2024 Menghai “7572” Ripe Pu-erh Tea Cake

Dry Leaves: Shoe leather, dark wood

First steep: Initial note fishy, color of wine, musty seaweed

Second steep: Strong shoe leather, Evener darker red, astringency but also very smooth mouthfeel

Third steep: Funky, old wood. Murkier than last steep

Fourth Steep: Old leather

Fifth steep: Very smooth, light mouth feel hints of leather, no more astringency

Sixth steep: Idk what to say beyond like light leather

Since this cake is pretty new only 2 years old it hasn’t had time to develop or age so the taste is pretty mild. I want to experiment aging this cake of 2024 7572 and see how it develops over time.

After 3 years of storage an aged and sugar aromas are meant to appear which hasn’t happened for my cake yet.

Background

“In preparation for the 1976 Yunnan Province Tea Conference, during 1975, Da Yi introduced the ubiquitous 7542 sheng pu’reh which set the standard for all future pu’reh to compare it to, the 7542 was by all means not the best pu’reh around, but it had overall very high performance in all areas creating a very well rounded sheng pu’reh.

In the same year, its shou pu’reh brethren 7572 was also released, whilst it did not create as much of a ripple in the pu’reh world, it is still used as a standard to compare to other shou pu’reh to this day.

75 – tea blend and fermentation process designed in 1975
7 – grade 7 tea, in general, the lower the number, the better
2 – Identification number for the Menghai tea factory” - source

TeaDB often uses 7572 as a reference point when comparing Pu’rehs.

That reddit thread linked this article containing historical pricing data for tea as of 2018. What the data shows is the 7572 is lower cost than other teas of its era. Perhaps, the low cost, high availability and mild taste is what led to it becoming a reference point.

This article did an experiment contrasting 9 samples of different ages of 7572. They used a gas chromatography machine to study how the chemical composition of the tea changed over time. They found that as tea aged Methoxybenzenes (an aromatic) as well as Terpenes decreased over time. But long chain organic acids increased in quantity over time. Long chain organics acids are also found in aged wine.