Visiting Tulin’s Puerh Tuo
Visiting Tulin’s Puerh Tuo finds the Puerh Junky faced with the arduous task of drinking more tea. Tulin is essentially Xiaguan factory #2. The person who runs their show is descended from the XG lineage. If one doesn’t know XG, then the reference is pretty much lost. The gist is that XG takes their tuo seriously and by extension so should Tulin.
The May 2019 acquisition of the ’06 Silver Pekoe is showing the first signs of root beerification. The taste is still predominantly sandalwood and dish detergent. The material from this production is excellent but dry storage will greatly impact its expression and you can’t get root beer from dry-stored puerh. Thick and intense. Only time will tell if this second batch root beers it up more intensely.
Tippy Tuo has been the most popular among the three Tulin tuo offerings. The latest batch is surprisingly well stored, if a bit dry. The broth brews rusty orange, with flavours of peat, attic newspaper, and some old flowers. The flower note comes through in the huigan, in the event you notice it given its unbearable astringency. It’s super drying, though cheeky as well, which will induce the salivary glands in some. It’s a tad throaty but the sensation is mostly with the cheeks and throat.
Tippy Tuo 2021
In contrast to the two above, the AMT comes from chopped leaves. It’s definitely sweeter than the Tippy Tuo and less thick than the Silver Pekoe. The floral huigan is its most outstanding attribute which seems to be from remarkably consistent storage. Over that time, the mushroom taste seems to have been replaced with newspaper. The astringency characterizing this production has waned slightly but not sufficiently to make me a huge fan.
AMT Tulin 2021
Boris and Natasha love the Tulin tuo productions. If you don’t catch the reference, it’s because confounded moose and skvirrel talk much lies to Puerh Junky about astringency. Often Xiaguan references might be associated with smoke. These Tulin tuo haven’t any hint of smoke. Among the handful of XG tuo your Junkyness has sampled, the Tippy Tuo at one point approximated XG’s Gold Ribbon but now it and AMT more closely some pedestrian MKRS offerings, while the Silver Pekoe compares favourably with Grenouille from Simao region. All of these Tulin are from Wuliang.
