I am new to puer and really to tea in general. A few months ago I ordered a couple samplers from whatcha and had fun with all the different varieties. There was one called ripe dark tea from Vietnam that I thought was just black tea. I tried it with milk one day and thought I was going to throw up, heh. Gave it one more shot a few days later, without milk, it tasted something like a rotting log. I was hooked.

I ordered a random cake off amazon (prime shipping ftw). It had a fishy taste that seems to have largely gone away over the last few weeks, but otherwise was creamy with a woody taste that I really liked. It was obviously not as high quality a tea as the loose Vietnamese one, or the white2tea ripe basics that arrived this week.

The basics set seems very fresh and good overall, but I'm not sure what I should be looking at between the different grades of leaves. They all have more of a...dirt? flavor than the others I tried. The different grades are clearly somewhat different, but I am unsure how to describe the differences, they seem subtle. What all should I be looking for? Are there any more in depth guides to puer tasting?