After trying my first raw puer, I felt like having some ripe puer. I generally only have it at restaurants, and we have one cake that we got in Zhuhai lying around somewhere. But for convenience sake, and because I’m still not over the novelty of ball puer, I took some of the ripe ball puer we had in the office to drink.

The vintage of this puer should be around 2017/2018, although I suppose that because it’s not raw, it doesn’t matter as much – as I understand it, the flavour of ripe puer doesn’t change very much if it’s only been a couple of years.

When brewed, this puer had a dark tea liquor and a sweet, woody smell. I would also say earthy, but not “dirt” (for some reason, my nose distinguishes between the two). And interestingly, when I opened the lid and had the steam from the tea hit me squarely in the face, I also distinguished some floral notes – but those disappeared pretty quickly and I haven’t found them in subsequent brews since.

Taste-wise, the puer wasn’t as sweet as I expected. The dominant taste-notes were woody and earthy. I was a bit surprised at the fact that the earthy notes were so present in the taste because they weren’t as strong in the initial fragrance. From the second steep onwards, though, I could start smelling the earthiness too (not sure if this is due to me having tasted the earthy notes but I definitely noticed it). There was some bitterness, but not much and the tea was pretty easy on the stomach too.

By the way, we received a tip from one of the local tea merchants who specialise in puer – they recommended adding a dash of milk. It sounded strange, but it’s actually really good. Most of the time, I’ll use milk for extremely astringent and bitter teas to help round out the flavour (as in the case of the powdered green tea from Tafu). In this case, the puer helped to rein in the earthy notes without destroying it. The tea mellowed out, but it wasn’t diluted, and I like the extra creaminess. It’s not the best puer latte I’ve had – the best is actually the loose ripe puer from 云元谷 that we also have in the office, but this was pretty good. We’ve also tried this puer latte thing with ripe puer, but I think the ones we had were too young because they did not taste good.

These two teas from 云元谷 have shown me that I am sorely lacking in practical experience with puer, and by extension, other dark teas. Luckily, I do have a friend who’s got a puer collection (and lots of other teas as well), so I will have to find time to drink tea with her.