Yunnan Sourcing

Alright, I’m finally back on here. It seems that I have very little motivation to type tea reviews these days. This was one of my sipdowns from the second half of last month. It was a very nice, likable Wuyi black tea, but it did not quite measure up to the spring 2018 Premium AA Zheng Shan Xiao Zhong offered by Yunnan Sourcing.

I prepared this tea gongfu style. I set my water temperature at 194 F and did not raise or lower it over the course of my review session. After briefly rinsing the 6 grams loose tea leaves I had set aside for the session, I started things off by steeping them for 5 seconds. This infusion was chased by 17 additional infusions. Steep times for these infusions were as follows: 7 seconds, 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, 3 minutes, 5 minutes, 7 minutes, and 10 minutes.

Prior to the rinse, the dry tea leaves produced aromas of baked bread, malt, pine, cocoa, and smoke. After the rinse, I detected aromas of brown sugar, roasted almond, roasted peanut, and sweet potato. The first infusion introduced a subtle creamy scent. In the mouth, the tea liquor presented me with notes of cream, malt, baked bread, pine, cocoa, roasted almond, and roasted peanut that were balanced by hints of plum, smoke, pear, orange zest, cinnamon, brown sugar, and sweet potato. The majority of the subsequent infusions introduced aromas of cinnamon, orange zest, plum, red apple, pear, marshmallow, lemon zest, minerals, and roasted chestnut. Stronger and more immediately noteworthy impressions of plum, pear, smoke, brown sugar, orange zest, and sweet potato appeared in the mouth alongside notes of red apple, earth, minerals, roasted chestnut, and lemon zest. I also detected hints of lychee, marshmallow, tangerine, butter, red grape, leather, and roasted walnut here and there. As the tea settled and faded, the liquor shifted to emphasize notes of minerals, cream, malt, baked bread, roasted peanut, roasted chestnut, lemon zest, and leather that were balanced by subtler impressions of brown sugar, butter, sweet potato, pine, red grape, orange zest, plum, pear, and roasted almond.

This was a nice Wuyi black tea, but as mentioned in the introductory paragraph, it did suffer a bit in comparison to the Premium AA offering. Still, it had a very respectable mix of aromas and flavors and displayed more than admirable longevity in a lengthy and intense drinking session. Had the tea liquor been just a bit smoother and thicker and had some of the flavor components been just a little more deftly integrated, this would have been a great offering. As is, this tea was very good, but it just lacked those little extra somethings that would have pushed it over the top for me.

A local tea shop gave me a single one of these tangerines as a sample; they were thinking of carrying it regularly. I think they ended up not doing so, which is a shame because it’s quite a nice tea. However, it’s available from Yunnan Sourcing, so I can always get it there.

The texture is kind of thin for a shou… It doesn’t have too much of a citrus taste; this comes out more in later steeps. Nice, but not what I’d pick when I want a pu-erh specifically. Like most of the fruit-packaged tea I’ve tried, it steeps well both grandpa-style and gongfu.

It has some roasted and chocolate tastes, but nothing too strong. Slightly bitter at times. It almost tastes a tad medicinal, but not in a bad way. There’s faint sweetness on the first steep, but not after that.

Brothy flavour, drying sensation on the tongue. You can really taste the tannins in this one. Nice warming smell. Not really up my alley in terms of flavour profile and sensation, but very much a good quality aged sheng. Despite being two decades old at the time I tried it, the taste was still complex and robust.

I found this tea very mild, even after a long steep in very hot water. Certainly not objectionable. It has a faint taste of burnt sugar, some bamboo scent, and a lightly roasted flavour. Overall, it’s fine, but too mild for my taste.

I tried the autumn 2016 version of this tea. It was refreshing and vaguely fruity; a pleasant enough tea, but not especially memorable. It has no strong spinach-y notes or other flavours likely to be objectionable, so it’s probably a good introductory white tea.

It is also very fluffy. I put together a tea sample pack for a friend recently as a holiday gift, and included this tea. A mere 10g of it fit into a size of jar that held an average of 18g of most other teas, and 32g of a more finely chopped tea.

This tea is a bit fiddly to brew. If I use my normal method, it’s not bad, but very mild; kind of unexceptional. Brewing it in duan ni improves it significantly; it really brings out the flavour. In porcelain this is a 40 – in clay, it’s a 65. The combination of better heat retention with the removal of a typically bitter edge helps showcase the subtler (and more delicious) tastes in the tea.

Strong taste of sweet potato, mild taste of chocolate. Not my favourite flavour profile, but for a very tea-like tisane, it’s the best I’ve found! It reminds me of a few roasted oolongs I’ve tried, so if I’m looking for something like that late in the evening, it’s a great option.

This one is kind of hard to describe, honestly. It really is like no other tea. The flavour is mild in the sense that no one note dominates it – it’s a gentle tea – but the overall taste is quite strong. It’s softly sweet, I suppose. I’d recommend it purely on the basis that it truly is unique.

Definitely nicer than full flowers; the taste is stronger, spicier, and more complex. It’s visually striking as well. A great drink for summer.

A nice tea, with some peppery notes as well as some vegetal, umami/xian flavours reminiscent of gyokuro. While still noticeably a Chinese-style green tea, it’s more like a Japanese tea than most Chinese teas I’ve tried. I initially brewed it in a gaiwan, but later experimented with using a banko kyusu and the same temperature and steep times I use for sencha. It worked really well!

This was pretty decent, but not amazing. A nice, smooth shou, with no taste of fish (though it has a fishy scent); the soup is very dark, and no flavours stand out very distinctly. It was actually better brewed grandpa-style than gongfu; the latter concentrated the flavours a tad too much, and brought out a strangely bitter note I rarely find in shou.

I don’t have much to add to this one after today’s session, besides the fact that the flavours now seem well integrated and it is as good as the 2018 version when that one was two years old.

Another new cake is 2020 He Tao Di. I loved the 2018 vintage, which is why I got it. The two are quite similar, but it is clear that the younger one is not as well-integrated and its taste is somewhat muddled. However, in terms of the huigan and the thick and active mouthfeel, they are very close to each other.

The dry leaf aroma has notes of honeysuckle, eggnog, banana, peach; while after the rinse I get more of a nutty smell. There are also hints of fur, courgette and red apple.

The rinse itself has a very soft texture and a brothy taste with notes of kale and butter. Throughout the session, notable vegetal bitterness as well as a distinctive truffle flavour appear. Other less prominent notes include milk, dandelion, grass and apple. The aftertaste is very sweet and long-lasting and tastes a bit like cashew nuts.

First taste. Enjoyed a few bowls of this in evening. Very smooth and rich. Pleasant to have while preparing for turning down the house. Storing in airtight tin.

This is the first tea I would reach for when in the mood for a Mengku sheng. I find that it’s a bit more warming, bitter and forest-like than when I tried it earlier. There is a nectar sweetness and notes of spruce, kale, hops, and lime leaves. It also has some coffee acidity and a numbing, metallic aftertaste with additional flavours of custard and honey.

After sampling many YS shengs , I recently purchased a couple of fresh cakes, this being one of them. As far as Bing Dao area goes, it’s hard to go cheaper than this without getting fakes, but this tea certainly delivers – that’s why I was happy to get it in bulk. It is among the more complex shengs, has a thick creamy texture and induces a peaceful state of mind. If you like Mengku tea, then I am sure you will love the taste profile and the pungent aftertaste too.

Compared to my sessions with the 2017 vintage, I found the aromas to be a bit muted here. However, it was the first tasting after the flight over Pacific, and even though I let it rest for a month, one should be careful before making any conclusions. The smell is sweet, vegetal and floral as one would expect. Specific notes include manure, sage, courgette, dry earth, nettle, and green pepper. Just like in the 2017 version, I can detect a mixture of orchid and honey aroma in the empty cup.

The liquor is thick and active from the very first infusion, which is quite crisp tasting. There is a drying sensation throughout the session, which never gets out of hand and completes the mouthfeel in a very satisfying way. Bitterness also appears in moderation and it lends itself to a nice, sweet finish. The taste is generally fairly vegetal with decent umami and a slightly metallic tinge. Many flavours could be identified over the course of a full session, let me just mention nettle, sugarcane, peanut, kohlrabi, carambola, celery root, enoki mushrooms, and chard to name a few.

As I mentioned already, the aftertaste has a floral pungency to it that appears fast. I couldn’t quite pinpoint the specific flowers it reminded me of, but I think there are hints of chamomile and orange blossoms. There is also an interesting creaminess as well as a fresh sweetness of green beans/peas neither of which is very usual. The more usual honey sweetness is there, but subdued and light – akin to summer honey. Complementing all that is a clover leaf tartness, underscoring the fresh, green nature of the sensation.

For my final review of the day, I’m going to dip a little further into the backlog than I did with my last two reviews and look back to my last sipdown of October. The Classic Bai Lin Gong Fu Black tea of Fuding is always one of Yunnan Sourcing’s regular offerings that I look forward to every year, primarily due to it almost always providing a great drinking experience. This spring 2018 offering proved to be no exception. It was a fantastic Fujian black tea.

I prepared this tea gongfu style. For my review session, I set the water temperature at 194 F and neither raised nor lowered it over the course of the session. After quickly rinsing the loose tea leaves, I started off with a 5 second infusion. This infusion was chased by 18 additional infusions. Steep times for these infusions were as follows: 7 seconds, 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, 3 minutes, 5 minutes, 7 minutes, 10 minutes, and 15 minutes.

Prior to the rinse, the dry tea leaves produced aromas of malt, cinnamon, baked bread, cedar, chocolate, and raisin. After the rinse, I detected new aromas of roasted almond and roasted peanut. The first proper infusion introduced aromas of honey and sweet potato. In the mouth, the tea liquor presented me with notes of malt, chocolate, cedar, cream, baked bread, and sweet potato that were balanced by subtler impressions of roasted almond, roasted peanut, raisin, honey, cinnamon, and brown sugar. The bulk of the subsequent infusions introduced aromas of orange zest, brown sugar, earth, plum, butter, grass, and roasted walnut. Stronger and more immediately detectable notes of roasted almond, roasted peanut, and brown sugar appeared in the mouth alongside earth, orange zest, mineral, vanilla, butter, and roasted walnut impressions. I also detected hints of plum, pear, smoke, red apple, green bell pepper, and grass. As the tea faded, the liquor settled and emphasized notes of minerals, cream, malt, earth, and roasted almond that were chased by lingering brown sugar, honey, grass, vanilla, roasted peanut, chocolate, and raisin hints.

This was a very smooth, sophisticated Fujian black tea that remained very approachable despite its complexity and depth. It also displayed tremendous longevity in a fairly extended drinking session. Since Yunnan Sourcing has batted 1.000 with offerings of this type, and this one did not buck that trend, I fully expect that the two most recent productions of this tea were also more or less just as good as this one. If you happen to be looking for a great and versatile Chinese black tea that is both easy and fun to drink, look no further.

This was another of my more recent sipdowns. It was also a tea for which I did not have particularly high expectations. For whatever reason, Jin Jun Mei never really seems to stick with me, and also, the various Jin Jun Mei offered by Yunnan Sourcing tend to strike me as being ridiculously hit or miss. The Pure Gold Jin Jun Mei of Tong Mu Guan Village has never struck me as being bad (usually it is quite good), but it also has never been one of the regular YS teas that excites me either. Fortunately, this 2018 production was good, probably the best of the comparatively few productions I have tried.

I prepared this tea gongfu style. I set the water temperature at 194 F and neither raised nor lowered it over the course of my review session. After quickly rinsing the loose tea buds, I steeped them for 5 seconds. This initial infusion was followed by 16 additional infusions. Steep times for these infusions were as follows: 7 seconds, 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, 3 minutes, 5 minutes, and 7 minutes.

Prior to the rinse, the dry tea buds emitted aromas of cedar, malt, smoke, baked bread, molasses, and tobacco. After the rinse, I detected new aromas of roasted almond, roasted peanut, and brown sugar. The first proper infusion brought out aromas of maple syrup, butter, cream, and chocolate. In the mouth, the tea liquor presented me with notes of cedar, malt, baked bread, grass, roasted almond, and brown sugar that were balanced by hints of roasted peanut, cream, butter, smoke, and molasses. The bulk of the subsequent infusions coaxed out aromas of vanilla, marshmallow, brown sugar, honey, leather, sweet cherry, and orange zest. Stronger and more immediately detectable impressions of cream, butter, and roasted peanut appeared in the mouth alongside notes of minerals, earth, honey, pine, orange zest, vanilla, ginger, marshmallow, leather, and chocolate. There were also some hints of nutmeg, maple syrup, red apple, pear, plum, sweet cherry, and tobacco that popped up here and there. As the tea faded, the liquor shifted and emphasized notes of minerals, butter, malt, cedar, cream, chocolate, and honey that were chased by fleeting hints of baked bread, smoke, roasted almond, orange zest, vanilla, ginger, sweet cherry, brown sugar, and maple syrup.

Overall, this was an enjoyable tea with a lot to offer, but if I had one serious complaint, it was that it grew very sweet and rich over the course of every gongfu session I did with it. There were instances in which the tea liquor struck me as being almost cloying. Even though I am not a huge fan of sweeter teas, this one was still enjoyable for me. It’s just that it would have been more enjoyable had the sweetness not been almost overpowering at times. To be clear, this tea was far from bad, but it was not really for me. At least I can say that it was more memorable and enjoyable than some of the other Jin Jun Mei from Yunnan Sourcing have been. I have no doubt that fans of sweeter black teas would love this offering. I could also see it working as a good point of entry into the world of unflavored tea for regular drinkers of flavored teas.

Okay, gang. Here is the review of my latest sipdown. I’ve had to take a break from drinking tea for the last couple of days due to seasonal allergies rendering me barely able to smell or taste anything, so I have nothing better to do in my spare time than try to free up some space in the backlog. Surprisingly, this was a tea that was totally unfamiliar to me. I have tried a ton of Yunnan Sourcing’s offerings over the course of the past 4+ years, but I had never gotten around to trying a Da Jin Ya prior to trying this one. I knew it was probably going to be radically different from the other Yunnan black teas I had tried, and that turned out to be the case, though naturally, there were some similarities imparted by the terroir and processing. Overall, this was a very interesting, satisfying, and unique black tea.

I prepared this tea gongfu style. I set the water temperature at 194 F and neither raised nor lowered it over the course of my review session. After rinsing the loose tea buds, I started off with a 5 second infusion. This infusion was followed by 19 additional infusions. Steep times for these infusions were as follows: 7 seconds, 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, 3 minutes, 5 minutes, 7 minutes, 10 minutes, 15 minutes, and 20 minutes.

Prior to the rinse, the dry tea buds emitted aromas of cocoa, cream, sugarcane, pine, and smoke. After the rinse, I detected new aromas of roasted almond, roasted cashew, lemon zest, and geranium. The first infusion introduced eucalyptus and orange zest aromas. In the mouth, the tea liquor presented notes of cream, malt, pine, baked bread, roasted almond, and butter that were balanced by hints of geranium, cocoa, orange zest, lemon zest, honey, sugarcane, roasted peanut, and plum. The bulk of the subsequent infusions coaxed out aromas of juniper, malt, camphor, green bell pepper, grass, black pepper, grapefruit, caramel, and plum. Stronger and more immediately noticeable impressions of cocoa, geranium, plum, orange zest, sugarcane, lemon zest, and roasted peanut appeared in the mouth alongside notes of minerals, roasted cashew, pear, red apple, green bell pepper, camphor, eucalyptus, grass, black pepper, watermelon rind, and caramel. I also detected hints of juniper, apricot, smoke, grapefruit, mulberry, and blackberry lurking around the fringes. As the tea faded, the liquor settled and emphasized notes of minerals, malt, baked bread, roasted almond, lemon zest, orange zest, cream, pine, and roasted peanut that were chased by fleeting hints of roasted cashew, butter, sugarcane, red apple, pear, watermelon rind, green bell pepper, camphor, and caramel.

This was something of an odd tea, and certainly not one I would want to have every day, but taking the time to drink it made for a wonderful break from the more typical Yunnan black teas. I also appreciated that it did not get me so amped up that I had difficulty sleeping or sitting still. If you’re looking for an interesting and challenging black tea that is also a lot of fun to drink, definitely consider picking up some Da Jin Ya with your next Yunnan Sourcing order.

This tea has an interesting appearance and steeps to a very pale liquor. The taste is slightly floral and slightly fruity, a little tart and a little bitter – but the strongest note is resinous pine. It’s quite a good tea, though brewing it longer or hotter than usual is best for a stronger flavour. I initially tried it in a small gaiwan, and I don’t think this retained heat well enough; it seems to take a while for the water to permeate the buds. It was significantly better in a small, non-porous teapot.

It’s kind of mild, but good. Has a fruity, savoury depth that’s also present in other purple teas I’ve tried. Some piney freshness is present, mostly coming out in later steeps.

Beautiful amber liquor. It’s quite tart and astringent, and relatively full-bodied. Overall not quite my thing, but okay – I’m not generally into young sheng anyway. This one is less complex than others I’ve tried. It was significantly better in brewed in duan ni than in porcelain; the clay took some of the astringency out and let a vaguely fruity flavour creep in.

The orange ‘container’ is charming, and doesn’t add too much citrus flavour when steeped. The tea infuses quickly and creates a dark liquor which is neither very thin nor very thick – kind of medium for a shou. Drinking it, my tongue tingles slightly – perhaps an effect of the orange’s acidity? The scent has more citrus than the taste.