/ck/ - Food & Cooking

I'm starting to dig into these bad boys: 2009 XiaGuan Xiao Fa.
>The Tuocha
I don't have much experience with aged shou puerh tea, so I'm debating what is aged taste and what is XiaGuan's signature funk. Either way, I think this is fantastic.
It's really robust, and tastes the least shou-like I have experienced. It tastes like dirt in the best way conceivable, with some dried wood notes. No sweet or fruity flavors really to balance it out, it leans pretty heavily in its own direction and I admire this tea for that reason. I also recently had a 2022 of the same tea, which has obvious similarities but is less impressive. If I recall correctly, their prices weren't that far apart, so I would skip the vertical and go for the aged one.
The tuo was compressed very strongly. That binghole was a real sphincter.
I'm about 1.5 liters into 9 grams with little sign of slowing down. This has way above average endurance. Its the strongly compressed nugs probably has something to do with that.
I bet somebody who wanted to stop drinking coffee but has only ever commodity junk coffee would really like as an entry point into tea.