Yunnan Golden Buds

My prize for the What’s Your Ritual Samovar contest came last night! I’m not sure if it was an error or if they decided to be extra generous, but they sent me Yunnan Golden Buds. Oh my dear sweet tea leaves!!!! The leaves are gorgeous and golden and puffy and amazing.

I did my first steep at 175 for 2 minutes, and I am in Sweet Potato Heaven. I mean, there are yams with halos on playing harps each time I close my eyes and take a sip! I am in awe! I was going to play around with the steeping parameters but I said why mess with perfection! Maybe another day I’ll try a different temp, but I am enjoying it so much as it is…ahhh!

I did the second steep in much the same way, and it’s outstanding as well. I think it’s even sweeter on this go around. I hate to keep saying amazing, but, er, amazing!!!

This is a gentle, subtle, delicious wonder in flavor yet an invigorating feel good tea! I love it!

I will most certainly be doing steeps all day, and I’ll update this post later :)

It’s kinda funny – I wrote my little essay to win this prize from an experience that I was able to have because my husband won a prize of free airfare anywhere in the USA for two at his holiday party at work two years ago!!! In that spirit, I gave samples to two of my favorite tea people at work to spread the spirit of giving and prizes and tea and ALL THINGS GOOD!!!

Thank you Samovar!!!

EDIT: I wound up doing 6 steeps! I at first stopped at 4, and then an hour later put more water in my kettle and did 2 more because I wanted that exquisite flavor. I know I went on about Sweet Potatoes earlier in my note, but I will amend to that and say I taste Sweet Potatoes and Brown Sugar. Image the Sweet potato angels glistening with brown sugar and THAT is how this tea tastes!

As Lauren suggested, I decided to enjoy my sample of this tea that I received a few days ago… and I’m glad I am!

I love Yunnan tea. In fact, I think it may be my favorite black tea variety. But then, it’s hard for me to pinpoint a favorite right now, I’ve tasted so many outstanding black teas. This absolutely belongs in that category.

There is just something about this Yunnan’s complexity that draws me in. Earthy, sweet, and wine-like. Deep, intriguing notes of pepper and other spices that are hidden within the sweeter flavors of fruit and roasted nut. Caramel… and I am also detecting a deep, earthy cacao note. Delicious!

I am writing my review of this tea for the Tea Review Blog as I write this tasting note… This tea absolutely deserves high marks – it is incredible! I look forward to the infusions to follow…

I got one of those $3 samplers from Samovar. And what is frustrating about those samples are the size: they are soo tiny so only one shot to try it. In my inexperienced view, I am not sure how I feel about this compared to the raves and price.

This IS a peppery and bold yunnan. Reading other tasting notes, maybe it was Liberteas’, this tea’s third steep was sort of like a darjeeling. In fact, I would imagine if this tea were oversteeped, it could be astrigent. But I have to agree w/Ricky (even though we are well in the minority), this was sort of OK. But then what does a high quality yunnan taste like? The others I have tried have been mild and sweet…

I was scared to try this tea. It’s such a big favorite here on Steepster, I felt awed and intimidated by its very existence. It’s like being in the presence of a celebrity.

On the one hand, I’m glad I looked at the notes for it before I tried my sample. If I hadn’t, I wouldn’t have known to give it a try at 175. On the other hand, wow. Such (almost universally) high numbers! Am I worthy?

Pretty leaves with those golden tips punctuating the darkness of the leaves. My smeller is off today, so I don’t get much from smelling the dry leaves. But the aroma of the steeped tea is incredibly complex. Sugary, fruity, buttery and smooth.

The sugar flavor is a very distinctive type of sugar. I know from whence the reference to yams comes. Last Thanksgiving, when the rest of the family was having some sort of goopy yam concoction with marshmallows and pineapple, I, on a restrictive diet, stuck a half yam, sliced longitudinally, in the oven to bake and eat plain. When I checked on it, the sugar in the potato had bubbled up from the orange meat, fallen to the bottom of the oven and carmelized there giving the most amazingly delicious smell. That’s the sugar I taste here.

It marks a return to the preternatural smoothness of Samovar blacks following a slight detour with the Ceylon Super Single.

I understand the high ratings on this. It has depth, body, character, all the things I look for in a tea.

I need to sit with this one for a while, taste it multiple times. On this first tasting when I’m tired and stressed, I fear I’m not in the frame of mind to give it its true due. But oh, how I am looking forward to getting to know this tea.

This was on my shopping list for a while, so I was super excited when Takgoti sent me some of this! It has received mostly fantastic reviews, which added to my super excitement. Not to mention that Samovar and I are currently deep in a passionate love affair – shhhh!

I definitely agree with those here who loved this. This is not a harsh tea, and it is very complex. The tastes are gentle; honey, yam, caramel. In order to get the caramel, I have to hold the tea in my mouth and let it wash around for a bit. The texture is unusually smooth and buttery, which is something I’ve never experienced in a black tea before. It leaves your mouth feeling full and coated like some whites do. I keep running my tongue over the roof of my mouth, expecting to find something stuck there.

This could certainly withstand the addition of milk, but this tea is so pure that I would not want to tarnish it in any way.

I want to thank Takgoti again for giving me the chance to have this experience! It was exquisite.

I had some of this earlier today! It’s a might fine Yunnan. It’s slightly bakey but sweet. It has hints of grainy notes that fit in nicely. It’s reminiscent of creme brulee or a comparable dessert – on the end sip!

It’s everything I ask for in a tea.

Perfect and delicious. How do they do it?

Flavorful and complex but so easy to drink…on a daily basis.

No more typing. I’m going to focus on the tea and drink, drink, drink.

I know this is a poor excuse for a tasting note but I completely ditto/agree with Ricky’s note on this particular tea. It just tastes like tea to me I wanted to taste the sweet potatoey goodness, bakey taste others describe about this tea but I’m not getting that I mean maybe vaguely I’m getting that but not as much as I do with Golden Monkey. I also do not care for darjeelings and this maybe why I’m not crazy about it.

The leaves are so cute – like the smaller, golden cousin of Downy Sprout. And the smell? Like cocoa powder. I’m not used to brewing blacks at such a low temp but I’m gonna go with it because that’s what takgoti says the tin says and honestly, given how delicate and fuzzy the leaves look? I can see the need for cooler water.

The tea smells insane. I smell different things with each whiff. Honey, molasses, sweet potato, earth, cocoa… Buttered sweet potato pops up the most frequently with molasses as a close second.

Oh my god. The taste. It’s gorgeous and there is no way that my description will do it justice. First off, it is sweet – like raw sugar or molasses or cane syrup. Then there is a taste towards the back of my tongue that is basically sweet potato. Perhaps a sweet potato dripping in butter. But that implies a heaviness or thickness that isn’t there. Instead, this is soft and beautiful – like listening to a string instrumental. It makes me want to just close my eyes and listen to what my taste buds have to say.

The second steep (@3:30) is a little darker flavored… a little more sweet potato, a little softer on the raw sugar. Still fresh and rich and delicate and flavorful and beautiful.

This tea literally wowed me. More than once. Quite simply, it is beautiful. This tea is an experience. So. Good.

I’m enchanted by the look of this tea, both in its dry leaf and liquid forms. The leaves are long, thin and twisty, and very, very golden in color. Never seen anything quite like it before. The aroma is very light, just a little sweet and caramel note.

It looks like others have gone two ways on steeping this up: either 175 or boiling. I went for 175 because it felt like this was a good tea for erring on the side of caution. The resulting liquor is a beautiful dark honey color, with a corresponding sweet smell.

Flavor – at first I’m surprised by how subtle it is. With comparisons to other teas that exhibit sugar/caramel/sweet potato flavors, I was expecting big leaps in those directions, and instead got baby steps. Still there, make no mistake – I can taste the burnt sugar and earthy elements, but it’s all scaled back to a much lower volume. Once I get used to that, I really enjoy this tea and understand the devotion others feel towards it!

I am going through these samovar samplers so fast. I will be sad once i have no more.

wow. This is so light, and I thought I had almost oversteeped it! Even with skim milk and sugar this tea still is so light, but so absolutely delicious. It has a malty, creamy taste to it. I almost wish there was more flavor to it. But as a softer black tea this is so delish!

I don’t think I’ve been using enough leaf for this, previously. The Samovar directions are usually very generous for amounts of tea and I’ve been automatically decreasing them. I’m frugal! Today I used a heaping tsp in 8 oz of water. This was delicious. Sweet, and slightly fruity. Very mild but tasty. I didn’t think I liked this particularly before, but suddenly I was craving it, and now I really like it. Weird. I’m on my 4th steep, which is taking it a bit too far, but there are still hints of what I was enjoying.

My first Yunnan tea! Very interesting… On first taste it seems like any other black tea, but once you “get to know” it, you realize it’s a little more complicated than that.

I am honestly stunned at the natural flavour that is coming from this tea. I’m not normally one to put any sugar in my teas (especially when it’s the first time I’m tasting it) but this tea tastes like it comes with sugar already!

To be honest, I felt that the complex flavours that this tea has were coming out more and more as the tea got cooler. This is definitely one of those teas that I don’t have to worry about cooling down too much. Very drinkable at room temperature!

Definitely a smooth tea, and definitely one that I will have to keep my eye on when I make my next order from Samovar. Time to go for my second steep and see what happens…

I’m having to taste around to explore my new found love of Yunnan. This one’s leafs are a little darker than the one I had before and not as fuzzy, if that’s an OK word to describe tea leafs. The color is really nice, and the taste is good. I think it’s not quite as smooth as the other one I had, but I’m still new with this tea. I’ll try it again later and see if I change my mind. I do like a good round tea though no matter what the type.

Black tea from Yunnan is the most popular kind outside of China. But actually, they only export the medium/low-end type of Yunnan black tea. One of the biggest feature of these tea is they adds lychee and rose when baking the tea leaf. The high end type was planted to contain subtle smell of rose. The smell is not added.

Shh…

We’re not going to talk about how long it’s been since I’ve logged a tea. In my defense I’ve been devoured by and residing in the bowels of schoolwork. Today I decided that for my own mental sanity I needed to put the books down for a few minutes [and Top Chef is on a commercial break]. Long preamble to simple question short: should you feel special because I’ve decided to spend some of my not-banging-my-head-against-my-desk-time to write this for you?

Short answer: probably not.

Longer answer: but if you do, have some warm fuzzies courtesy of me and the internets.

I tend to drink a lot of the same tea, so…I figure you can only hear about how much I want to marry the same four or five teas from Samovar x number of times. [Yes, that’s how I roll.]

However, the lack of money [being a student is over-rated] and time [ditto] has led to the need to branch out into my tea stash a little bit more.

Not that this is at all a bad thing, because as fall is beginning to waft into Virginia, I find the hot cup of Yunnan Golden Bud in front of me to be deeply satisfying. It’s got a bit of sweetness to it, but more of a brown sugar kind of sweetness. There are many different tastes that swirl around in this tea, but my palate isn’t nearly sophisticated enough to pick them out. I can tell you, though, that the flavor profile sings of autumn to me – it’s deep and rich and would probably be awesome with something heavy and savory. Oooh, like potato torte.

Oh my god I could really eat some potato torte right now. Want to make me one? I’ll split it with you!