Hi tea fans!
After having good luck with my first venture into pu-erh teas with the inexpensive "Lucky" brand Yunnan Tuocha, I ventured to Wing Hop Fung in Monterey Park, CA to try some other pu-erh teas. I've found Wing Hop Fung to be a rather good retailer of Chinese products, and the store is well-regarded by the local Chinese community. Thus I figured it was a safe place to go.
I bought two teas, one packaged in a box labeled "Yunnan Tribute Tea" and another whose brand was in chinese but featured a rooster on its paper wrapper. They cost about USD $6/cake.
The Yunnan Tribute Tea featured a different pressed symbol on each side. This same tea can be found by googling "Yunnan Tribute Tea", for sale by Tenren (for a much higher price than I paid!). I tried the cake tonight and found the first two brewings (done gongfu style) to border on rancid. The smell of the brick hinted at this before I brewed it, but I tried it anyway. Subsequent brewings were just ok. The cake seemed very dark--I figured it was cooked rather than raw and aged, especially considering the price. I'm wondering if this is an example of wet storage pu-erh? It had a clear red liquor, but smelled like pesticides.
The Rooster tea smelled much better, but was also very rancid in taste. Its liquor was yellow-green and cloudy, and the flavor reminded me of a poorly stored or low grade pouchong, maybe even kudingcha! I thought perhaps it was just a very young cake, considering it would have been produced this year or for release this year, but the cake was brown, so I didn't think it could be that young. The leaves were present on the outside, but inside the tea was like mush. I wish I could find this particular cake online for reference, but this is all the info I have on it.
I was wondering if others on this board had similar experiences with either of these teas, or if they enjoyed them. I don't know if these are just examples of bad pu-erh or if my palate hasn't quite graduated to finer pu-erh sensibilities.
Anyway, all replies appreciated.