Spring Lincang

This wild arbor raw Pu-erh from Xiao Hu Sai village delivers a strong, mouth-watering experience. It presents a thick body with pronounced initial astringency and bitterness that evolves into a linger. It leans astringent, bitter and syrupy.

Water around 95–100 °C (203–212 °F). In a mug, steep 3–5 min. For gongfu, use 5–7 g per 100 ml, 10–20 s steeps (10–20+ rounds). You'll get to see how the flavor changes across multiple rounds. Rinse the leaves once with boiling water before your first real steep. It cleans off storage dust and gets the flavor going.

Grown in Yunnan, China from the Xiao Qiao Mu cultivar. This batch is from the Spring 2017 harvest.

Starts at $16.00 from Yunnan Sourcing, or about $0.42/g. A 25g package gets you around 4 gongfu sessions at ~6 g each, which works out to about $2.52 per session. Compare dark prices across vendors on Teadar.