Yun Nan Dian Hong Black Tea Full-leaf

Why are their tea names so long? I don’t know. It’s a bit annoying, but hey, words, whatever.

Thanks so much to James R for the sample of this! Apparently it’s much like Teavana’s Golden Lotus. Cool.

The leaves are beautiful – really long and thin and beautifully silky. They’re like little tubes. Many of them are a bright dandelion gold, and some of them are bronze and black. It’s so nice to see such a wide variety of colors in a bag of tea.

The first steep is rich, dark and malty. I drank it while it was probably still a bit too hot, and while driving, so I suppose I can’t really comment too much on it. But it was full and promising.

The second steep, I didn’t steep for very long – I poured water over and let it steep until I had finished packing my bag for class. That was also malty, but there was a beautiful natural sweetness to it, especially as it cooled. On my last sip I got a whiff of marshmallow.

Third steep. The tea starts turning bronzey-orange as I pour the water over the leaves. Beautiful. I smell some of that sweetness I picked up at the end of the last steep – I’m not sure I’d go for marshmallow right now – but a cinnamon sort of graham cracker? Maybe I just have s’mores on the brain. Dunno. But I’m starting to get some roasty notes from here, almost like a dark oolong. I didn’t steep this one for very long either – too impatient.

This tea’s too good!

Setup:

- Vessel: Glass teapot 250ml (3 Oz)
- Leaf: 7.8 grams
- Water: 90 C
- Time: 1m, 2m, 3m

Leaf & Infusion:

Dry leaf – The leaf is one of the most wholesome I’ve ever encountered. Leaves are long, needle-shaped with vibrant golden tips and dull black leaves. Ratio of buds and leaf is 50/50, and leaf shows some of that golden hair too, making more of a impressive display. Leaves air of citrus and cooked potato skin and when hot air is introduced intensive molasses note appear along with blooming undertones.

Wet leaf – This is where the wholeness of leaf is accentuated, along with fat texture and veins exposed. The overall aroma is of citrus and potato skin with blooming hints. The molasses part quickly escapes as the leaves cool.

Infusion(1m) – First infusions is very bright and clear with orange-coppery tone and rising aromas of molasses and potato skin. The liquor is initially light, but as it smoothly slides down the tongue it develops more of medium body and pleasant potato-molasses finish mentioned earlier. Few sips later show hints of bitterness, astringency excluded, and peppery film on tongue, a trademark of Yunnan black teas. The aftertaste is long lasting and molasses develop into more caramel type, and blooming notes are more pronounced here as well.

Infusion(2m) – Second infusions brings this tea to more of a breakfast type: full-bodied, rich in taste and very pleasing. As it cools down some new notes develop, honey-sweet and fruity-sour impression is quite notable at finish. It reminds of Assam and Keemun to certain extent.

Infusion(3m) – Third cup is still rich in flavor and aroma but the decline is notable. Tea shifts back to medium body and keeps a lot of sweet and blooming elements from previous steep. The potato-citrus duo, however, has almost completely diminished. The aftertaste strongly resembles of Keemun when peppery sensation is thrown aside.

Conslusion – Most satisfying Dian Hong, very rich and clean with many changes involved in successive infusions.

Thank you to Angel & Teavivre for this generous sample

These are among the most beautiful tea leaves I’ve seen. Perfectly straight, in shades of olive, wheat, charcoal, & rust. Wet, they swell up lushly, taking on a copper color, with an olive undertone.

The scent is of chocolate & peppercorn, & the flavor satisfies: bold without being bitter, deep & smooth, essence of chocolate, a little spice, & there is the ‘clean’ sensation of linen, but it’s not an astringent type sensation, & it’s not so much a taste either, more a freshness, like sheets drying in the sun on the line. This is the kind of tea I like to start my day with!

I drank the first cup & a half plain, thought I’d add a little stevia to the 2nd half of the 2nd cup, just to see what it brought up, & it ruined it for me. :p

Not so much that I couldn’t polish it off & go for one more steeping, though, & the leaves delivered.

Morning tea from Terri! I’m doing my best to try and get through the rest of the samples that she sent me and i finally feel like i’m starting to make some headway lol. I brewed this western style since i need to pack and go, but i may try resteeping this tonight when i get home since it’s such a lovely tea.

This isn’t a BOLD tea, but it is a sweeter, malty tea that has a full flavour going on. It’s been a nice comforting cup during this morning’s crap show at work.

I’m watching a generic Christmas film and I got the sudden urge to drink a gaiwan of black tea. So my hand goes into my large bag of Teavivre samples and I pulled this one out. My husband is having his work party tonight so I am on my own all day :(

The tea is made with small leaves that have been thinly rolled and dried. They have a dry earthy smell.

Gaiwan 3oz Tea:7g 6 steeps: rinse,15s,25s,45s,1m10s,1m30s,2m 90ºC/194ºF

Steep one – 15 seconds
The tea soup is honeyed brown in colour with a sweet, earthy and slightly floral tone. It does taste sweet and malty to my delight with no bitterness and of fair strength.

Steep two – 25 seconds
I’m starting to pick up a musky deep fragrance now. Malty and sweet still and very rich but still smooth.

Steep three – 45 seconds
Increasing in strength and becoming maltier and very thick and earthy.

Steep four – 1 minute 10 seconds
The colour reminds me of pu erh as it has that brown/red glow. Very sweet …reminds me of marmite a little.

Steep five – 1 minute 30 seconds
This has weakened somewhat and has increased it’s floral flavour again, it’s like jasmine but earthier.

Steep six – 2 minutes
No malt or richness to speak of anymore but it’s still sweet and floral.

I love Yunnan tea’s and straight away I could tell that this was one of them. It has the lovely strong, malty trademark that Yunnan’s usually have which is a pure bonus. On the most part it was rich and smooth but very balanced and clean.

Admittedly not one of my favourite Yunnan’s as the smell is a little too musky for my liking but it was a pleasant and smooth drink. It’s amazing to think that such small leaves can create such large flavour and aroma.

After my experience with Teavivre’s Yun Nan Dian Hong golden tips, I couldn’t wait to give this a try. The leaves were longer and darker than their other yunnan, and the tea brewed to a darker amber/brown. The scent is all around stronger, still fruity, but more robust and sweet.

I think this is what I’ll be ordering next time. While I love how smooth and pure the golden tips are, this stronger, heartier tea is what I was looking for. It’s dark and gorgeous and complex without being bitter or smoky. Something I could wake up to on a daily basis. Hello, new favorite black tea.

This was the 4th tea in the comparison today. I enjoyed it but it isn’t quite what I was looking for. It would be a pretty nice morning cup if you wanted some thing rich, smooth and sweet. Very well behaved and full bodied but I thought it didn’t have quite the character that the other 3 did. So while I enjoyed it, it won’t be a keeper for me.

The other side of the coin, yet again my friends!

The full leaf yunnan brews into a notably lighter colored beverage than the ‘standard’ black tea (now referred to as half-full). To match, the flavor is lighter as well. Less bold than the half-full, it still has some of the same maltiness, but where the half-full leaf ends in a very apparent smoky finish, this has a light fruitiness at the end of the sip. A little sweet, somewhat indecipherable flavor that kind of creeps in while you’re drinking.

A little less economical, at about $3/oz, but could be preferable to folks that like more refinement and subtlety from their tea. We brewed these both a little on the strong side (7g for 16 oz), so I’m not entirely sure how that would change the character.

I can’t really pick a clear winner between the two, they’re just different.

I realize I’m probably the odd one out brewing this with such short infusions, but I plan to try this longer as well with the husband, if I can ever get him to agree to sampling. Conversation last night: “Hey sweetie can I brew you a cup of really good black tea, I promise I won’t do short steeps”, husband: “No.” How do I work with that? (apparently by just brewing them and bringing them to him). So between that and me and the toddler not feeling well, these samples have been going slowly, my apologies.

I do think I am learning more about tea through this. Like I finally understand what people mean by a Yunnan having a linen like texture and for me it relates to the feeling, not the taste of pepper and cinnamon, though there are hints of those tastes in this too. The texture also reminds me of waffles, good whole wheat waffles like the ones I had for breakfast, which are really kind of linen like themselves. There is a soft sweetness here, but it does not speak to me as honey, nor as rock candy, but as sweet cream butter. However the tea is not yet buttery in this first short infusion, it does not coat the roof of the mouth until the second steep (perhaps if I did one longer infusion it would be there). Rather this is like licking a stick of unsalted butter and really tasting it.

I did brew the three Dian Hongs this evening at two and a half minutes each and got my husband to try each. All three are very nice black teas, each is different. Not so surprisingly the husband liked the lowest grade as it tasted the most “tea-like” more tannins I suspect and personally I think more malt, it had a cooler quality. What is surprising is that I preferred this, the middle. I think it was actually the most complex, but the golden tips is revealing more character as it cools. I will resteep each of these tonight at least once.

I also want to share how comforting opening the bag of this was, it smelled so rich and familiar, like opening up a huge canister of Golden Monkey and wafting it, which is saying something for such a tiny foil packet. The quality of the leaf is very good. I have not brewed the Golden Tips gonfu style yet so I will wait to review it as I am trying to figure out exactly what effects more buds have on the flavor, smooth, sweet and more high pitched are my initial thoughts, but I was getting some yam notes once it cooled. Thank you Angel and Teavivre

I have been looking forward to this yunnan ever since my tea samples came to me. The leaves were long and slender. They wouldn’t play nicely with my flat bamboo tea spoon, so I just filled the bottom of my press with leaves. The brew is nice and dark brown. It looks like a solid black tea and I could probably fool some of my friends into thinking this was coffee. It is that dark at just three minutes.

The second steep (4 mins) is just as delicious as the first (3 mins). Bold and roasty. The second steep has a slight undertone of chocolate that I love with this tea. I keep timing my teas wrong. This is a good tea to wake up with in the morning. It is slightly heavy tasting for the afternoon, but I adore it anyway. Maybe the promise of this in the morning will actually get me out of bed earlier so I can make it.

Later… third steep at 4 and a half minutes. The flavor isn’t as strong, but it is still tasty. I think I only like doing two steepings for yunnan blacks because I like them stronger.

Very nice. I think people who favor green tea, but want to venture out to more black teas would really like this one.

1st steep- very mild, vegetal like green tea.
2ns steep- more of the maltiness of traditional blacks.
3rd steep- still very dark, a slight astringency coming through this time. But still getting a bit of the vegetal.

Well, this certainly tastes like tea…ummm, let me clarify that, I love this tea, not because its sweet or exotic or complicated, I’ve had plenty of teas that are amazing, white/black mixes, oolongs with fruit or edible flowers, ,y last two reviews here spring to mind, tea’s that I love none the less but are so complex they lose that one fantastic aspect of tasting like… well tea.

Yun Nan Dian Hong from Teavivre is probably the best tea I’ve had in a long time, and its all due to the simple fact its uncomplicated, delicious, and amazingly unrefined, its simply good black tea. Simply good if not simple, there is a lot of flavor to this tea, a subtle taste, that’s neither as heavy as my other favorite (second favorite now?) black, Yunnan noir by adagio, a little more delicate, a light smoky almost burn sugar taste, but is still well in the confines of a delicious morning black. I struggle to describe it honestly. One of those things that’s better experienced in the first person rather then the third.

As for the technical I followed the advice of the lovely Strayer (Who also sent me this tea in the first place, and therefore will be loved forever) and steeped for less then four minutes at a nice high temp of 180-185, it steeps into this rich golden brown, amber color that is nearly as pretty as it is delicious, and the aroma of the drained leaves is amazing as well, definitely a good morning tea something to take your mind off the fact you had to roll out of bed before noon.

You do need to watch your time and temp though, this is actually my second attempt at the tea and its well, sensitive, my first attempt was only about a minute or two longer, and ten or 15 degrees less and it didn’t quite ruin the tea, but it wasn’t nearly as good, it may be a black but it behaves like a green, a few misplaced seconds or degrees here or there, steeping it in glass instead of insulated ceramic, this all seems to make an actual difference, its more then worth the effort, but don’t be surprised if your first attempt isn’t exactly prefect, on that note I’m going to toy with the time and temp a bit, and see if I can get even more out of this tea.

In short, because I might of over cooked this review, if you want a pure strait forward, but none the less uncompromisingly delicious black tea, you need to do yourself a service and at least try this, it really is amazing.