Puerh Aging: Two Years in the life of Green Mark

Time for a little puerh nostalgia, by examining the aging of a “Green Mark” that I liked enough in ’15 to get a tong in ’16.  At the time, I was most impressed by the delicate touch of humidity that had been added.  There’s enough to where the “golden flowers” of fungi were visible through the aid of my camera.

Though the storing touch was impressive, I quickly surmised that it was more than storage that was responsible for it color and quality.

Regard, an obvious blend of raw and ripe.  Obviously, not a real Green Mark but interesting execution nonetheless.  The tastes were always quite complex, rich, sweet, and inviting.  The kick of astringency as in later infusions was always a bit of a bummer but certainly not the end of the world.

April 2016 shot

This shot shows a fairly handsome brew, but as noted always had a bit of tweaking astringency.

Bell Pepper Pot with the ’01 GM Puerh

This is a shot from Aug 2018.  It is quite remarkable how much darker it is.  The astringency has pretty much faded.  It’s expressing that glassy effect evident with productions have oxidized a great deal.  The contrast between the raw and ripe material isn’t there anymore.  The camphor may not be quite as punchy as it was.  Overall, it’s still quite pleasing.

There are some “real” productions that are blended.  They are usually ripes.  For example, the “7581” is mostly ripe material.  LYH has a ripe production called Auspicious that was positively undrinkable when I first got it a few years ago.  A few year later, it turned out to be nice and glassy.  I noticed that YS introduced a raw/ripe blend of some sort in the past year or two.  It seems all the rules are being broken.   Ultimately, the proof is in the taste and effect, which is an ever-moving target.

I find this Green Mark to be very good, and is aging along quite nicely.