Puerh Junky’s Three
The Puerh Junky’s Three is pretty much like any other story. There’s good guys and bad guys and the bad guys turn good and the good bad and everyone has a drink to just forget about it all. Choose you heroes carefully. You might get snakebitten. Here I take a foray into three 6FTM productions.
Step right up, I got your snakes here. The ’13 Snake is the tenth edition of the Lunar Series and is relatively young. The production struck me as a sweet Riesling, with clear taste of honeydew and a sweet aroma. The experience was short lived, as it starts to wane precipitously after the fifth infusion, but those are all very good infusions.
I decided to follow such a young production with the 07 Tinned Pig, which was tinned probably mid February 2021. This 6FTM production is more resolutely pressed, but it’s been broken down to chunks. Here the production didn’t really start to hit its stride till about the fifth infusion. I switched from clay to gaiwan, as a noticed a hint of metal that I think the red clay was bringing out. I got an additional four infusions and when pushed it didn’t bottom out, remaining sweet and textured. Overall, it expressed a colour and nature that could be mistaken for a very good production from around ’15. No doubt compression accounts for much of this youth. At the same time, it is very round and smooth.
Finally, I went with another production from ’07, Poison. This production is in an altogether different class. By the third infusion and drinking w/ my wife, we both tapped out. The brewing was perfect, with each round a bit darker than the previous. It’s open from the first infusion and just wows with each subsequent infusion, but it’s a lot to process. So you tap out.
June 2021 will be around one year LA storage for this raw puerh cake. In that year it has continued to wow me. The camphor is starting to make a turn toward down right medicinal beyond root beer. There’s also an interesting sour that affects the salivary senses. Something about the woody productions that go beyond the leafiness of the Tobacco class, a Spirits class if you will. It evokes senses of whiskey and tequila, digestive liqueurs, with spices like clove and star anise. Vanilla, sarsaparilla, but with an edge evocative of spirits aged in oak and mesquite. Oh, and smoked bubble gum, even locquat. It is anchored by some serious bitterness and sweetness. You tap out again at the 9th-infusion.
In terms of Spirits class productions, Glee comes to mind. The Jade Rabbit and the 6FTM Tuo both exhibit spirit attributes as well. They’re all good studies in excellent productions.
