Being rather impatient with recent orders of tea I had decided to look at tea during my next grocery trip to my local Uwajimaya. And after examining the prices for Pu-Erh tea cakes decided to go for something in the 'low-middle' of the price line-up, knowing that I wouldn't care for the bottle of the barrel, but also wouldn't likely fully appreciate something at the higher end. Tea is after all an acquired taste, and one that's learned and developed, there is no need to rush towards 'the top'. And had selected this cake of "Lo Man E" Raw Pu-Erh.
This tea comes to my corner of the Pacific Northwest all the way from Bulang Mountain, in Yunnan province China, near the boarder of Myanmar. After some brief research it seems like this is an area rather well known for it's 'high elevation' teas. This comes as no surprise, as (spoiler alert) it tastes very similar in my opinion to a Wuyi tea ("rock" tea) I have had in prior years, both being pan fried/processed teas that were grown in higher mountain elevations.
The tea cake was handsome, with a beautiful composition of marbled hues and colors. This is far different from my 'ripe' Pu-Erh tea cake that was more of a uniform red/brown/black color.
The paper cover-slip on the cake discusses the history of the Lao Man E village, existing for over 1400 years, a village that consists of traditional wooden buildings, tea trees, bananas trees, and bamboo forests. It says that the oldest amongst the thousands of acres of tea trees are around 500-1000 years old, some exceeding 10 meters in height. It also describes the tea as "wild, vigorous, refreshing and sweet, with a full bodied flavor".
I would agree with the mention of a "full bodied flavor", but I have not found this tea to be "sweet" in any way. Perhaps I need to change my method of steeping it, I had followed the English instructions (perhaps a grave mistake) and used boiling water as instructed. Either way, I still found it a pleasant tea. It offered a bitter start that developed into a nutty taste (much like an oolong) and left a level of astringency in the mouth afterwards. It doesn't feel light at all, or fresh, but hosts a lot of the smokey, nutty, and savory flavor one would expect from a pan fried tea.
I would overall rate this a 7/10, it's a solid tea, perhaps not my favorite that I've tried, but I find it a lot more approachable as a Pu-Erh than my 'ripe' cake from 2012. It's bitterness makes it less appealing, but the nuttiness brings it back some points in my opinion.