The Shou/Ripened/Cooked Puerh process was originally created as an attempt to imitate the effect of long aging on Raw Puerh tea cakes. While, instead, they mostly created the new class of Puerh, Ripe.
With Riparian White2Tea has returned to those roots of attempting to imitate the character of long aged Puerh with an experimental blend of semi-aged raw puerh and lighter ferment ripe puerh. Still very freshly pressed, it's already almost convincing in the color and early steeps. Later steeps are a bit thin, but It will be interesting to see what shape Riparian settles into in a year or two.
Prosbloom is one of my favorite White2Tea skull themed labels. The tea itself is high quality, reasonable price, fresh shou puerh tea. 2021, just getting better with age.
2017 Mangjing Ripe from Farmer Leaf. A tea producer friend of farmer leaf reserved a small portion of their raw puerh maocha over several years. It was stored in fairly wet conditions in their Yunnan warehouse. In 2017, they processed that accumulated maocha into a small batch of ripe puerh. It was pressed into cakes in 2019.
They say the storage was wet, but no mold/mildew notes in the flavor. I like the flavor, on the darker side, and the energy is strong and very pleasant. After trying, I ordered a cake.
The third tea from Peter's visit to a Taiwan tea shop is a Dayi Shou Puerh of indeterminate age. Raw Puerh is often not really prized until it has decades of age on it. Ripe Puerh was originally created to mimic the effect of decades of age, by fast aging Puerh material in warm, wet piles. Dayi is a very well known factory Puerh producer. It may not be well known, but a little age on Shou Puerh, and it loses the characteristics that many find distasteful in young ripe puerh.
2023 Predawn Dark charcoal roasted Shou Puerh mini from White2Tea. This was club selection from last spring, which, for better or for worse, has been sitting in close proximity to a Lapsun Pine Sap smoked mini. So it is a bit smokier than it should be. Always keep any pine sap smoked tea separate.
A few years back White2Tea made their Pretty Girls shou puerh available as 12g biscuit cakes. So, you can either break it in half and brew a small batch or get out a larger pot and drink all day.
Xinghai 2009 "Dragon" ripe puerh mini cake via Yunnan Sourcing. According to YS, this is "gong ting" and "first grade" tea from 2008. I am sure 100% what those terms mean, but on a practical level the leaves are very small, so I kept the steeps short. Even keeping the steeps short, this tea ends up with a very zippy energy for a ripe puerh. It is an enjoyable, easy to brew tea, no bitterness and the storage flavors are mellow and pleasant.
I often say while Ripe Puerh and Raw Puerh start very different, over time they become similar. A good example is this 2002 "Golden Leaf Shu Pu'Er" from Verdant teas. If I didn't see it was "Shu Pu'Er"on the label, I would think it is a middle aged naturally stored raw puerh.
I found this single 2022 pretty girls Shou puerh mini, must have been a bonus with another White2Tea order last year. So I thought it would be interesting to try and compare with the 2019 version. Lighter flavor, slight astringency, less richness. I guess luggage aging puerh is a thing. Heh.
2019 Pretty Girls "Choco Bar" mini brick from White2Tea club. I was DM'ing with White2Tea about the joys of even mildly aged shou when I remembered this little brick of Pretty Girls from 2019. I took this brick as back up tea on several trips, pre-pandemic, it's been to Wisconsin and Europe, but never cracked it. Now's the Time.