2010 Yunnan Sourcing "Bu Lang Jie Liang" Raw Pu-erh Tea Cake

Gentian root meets sugarcane and butter

"This is a very interesting tea. It was reviewed when it was just out of the (stone) press by Hobbes : http://half-dipper.blogspot.com/2011/05/2010-yunzhiyuan-bulang-jieliang.html?m=1 I don't have any personnal reference on how bitter the tea might have been at that time but believe me, this is one of the most bitter tea I have tasted. I sometimes infuse gentian root to aid digestion after meals, and this Bu Lang is not far behind. But it's a good kind of bitterness, as it kind of coats the mouth and stays with you for quite a while after drinking the tea, and somewhere in that time, it turns into a sort of thick buttery sweetness. There might even be something along the lines of flowers in there : it's a surprisingly complex tea. It litteraly stays in your mouth for an hour or so. But for me the most important part is the body feeling, the general impression the tea produces on me, and it's good one, I feel this bitter-fest pumps up my metabolism and gets my system going for the day. All in all, this is a very interesting tea, and in that same price range, I would strongly suggest trying the 2010 Gu Ming Xiang Ban Pen Gu Shu, which is from the same region but tells a totally different story, with a different body feeling, less bitterness but is equally intense. I also got a cake of the 2009 Ban Zhang Premium, it's awesome tea, but if I had 250$ to spend and wanted to store some Bu Lang for the future, I'd get this Spring Jie Lang and the Gu Ming Xiang Ban Pen : they're two different stories that complement each other very well."

— Danny A. (4/5)