2019 Chaze Bai Fu 'Hundred Blessings' Ripe Pu Erh Cake 357g

It's rare to encounter a ripe pu-erh tea like this, with its incredibly rich, sticky texture. While the thickness is moderate, this stickiness that completely coasts your palate, we would describe as quite insane. Just this feature makes it one of our favourite ripe pu erh tea cakes from the Dai minority region in Xishuangbanna, Yunnan.

The tea cake is crafted from a refined blend of tea leaves and golden buds, meticulously processed into loose tea (mao cha) and gently post-fermented to achieve a balanced flavor. The cakes are loosely compressed, allowing you to break them apart easily, even with your hands if a tea knife isn’t available.

The flavor is wonderfully comforting, with sweet notes of dates and caramel. As you continue steeping, subtle hints of rice and mint emerge, adding complexity to your gongfu brewing session. This isn’t a heavily fermented or overly robust ripe pu erh; instead, it offers a gentle earthiness, free from any smokiness or strong spice flavors.

While, we recommend to start out steeping it at full temperature, this ripe pu erh tea is also quite suitable to steep at lower temperatures (80-90º), compensated with a longer steeping time. Its endurance is remarkable, only starting to become milder in taste after 8 steeps. The same tea leaves can easily be brewed for 14 times.

We only managed to obtain 28 cakes of this tea, and once sold out it won't be restocked. Thus, we recommend you to order a sample or a single cake first, and stock up if this is the right ripe pu erh tea for you.