Shengtastic

Right, a little bit windy, a little bit windy, so I’m going to just attach the mic to the phone because I wanted to yap a little bit about sheng. To you. I’m, I’m, uh, very excited about sheng at the moment. And I’ve just put in a Yunnan Sourcing order for about four or five different samples of some different cakes, assisted by GPT actually, assisted by me talking to GPT and going through the kinds of shengs and the kinds of flavour notes. ​ Sorry, I had to repeat the end of that sentence, or pick it up from the end of that sentence because, for some reason, it glitched on me and I lost the end of the sentence. ​ So I did this kind of, um, sort of using GPT as a tea connoisseur to guide me, and then also going looking together on the Yunnan Sourcing website and seeing, okay, well, which of the types of sheng are probably going to fit me. ​ So it would seem that the Iwu shengs are probably going to be more in my line than, say, the Bulang shengs, because what I really like in a sheng is something really kind of juicy, sort of sharp, but still with that sharp, shengy, yangy quality, right? Which is also why, I don’t know, for some reason, spring and summer is when I drink sheng. I don’t drink much of it in the winter. ​ But spring afternoon, summer afternoon, there’s nothing I want to drink more than just sheng, sheng, sheng. Because it’s got this kind of tropical thing, particularly the shengs I like, which maybe have a bit of tropical juiciness to them. Some of those flavours that you don’t always get in the other teas, right? Your pineapples, your mangos. But always with that weird funk, like it’s just starting to go a little bit rank. Mmm. ​ And the sheng I’m drinking at the moment, oh man. It hits all of that for me. ​ And this is where, I don’t know, let’s call this the tea drinkers’ smugness, because I am discovering also the smugness, which you are now going to be on the receiving end of. Prepare for smugness. ​ There is a certain smugness in someone drinking a little bit of tea from their stash, tea they’ve been having for a while, tea they’ve actually been encouraging to develop because I have a little humidor set up with, you know, sixty five, is it sixty five? I think I decided to go sixty five percent humidity. ​ Which is there to encourage this sort of ripening, the ripeness of the sheng, but not in the shou way. More in that other way. And I feel like maybe this has been doing something. I don’t know. It’s been in there for about the last year or so. ​ Because this seems juicier, more complex, more flavourful than the last time I tasted it, and I wonder if that’s the little sheng humidor doing its thing. I don’t even know if humidor is the right word. ​ Oh, it’s good. ​ I’ll send you a picture of it, and fuck, if he still sells it, I would very much recommend buying a cake. ​