Classic Tobacco Puerh
The ’08 Dali Tuo is a Classic Tobacco Puerh, and very good one I might add. It’s on par with the Water Blue Mark and the Cherry Blossom in terms of tobbaccoey tastiness.
This raw Xiaguan TF treasure has been written up several times. One occasion lay witness to a distraught Puerh Junky who thought that the DT had gone south. Truth be known, it has a great intensity: smoky, sweet, woody, spicy. Sure, it’s in “7536” (’07) company, but the absence of any playfulness up front makes it a kind of paragon of the Tobacco Class.
Productions seem to vary wildly from year-to-year. It’s been some since I’ve had the ’06 version of the same production but it’s always seemed to be a peaty animal, whereas the smaller ’08 is more petrol. Similarly, the ’04 version of the 7536 by Fuhai is vastly different from ’07. The 7536 has been penned as a 7532 imitation, which is conceivable with the ’04 production but inconceivable with the ’07.
Oops. At about the fifth infusion a fruit note does come out. It’s what made me liken it to the ’13 Forever Love, which I do not own. The fruit is certainly not its feature but it is expressing in a fashion consistent with puerh of this age. By contrast the WBM and CB exhibit their fruitiness up front alongside the tobacco and sweetness.
Tobacco is naturally bitter. Dali Tuo’s bitterness nicely balances the other more prominent notes. Yeah, there’s astringency but it isn’t drying, leaving a nice zing in the mouth.
