Yunnan Sourcing

I waited patiently for about 2 weeks to try this YS sampling.. it was worth it.

Brewed Gung-Fu style in a gaiwan. This tea opened up very quickly, after only the 2nd infusion I had very strong mouthfeeling (further toward the throat than I am used to) as well as cha qi. Experiencing this tea through the first 10 infusions left a very heady feeling and was very stimulating.

Slight bitterness/astringency through the first 10 infusions. This tea stayed mostly consistent for the 20 steep session, but I highlight the lack of any astringency/biterness after about 10 steepings and more into vanilla-like tones.

Very exciting tea, can’t wait to enjoy this again.

I have stored some of this tea broken up for about 6 months now, and I can definitely see signs of improvement. It is smoother, sweeter and the fishy fermentation flavours are much more subdued.

Clouded liquor with a dark red colour. Smell of the wet leaf is mostly peat-like.

The taste is not very complex, savoury notes of mushrooms dominate, but there is also considerable herbal bitterness. There is a long aftertaste, in which some sweetness apears as well.

I quite like the cha qi, which is fairly mild. I reckon due to the relatively mild fermentation the tea can change over time to develop more sweetness, which right now is very subdued.

Very light tea, floral with nutty hints. I think it might be too subtle for me though. Sure, there are times when a light tea is nice, but this is not one I would go for regularly.

It mainly tastes like sugary water. The smell is more enticing, I noticed some resemblance with lavender and orchid.

I should try a cold brew at some point to see if it yields better results. Also, right now it’s winter in Canada and I have a feeling this tea might fare better as a summer tea.

I have the Spring 2017 batch.

Dry leaf smells really fruity, bright passionfruit.

1st infusion at 180˚F:
Tastes like a delicate, juice-sweetened white tea drink. Incredible!

Poor and bland tea with no pleasurable characteristics. It just smells and tastes like dusty old wood which has been rotting in a damp cellar for years. There is a very good reason why this tea is so cheap, it is no good. That said, I will probably finish the cake off one day, so it is drinkable.

It smells like puerh, tastes like puerh, pretty much standard puerh. I got a bit high on the first brew. Brewed it gongfu style.

Once again, I owe this tea an apology for overbrewing it last time with way too much leaf.

This time I used 9g in a 190ml gaiwan and it tasted and smelled wonderful. It’s still slightly on the herbal, bitter side, but in an invigorating and harmonious way. Goes well with sweet peaches.

Second infusion:
Even more musty, with a lot of character like old furniture and a hint of salty seaweed. Maybe salty caramel / sugar, is that supposed to be the “sugarcane” on Yunnan Sourcing’s website description?

Third infusion:
Goes great with milk and paired with bread and butter pudding.

Rating: 86

Chinese translation of Qi Zi Zhi Ge: “Song of the Seven Sons”

Smells bitter, earthy, medicinal, like musty old-people’s furniture. I can see how people get a hint of fishiness from it too. Not a fan of the smell.

Tastes bitter like herbal guilinggao (tortoise jelly). Bitterness is neutralised when you add milk, it’s very good with milk.

Probably wouldn’t buy the full-size tea cake of this.

Rating: 70

It has an average thickness, a mellow caramel flavour with little to no astringency and no dank soil taste whatsoever. It doesn’t last for very many brews and thins out slightly on the quicker side, though this isn’t an issue for me since I have only a few cups in the morning. It’s a very good daily drinker and value for money.

Sat down with this as an afternoon brew as I have a sample. I agree with the other reviews that it is nothing to write home about.

It took a while to open up and later brews were more pleasant and rounded. Not a huge amount of bitterness with the brewing that I was doing. the main notes of herbs, leather and wood seemed to not last for that long and I didn’t get much of a coating mouth-feel from it. For the money I don’t think it is bad but I don’t need any more daily drinkers like this!

Grabbed this one for work today. I don’t think I will again, this tea seems much to delicate and was a waste to drink at work under the wrong circumstances.

At any rate, grabbed too much leaf again and I’m not going to waste any so I was forced to fill half the cup with leaf. Wasn’t so heart-throbbing as I would anticipate with that much leaf. I guess that and the lack of consistent bitterness (apart from the first cup lack of any bitterness) plus the sweet dirt tones are all signs of Yiwu, in my experience anyway.

I drank a whole cake of 2005 “Big Green Tree” over the past few months at work and that being a daily Yiwu drinker I thought I’d go for this one. Would prefer to save this one for the gaiwan or jianshui and get some more Big Green Tree for work… as far as Yiwu is involved.

Keep this one to finer brewing.

[Autumn 2017 harvest]

The tea has a mild and delicate yet exciting taste. There is a lot going on, even thought malt definitely is the most present in the taste. Chocolate, citrus and spicy notes are very noticeable too though. Generally it is a very sweet affair. In later infusions, the sweetness is more reminiscent of pastries and sweet potatoes.

The aftertaste is protracted and oscillating between sweet and spicy, very enjoyable.

I love the mouthfeel, it is very thick for a black tea. Given that it’s pure bud tea, it also lasts a surprisingly large number of infusions.

This tea has unbeatable dry leaf aroma. The wet leaf smell is also very enticing, sweet and soothing. It reminds me of beef broth, leek and some kind of cookie which I couldn’t identify.

The taste is a mix between nutty/floral taste of Long Jing and vegetal/umami taste of Sencha. At low temperatures it is more brothy and floral at higher temperatures the astringency and nuttiness is more present.

If you like green tea, you absolutely shouldn’t hesitate with this one. You won’t be disappointed.

I only had ten grams of this tea to work with, thus I went ahead and polished it off simply to get through another Dancong before the end of the month. I finished it two days ago, and now that I have had some time to think about it, I have concluded that this was a more or less excellent Ya Shi Xiang Dancong oolong. My only quibbles with it were that I expected higher leaf quality (There was a lot of broken leaves in what I received.), and like many Dancong oolongs, it faded rather quickly.

I prepared this tea gongfu style. After a brief rinse, I steeped 6 grams of loose tea leaves in 4 ounces of 203 F water for 7 seconds. This infusion was chased by 13 subsequent infusions. Steep times for these infusions were as follows: 9 seconds, 12 seconds, 16 seconds, 20 seconds, 25 seconds, 30 seconds, 40 seconds, 50 seconds, 1 minute, 1 minute 15 seconds, 1 minute 30 seconds, 2 minutes, and 3 minutes.

Prior to the rinse, I was able to detect aromas of nectarine and honey accompanied by something of a clay-like earthiness. After the rinse, I found emerging aromas of cream, citrus, rose, peach, and orange blossom. The first proper infusion brought forth new aromas of vanilla and rock sugar. In the mouth, the tea liquor offered notes of cream, rose, nectarine, peach, orange blossom, and rock sugar with vegetal, herbal, and earthy underpinnings in the background. Subsequent infusions brought out more distinct notes of damp grass, watercress, cattail shoots, earth, anise, and caraway, as well as impressions of sweet orange, lemon zest, toast, roasted almond, minerals, toasted grain, rye, apricot, pear, lychee, and marshmallow. The later infusions offered lingering impressions of minerals, pear, cream, damp grass, and roasted almond with fleeting notes of lychee, toast, citrus, and rock sugar in the background. Curiously, there was a surprising, yancha-like hint of popcorn hull on several of the later infusions.

I’m quickly opening up to Ya Shi Xiang Dancongs, and to me, this one was a winner. While I would have liked to see leaf quality on par with that shown in Yunnan Sourcing’s photographs, this was still an extremely complex tea that offered a nice, smooth texture in the mouth and hardly any soapiness. I think Dancong fans would get a kick out of it.

This is a very nice aged tea. It seems to me that the more I drink it, the more I like it.

The wet leaves smell of old, slightly decaying wood in a damp environment, like a castle basement. Reminds me of one ambient & noise music festival called Hradby Samoty, which happens at a castle every year. I also get some chocolate and dried fruit notes coming through. The liquor is fiarly mellow and smooth. It is quite sweet, resembling prunes and cheesecake, but also has cocoa bean bitterness and little bit of mushroom broth, especially in later steeps. I get a slight cooling effect in my throat and the aftertaste is spicy I would say. There is absolutely no astringency, rather the mouthfeel is soft and mouthwatering.

I think the price these are selling for is very good and I think I will be getting some more once I finish the ones I have.

The sample I received stands out in appearance from most raw pu’ers you typically see. The leaves are rather large, largely intact and they’ve been neatly pressed into clear layers. I’ve had the sample in my pumidor for quite a few months, but I finally wanted to make a purchase decision on this tea, so I threw nine grams into my 130ml gaiwan and got brewing. I rinsed the leaves briefly for five seconds, giving them ten minutes before the first infusion. I did ten steeps, for 6s, 6s, 8s, 10s, 15s, 20s, 30s, 45s, 75s and 90s.

For this session I used both a regular glazed teacup as well as a brand new unglazed Jianshui clay teacup to evaluate the tea. I’ve used a similar cup for shu pu’er for a few weeks now with great results and was glad to discover that at least with this tea the clay seemed to be suited for sheng as well. Based on my limited testing, at least while new the clay can mute high notes somewhat while boosting lower notes and increasing body. For ripe pu’er the pairing is almost ideal, but after two failed experiments with dian hong I was glad to discover that at least with this particular raw pu’er I did not seem to lose too much of the tea’s nuance, whilst significantly bringing forth the tea’s flavor. The cup does alter the flavor profile slightly, but from here on I’ll likely be evaluating teas using a pair of a glazed and a clay cup.

As is customary to me, I did drink the rinse. While the color was still really pale, the tea was already surprisingly thick. While rinses can be somewhat hard to judge in terms of flavor, this one was nice, maybe a bit fruity but also somewhat creamy.

The first proper infusion still brewed a really pale greenish yellow. The tea, however, was much, much bolder. It had a nice, oily, almost buttery mouthfeel and it was really aromatic with a long aftertaste. The taste itself was creamy, slightly vegetal. The second steep produced an interesting luminescent yellow that was characteristic of this session. The tea continued to be bold and creamy, veering slightly more toward green now. It was also possibly hinting at astringency that was to come.

The soup was notably thicker in the third steep. The taste was greener and there was a hint of dryness, but vegetal was possibly the most dominant character. The next steeping was somewhat more coarse. The taste leaned more toward cooked vegetables now and the tea left my tongue a tad sandpapery and caused a slight burning sensation at the back of my throat.

Infusion number five continued to be quite strong. It was mostly vegetal still with a dry finish. The tea continued to be nicely thick in the sixth steep while the taste remained vegetal, but now also with a refreshing quality to it.

The seventh brew was harsher, less enjoyable. This is where the clay cup made the tea much more drinkable. The taste itself was a cross between vegetal and mineral. The next infusion was much better. It was quite reminiscent of the early steeps with its creamy vegetal taste. It was quite yummy and still nicely thick.

In the ninth steep the tea got harsher again, with some slight astringency to it now as well. While the tenth infusion was still quite full in the mouth, the flavors were beginning to simplify and the tea becoming less enjoyable and rewarding. I decided to call it here. While the tea could have possibly gone on for a bit longer, I think there’s a high probability it could get nasty really fast.

This tea was really good. It didn’t blow me away, but the quality is evident. The only reason I’m not more enthusiastic about it is because I’ve had the pleasure of reviewing some really high-end teas recently and while this one is better than a lot of other teas out there, it can’t quite compete with the best of the best at least in its current young state. With age I have no doubt this will become a fantastic tea. For such a young tea, this is very drinkable, although I’m not sure if it’s quite dynamic and interesting enough to warrant more than a session or two before tucking it away to age. While not cheap, I do think this sheng offers good value for the price, especially for a 2017 tea.

Normally I would order a cake of this right away, but as my pumidor for sheng is starting to get short on space, there are a few other teas I want to try before deciding which ones to get. I will likely invest in a second clay jar to break up another cake for drinking purposes and free up space that way as well. Nevertheless, this tea has my recommendation.

Even though the tea is lightly oxidized, the liquor remains very light green and medium bodied.

The green grassy notes are also present in the taste, but overall it’s a more floral affair than what is the case with most green teas. There is also a noticeable sweetness reminiscent of cantaloupe and edamame.

The aftertaste is mostly sweet with a hint of spiciness and induces a drying sensation. For the price, this is an awesome deal!

This is a nice, mellow, easy drinking young sheng. Thick, oily/brothy texture, low-moderate bitterness and astringency. It has a particularly strong mineral note to it. Moderate sugarcane sweetness balanced by a savory mushroom flavor. All of this with a nice floral orchid aroma. Later steeps develop some musk, citrus, and incense notes.

Wu Yi is a favorite of mine. I will order those I haven’t tried but a few I keep in stock and this is one of them because I like the roast. Not burnt, just right.

The soup is rich with a distance fleeting note of the sea. Otherwise sweet and fruity.

Bouquet: This fine buddy develops a very nice thick mouthwatering vegetable sphere with a mix of kohlrabi (turnip cabbage) & eggplant in a slightly grilled or baked version plus a fine layer of cranberry smoked ham finished with a elegant placed peppery note and fine herbal field flowers to it.

Liquor: The actual texture of this sligh

tly golden Sheng is quite silky soft with a strong beeswax scent within the emptied cups. The tasting profile is very well balanced and with such a full and thick composition. It feels like a fresh blooming Spring meadow while fresh cut and dried hay is spread around this field. Within the actual taste you can definitely taste fresh juicy kohlrabi cut in slices to be eaten as a refreshment under an old oak tree. There is something woodsy to it but just a hint of it followed by another major note of Korean pear (nashi pear). Some people might think about too young Sheng’s as being too fresh and for those I think this fellow is the best choice because it still got those Spring freshness inside his composition but the whole symphony matured a bit because it already past a couple of Spring seasons and picked the best parts out of those years on its way. The Aftertaste is a sensation of its own! Even after the last sip is done and a cooling feeling sets in suddenly out of nowhere your inner mouth section starts watering like if all those juicy aspects are coming together again. Within the aftertaste the Korean pear part especially of its skin is crucial for the major concept of its unfolding followed by a slightly nutty undertone of walnut and a sweet syrup like echo of raspberry and cheery blossom.

Definitely enjoyed this buddy a lot. It presents itself in a very nice composition between fresh Spring notes and already some slightly aged Autumn parts. Very juicy and complex profile!

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