Description:

Sheng is Pu-erh left unfermented, so what you buy is a tea at the beginning of its life rather than the end of it. Young, it drinks like a strong green tea with edges: apricot and hay, a real bitterness that turns sweet a moment later, and the cooling sensation in the throat that drinkers call huigan. Kept somewhere dry and airy it darkens and deepens over years. Use water just off the boil and short steeps, and treat that first bitter note as the point rather than a fault.