2009 Late-Winter Budset Yabao

I know everyone really loved this tea, but somehow it didn’t impress me as much. I brewed it western style. I brewed it in my gaiwan. It was good, yes, but something about it didn’t sit right with me. Eventually I put it in the cupboard and sort of forgot about it.

Until David of Verdant Tea put up that iced tea post,I had never even considered making ice tea with anything other than blacks and fruity teas. As it seems he had good results, I decided to experiment a little. Out came this tea – and a few other oolongs – from the far corner of my tea cupboard.

I cold brewed it overnight and the results are quite unbelievable!
This is iced tea perfection. It tastes and smells of pine trees. May seem sort of odd that something tastes like pine trees, but it’s subtle and refreshing and very good. It brings back memories of childhood, running around in the forest collecting pine cones.

It has a quiet elegance that I find is characteristic of many Chinese oolongs (I know this is not an oolong, but it’s gentle flavor reminds me of some oolongs).

From the corner of the cupboard to front and center!
I am in love with this tea.

Oh, and so far I’ve cold brewed these leaves 3 times and it’s still great. The first pitcher wad brewed for about 8 hours, the second for about 12, and the third for 24 hours. I wonder if I can do yet another….

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!

Story Time: Well I have experienced food poisoning for the first time. I ate some of my left over stir fry that I think was a day or two past prime. For that night and to late after noon I was suuuuper nausea’s. Luckily I felt good enough to eat tonight, but man that was not fun. I think I am going to wait to make my stir fry again though for a while.

Tea Time: My Verdant tea order came in today. Even though I was not going to buy any more tea so i can get WHO tickets, as soon as I saw the email from Verdant Tea saying that they had sample sizes, the impulse was just to great to ignore. This one was the sample sent with it. It is funny cause I was planning on trying this one, but was going to have to wait due to money constraints. Maybe David is psychic…

The tea leaves look really interesting. I have never seen white tea look like this before; then again i don’t normally drink white tea. The smell of the leaf is light, but crisp.

I was a little nervous when I noticed that the liquor had no color when it was done brewing; but i had to remember that this is white tea of course. The liquor itself smelled crisp and a little dewy….ohhhh.

The first sip of this warm was good, but not OMG! However, I figured this would be better cooler then warmer so I let it set for a bit. I am glad I did. This tastes soooooo refreshing. Very sparkly on the tongue and taste like dew off of pine needles, and taste like how a summer rain smells. The after taste is great. It leaves this cooling dewy sensation in your mouth.

This is a highly addicting tea. I have been make a half and hour long brews from this tea. I am leaving the rest in a mug to cold brew over night to see what comes of it.

I have been intriged by the concept of pu erd white tea. I must say I think it adds a nice level of earthy fullness to white. I diffidently will be trying Verdant Tea’s other pu erd white tea and the alchemy mix with this tea.

I would recommend this tea to white tea lovers and anyone interested in trying a white pu er.

Specifics
Water: 8 oz steepings
Pot: Make shift Gaiwan
Sweetener: sometimes a couple of drops, but not really needed.

This is one of those teas that has me mystified. I have read all the positive reviews, and I am a big fan of Yunnan Yabao tea, and yet this version tastes nothing like I had hoped. I have made three valiant efforts over the past week, doing multiple steepings at different temperatures, and all I get is tea water that tastes of old hay. :(
I’m not putting a numerical rating for now, since my experience was so different from everyone else — I thought I had a pretty good palate, but this leaves me with a big question mark…

I hate to say I thought I was’nt going to like this. I brewed it up in the Yixing with what I thought was an appropriate amount of buds. After about a few minutes I lifted the lid and I smelled evergreen. Maybe I should of had a cup then. I let it go longer. It was a yellowy liquor with a mild flavor and fragrance. Very nice in a white tea way. But the surprise is the high. A nice relaxing eye opener. As others have stated, I too am going to let it steep away for a long period after my 2nd steep. It’s very different yet very enjoyable if you have an open mind….

It took a lot of work for me to get something from this tea. I started with a one-minute infusion and tasted very little, so I continued on to three minutes. I found a faint sweetness and a musty, earthy taste redolent of the cedar that Verdant mentions in its tasting notes, but even then I felt I was tasting not so much a delicate tea that needs patience and dedication to tease out its complex essence (an approach that I adopt when tasting lightly oxidized Oolongs), but a cup of lightly vegetal hot water. I guess I do need to have that “wow” or “aha” moment when I drink a tea. Emily Dickinson defined poetry this way: “If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry.” I want that kind of experience when I drink tea.

Interestingly, this tea gave me a different kind of buzz than other tea. Maybe it’s all that energy packed in those buds.

This will always be one of my favorite kinds of tea.

We used a brick of yabao at our wedding, just because it was one of our most treasured flavours we wanted to share with everyone.

I was so pleased and excited to find more yabao. Even though this one is loose and considerably younger, it still has all of the great things I was looking for: sweet and spicy (almost sparkling), with nutmeg and cinnamon, marshmallows, and a feeling or a flavor that reminds me of fresh white linen in sunshine.

I’m interested to see how this one will grow over time (since it’s loose, it will probably age faster), especially since this one is a little more woodsy and less mushroom-y than others I’ve tried.

If you don’t think you like pu’ers, definitely give this a try! It is a perfect “gateway drug” and it’s practically idiot proof. I accidentally left some leaves steeping in a cup for a few hours one afternoon at work, and it still tasted amazing- not a trace of astringency. I have no idea how you could make this tea bitter or unappealing.

I just purchased this tea and I am waiting for it to come in the mail. What drew me in was it was on “clearance” and is “age-able”, I plan to give it to someone with more self discipline than myself for Christmas. My question for now is, How does one age this particular tea? Should it be air-tight or open to air? And where would be a good place to store it?

This one immediately piqued my interest as a strange and unusual (and authentic) offering. Nathan at Verdant Tea was kind enough to supply me with a handful of bite-sized samples of some of their sheng (which are all very, very good by the way) and this fortunately found its way in there.

It is different that any other traditional tea I’ve had as it carries very airy, herbal qualities. The taste is an exquisite blend of chamomile, lavender, lemongrass, and definitely sage. At no time does this taste bitter or medicinal. Instead there is a caring warmth throughout. Only at the tail end of the flavor profile does the taste of Yunnan sweetness come through reminding me that I am, in fact, drinking tea..

All in all I have to say that I am impressed. It is most certainly in a genre of it’s own with the only similarity in taste to puer being the lingering sweetness at the end. It’s really interesting, if anything, and I can recommend it to anyone who like hot beverages of any sort.

Surefire.

The dry “bud” has a nice woodsy smell. I was eager to get home to brew it. The wet bud was a little musty but had a sweet cedar aroma. I did not know how long to brew it so I did it for 3 mins. It seemed to be enough to get the flavor from the buds. I don’t know what to say about the tea…I might have to come back to it.

After drinking this again I can see how this tea can grow on you. I have steeped it 6 times. 2mins,5mins,10mins,15mins,20mins, 1 hour. The buds really do take off on the flavor. I will have to try the new silver buds.

Well, as the rating indicates, I thought this tea was simply amazing. This tea reminds me a lot of a eucalyptus “tea” my mom use to make, but without the medicinal aftertaste. It had a soft “cloudy” sweetness, with eucalyptus and raisin notes in the aftertaste. There was also a pleasant tingling sensation that came through towards the end of the first cup and almost dominated the second.

This tea was so shockingly good, it had me at the first steeping! It was as if I were drinking a hot cup of the holiday season!

It tasted very much like the scent of warm ceder wood, freshly cut.

I was hooked! This is the kind of tea that never gets old, steeps all day-constantly producing the amazing flavor that you love. The texture of it is is unbelievably silky.
I would highly recommend this yabao to even the most uneasy tea drinkers as the flavor takes over and lets the taster relax and meld together with the tea.

This tea is almost impossible to find, the only sensible place to purchase it would be at Verdant Tea- a great tea for a fantastic price.

Another incredibly rare tea offering from Verdant Tea. There are only 2 families that produce this varietal of tea. I have seen it in a few other American tea houses, but take heed: this particular Yabao is far and away the best. Such a versatile tea; notes of cinnamon and nutmeg spice with a sweet and warm mouthfeel. I currently have a brick of Yabao as well as the loose leaf in my possession (from Verdant Tea), both of which are incredible.

Yabao is particularly nice because of its ability to steep indefinitely. This tea is a perfect candidate for throwing to the bottom of a travel mug and leaving there all day. I have also steeped this Yabao for 2+ hours and had no problem with it lasting throughout.

One more note: I have a 15 year Yabao in my possession and it is particularly mind blowing. This tea is GREAT for aging long term and will only continue to build in complexity. My honest opinion for any tea lover would be to buy a half pound of this…some for now and some to age long term. The price is right!

To the comment about this tea tasting like hay. I would agree that it can taste like that but this is a light and subtle tea. This tea isn’t going to bang you on the head. This is tea that you have explore. Then you’ll likely find the flavors these other reviewers are talking about.

Also, you can steep this tea forever!

This tea was a bit strange, but in a good way. I opened the bag, but there wasn’t much of an aroma. After brewing the tea, I still had a hard time with the aroma, but there seemed to be something a bit spicy (spicy as in smelled like a spice, not oh-my-god-my-tongue-is-on-fire spicy). Imagine my surprise when I tasted the tea, and it there was a delightful dash of cinnamon taste! It was like drinking masala chai, but not a strong, and with more refined/subtle flavors than any chai I’ve ever had. Unfortunately, I only had time for four infusions of the tea, and it was still perfectly drinkable, but the flavors had started to fade quite noticeably. I actually think that I want to get this tea in a larger quantity in the near future.