Hide

Welcome to Steepster, an online tea community.

Write a tea journal, see what others are drinking and get recommendations from people you trust. Sign Up or Learn More

Stephanie

146 Followers / 114 Following

2009 Late-Winter Budset Yabao from Verdant Tea

Stephanie drank 2009 Late-Winter Budset Yabao by Verdant Tea

An interesting tea!! Very unusual. I think I love it. :)

I know I didn’t brew this perfectly. I just felt like I needed to try this today and so I threw it in my bag to try at work. (So my impressions are based on roughly 1 teaspoon of tea and 190 degree hot spigot water in a 12.75 oz travel tea mug):

It smells like freshly peeled corn husks!! With slighty sappy, crisp evergreen and watermelon-like notes.

Tastes delicate and sweet, yet somehow has substance. No strong floral notes or spice—maybe a wisp of clover and grain with a sprinkle of sugar.

I love the scent the best and I also feel very calm and centered while drinking this.

It looks like a full-size order of Late-Winter Budset Yabao is in my future!

2011-06-23 13:02:49 -0400

190 °F / 87 °C

8 min or more

I Like This

13 likes

5 comments

People who liked this

Comments

Nathaniel Gruber 2011-06-23 16:36:28 -0400

I too love this tea! The beautiful thing about this tea is that it is almost impossible to brew it incorrectly. It is so forgiving. Good description of it, too!

Stephanie 2011-06-23 16:49:13 -0400

Yay! Thanks Nathaniel! I especially love teas that I don’t have to “baby”. This one is practially perfect in that way.

Spoonvonstup 2011-06-24 18:54:13 -0400

Ditto Nate’s comment. This tea is so ridiculously forgiving! I’ve definitely just thrown leaves (buds?) into a cup at work, and let them sit in water all day as I refilled with hot water.

The only way I wouldn’t recommend this tea is putting it into a fill-yourself tea bag. The ones I tried, at least, were made of a linen-y paper, and they ended up absorbing and masking a lot of the sugar-crystal sweetness and replacing it with..paper. Also, since the buds are so big, you don’t fit as much into a bag as you probably really need.

Glad you enjoyed this one! This kind of pu’er was the very first sheng I fell in love with, and my gateway drug into pu’ers. It’s so pleasant and forgiving; there’s no way to do it wrong, and everyone who tries it invariably enjoys themselves.

I’ve heard that Verdant is trying to bring in some Yabao pressed into bricks and much older than what they have already. If they ever do (fingers crossed!), I’d recommend you try some of that, too.

Stephanie 2011-06-25 03:09:39 -0400

Hi Spoonvonstup (such a great name…how come I never thought of it??) I agree with you about forgiving teas! I think puerhs are forgiving in general, since they’ve had so much time to “mellow out”.

I don’t have much time for temperamental teas nowadays. So, to a tea, I say: “Just let me throw you in my tea mug and let’s see how you hold up!” ;).

Geoffrey Norman 2011-06-26 00:59:31 -0400

I loooooooove Ya Bao. Lemoniness and sheng pu-erh. What better combination.

Follow Get this person's updates

Profile

Bio

Virgo Sun, Pisces Moon, Aries Rising

My ratings are purely subjective and each note varies according to my perception and mood at the moment. So, with that said, my rating scale can be deciphered as follows:
90-100: I am in love! A must have at all times! :D
80-89: This is good. It is full-tin worthy! :))
79-70: This is okay. Glad I tried it. Might get more. :)
69-60: Meh. I’m indifferent. Neither here nor there, this is Tea Purgatory. :/
59-under: Mediocre and Sad. Really not good enough to try again. A disappointment. :(

_{My Misc. Personal Favorites List (because I love making lists!):

Books = The Mind Parasites by Colin Wilson, The Neverending Story by Michael Ende, Beauty by Sherri S. Tepper, The Shell Seekers by Rosamunde Pilcher, Personal Darkness by Tanith Lee.

Movies = E.T., The Princess Bride, Babette’s Feast, Enchanted April, The Age of Innocence, Death Becomes Her, GATTACA, Fight Club, The Matrix, The Others, Pride and Prejudice (2005 version), Nacho Libre :).

TV Shows = The Twilight Zone (a classic!), Star Trek TNG, Buffy the Vampire Slayer (I miss this!), Mad Men, Sherlock, Being Human.

Music? = I find myself perennially stuck in an 80’s-90’s New Wave & Alternative time warp. ;)

Quote of the Day: “There really isn’t anything; only the story appearing now—and not even that.”}