Anybody tried Upton's green pu-erh?

Although Upton's choices in most other types of tea is very good (IMHO), they have only ever carried a few pu-erhs, all black up to this time. I've tried a couple and didn't care for them.

However, now I notice they have, for the first time, a green pu-erh in tuo cha form (7-8 grams per). Has anybody tried it? If so, what were your impressions? The description says it is made from "fine buds of Yunnan's heirloom tea trees", and the flavor is described as "vegetal, with notes of wild honey and dried fruit." This sounds attractive, but at a price of around $0.35 per gram, it is way out of my normal range. Looking for opinions of you experience pu-erh drinkers out there.

Randy

Reply to
RJP
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I hadn't even noticed that they added that. A few months back I bought a sample of one of each of Upton's Pu-Erh offerings and I can say that none of them did much for me except their Ancient Maiden, which was good as a beginning Puer. Since I am mainly drawn to the green puer's I plan on ordering a sample and giving it a shot it sounds intriguing. It's $7.70 for 15g which I'm assuming is 2 Tuo's which is about 10 servings. It does seem pretty steeply priced for what it is though.

I'd be interested to hear what some of the Puer experts could say about this. I could be wrong but it seems like this wouldn't be exclusive to Uptons and may be available elsewhere at a better price.

- Dominic

Reply to
Dominic T.

I'd be much obliged if you shared your impressions when you do try it.

I don't know much about amount of green pu-erh leaf to use, and how many infusions from a given batch of leaf, but I had hoped that the 15g sample would yield more than 10 servings (which I'm assuming is a 6 oz. cup).

Ditto.

Randy

Reply to
RJP

If your aim is just a test run of green pu'er and convenience, and the larger financial picture seems silly when it's only $7.70 expenditure for those upton minituos, then ignore the below, and give it a shot. Minituos are a good introduction to pu'er, generally, but I haven't tried these in particular. Even if this is your aim, be aware that these are "bud only" minituocha, so you still might not be getting the intro you might want. It'll taste probably something between yinzhen (silver needle) and pu'er, with a bit of aromatic hickory/pine smoke thrown in.

But, if you do consider "value" important, then consider: 15g is two

7-8g mini tuo for $7.70...very very expensive considering what it is.

Generally it's 1 mini tuo per 140-150ml yixing pot (5oz) to do a multiple steep method. If these minituo are any good, you could get

5-10 servings out of each mini-tuo, but only two "sittings" of tea. If you split them in half and brew them western style (long brews), that's only 4 sittings/servings--you'd be hard-pressed to get 10 tea sittings out of those!

FYI, i use 1g tea to 15ml volume for green pu'er...so one of those serves a 100-110ml gaiwan for me (just under 4 oz).

To give you an idea, 500g at that price would be $256.67...even at their bulk rate 500g is $156.00. Meanwhile, a 500g Xizihao Lao Banzhang cake, IMO one of the best green pu'ers on the market right now, runs ~$68+shipping. For $256.67 you could get one or two great cakes from the 1990s. For $156.00, you could get one 1990s cake.

For $7.25, you could get a ~30g sample of the lao banzhang from hou de--with free shipping--or samples of more than one green pu'er from Jing (w/o shipping), or 100g-250g green tuos from various online vendors on ebay and elsewhere.

Again, if it's just a test run of green pu'er, or you're just curious about these minituo and 2 is enough because you don't want more sitting around if you don't like it, then the minituo do make perfect sense. But for the same price you could get larger samples of better teas, IMO.

Feeling frugal,

~j

RJP wrote:

Reply to
Jason F in Los Angeles

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