226 Tasting Notes

89

White2Tea has a wide selection of single brew-size individually packaged puehrs that
excel as inexpensive daily drinkers on a go. Ripe Flap Jacks is a nice recent addition to that group: cute 8-g little pancakes easily separating in a cup.

The taste is very mild and sweet, with earthy and rotten wood notes present but quite muted. No fishiness, no funkiness. This tea lends itself best to short (~10 seconds) gaiwan infusions and produces a lot of them without a noticeable decrease in flavor. The taste is not complicated at all but is consistently pleasant and cheerful. A very good daily drinker indeed.

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84

I had this tea again at work hoping that it would inspire me for a short mad dash to complete a report before the deadline. No such luck. It has all oh the dianhong notes and looks but misses something that would make it special in any way. Also, you have to make very short infusions since it EASILY becomes to concentrated.

The end result is some pleasant sweetness combined with equally pleasant bitterness. It’s just I prefer teas with a defined character. And oh, it is NOT a tea to increase work productivity. Will go and lower my original rating of 88 to something more mundane.

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93

My first experience with snow chrysanthemum and a very positive one.

This purple tea comes as a nice little black cake with orange and yellow snow chrysanthemum pieces all over – festive! The dry leave smells strongly of apricot, smoke, fallen leaves and spice. The flavor is fairly complex: I could pick up apricot, peach, prunes, spice, carrot, smokiness, dill, mineral… The aftertaste is very long, spicy and apricoty.

This is a pretty unique combination ( I suspect that the snow chrysanthemum is the main player but it blends so well with the purple tea base so it is hard to separate their contributions) and is probably one of those love-or-hate teas that get scores of either 90+ or in the 70-s.

Ying Shan Hong reminds me very much of the fall season with bright orange colors, bold taste, splendid decay and wisps of smoke in the cool air. This tea effortlessly won me over and got me intrigued with the potential of snow chrysanthemum in other teas.

Flavors: Apricot, Autumn Leaf Pile, Carrot, Dill, Mineral, Peach, Plum, Smoke, Spices

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91

It never ceases to surprise me how many excellent variations of the basic tippy dianhong tea exist. This is one of them. This tea has a strong base of sweet potatoes and baked bread but on top of that has many sweet fruity and vegetable notes: peach, melon, floral, asparagus, spinach, broccoli. The taste is complex and enjoyable and remains enjoyable in the subsequent Western-style steepings (it did lose a lot of nuances, though) with hazelnuts coming forward strong.

This tea is very sensitive to water: to appreciate all of the nuances one needs to use sweet spring water. The overarching tea character is not one of the relaxation and lazy savoring – it is a very energetic, uplifting tea that is well suited to be one of the midday drinks at work. In that respect, this tea is not that dissimilar to more refined Keemuns. My only complaint is the regrettable lack of a lingering aftertaste , which Keemuns, for example, have in spades.

Nevertheless, this is tea is very good and worthy of a reorder. I will look if they have an imperial grade for this tea though since this tea would have a potential to be awesome.

Flavors: Asparagus, Bread, Broccoli, Hazelnut, Melon, Peach, Spinach, Sweet Potatoes

eastkyteaguy

I just got a pouch of this one like a couple weeks ago. In general, I find Yunnan Sourcing’s black teas to be very good. I think I may even have an unopened pouch of the Spring 2017 version of this tea somewhere.

Bluegreen

Eastkyteaguy, do you think that black Yunnan teas retain their taste well over time? I read that some of them can even improve with time like puerhs but find it hard to believe…
I always try to buy the latest harvest but some teas are available only as the 2017 or even 2016 harvest … and they are often discounted so I am having a harder time in convincing myself to stick to the 2018 harvest lately.

LuckyMe

I have a few 1-2 year old YS black teas that have held up quite well. That being said, I don’t think any of them have improved with time. Just no noticeable loss of freshness or flavor as tends to happen with green teas and oolongs.

eastkyteaguy

Bluegreen, I agree wholeheartedly with LuckyMe’s comment, as I would also say that Yunnan black teas don’t improve over time so much as they retain their character longer than many other teas. I would still want to drink most of them within 24-36 months of harvest though.

Bluegreen

Thank you. It makes me feel better. Yunnan Sourcing has enough 2018 red teas to try as it is without the nagging thought that I may need to check out the previous year’s harves as well.

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92

It is interesting how many sweet and sour berry/fruit flavors could be discerned in this tea: sour cherry, cranberry, lingonberry, honeyberry, cloudberry, rowan, bird-cherry, green plum… Most of them are not even an option in the Steepster’s drop-down flavors/scents menu and that shows that this tea is pretty unusual.

I like it, it is a nice change of pace from other puerhs.

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95

I like Keemuns and can appreciate many different kinds of them. There are fancy ones, with a complex aroma and many flavors. There are working horses packing a welcoming punch in the morning for those who prefers them to morning coffee. This Keemun from Yunnan Sourcing is the comforting, cozy type.

The dry leaves are pretty long even for Mao Feng Keemuns. The aroma has less malt and more of dark berries, wild flowers and honey: it is a pretty good. I brewed it Western style since I treat Keemuns as not a tea to savor but a good working companion helping you to get through your busy day.

The taste is mild, comforting and relaxing rather than bracing. The original punch of malt is there but it is much more muted than many lower-priced Keemuns. It has some quality of the rush one feels after downing a shot of strong hard liquor and it quickly transitions to a more complex second taste of berries, oats, honey and something certainly floral. The aftertaste lingers for a long time and is VERY pleasant.

The second infusion was markedly less smooth, with a pronounced maltiness and a strong taste of bitter-sweet dark chocolate. Plus a hint of molasses. It was still a very good cup of tea but with a very different flavor profile, as if they were two completely different teas.

Overall, I liked this Keemun a lot. I have to admit though that I am partial to Mao Fengs and prefer them to most Hao Yas. Yunnan Sourcing started offering Qimen just recently and, I believe this is the only kind that they sell but it is quite good and I hope they would consider expanding their selection.

Flavors: Blackberry, Dark Chocolate, Flowers, Honey, Malt, Molasses, Oats

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65
drank Organic Wuyi Oolong by Wegmans
226 tasting notes

An impulse buy it was. There are a lot of bulk teas at Wegmans ( a large American grocery store chain) and from time to time I try them hoping against hope to discover a hidden gem : they are very inexpensive and you can get as little as you want.

No luck this time as well. This tea as all the previous ones I tried proved to be rather meh. It has large twirly leaves that look decent but the only flavor they give off is of roasting. The taste is pretty basic, with heavy roast and smoke pre-dominating and very subdued notes of baked bread, berries and honeyed sweetness in the background. The aftertaste is VERY lingering but it is just intense roast that is not particularly pleasant at all.

But wait, there is more: the second steeping (western style) came out still pretty dark but lost almost all of its taste and was pretty close to a typical tea bagged generic Chinese tea.

It is a very one-dimensional and rough at the corners tea that manages to successfully misrepresent Wuyi Oolongs. I am afraid that quite a few people that have had not anyprevious experience with Wuyi Oolongs will never even attempt to buy any other tea labeled as Wuyi after trying this one. Sad.

Flavors: Berries, Bread, Honey, Roasted

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84

I had this tea gong fu with 6g per 100 ml and originally short (10-15 secs) increasing to medium (20-25 secs) steepings. I could discern a typical dianhong profile of sweet potatoes, baked bread, flowers and blackberries. What makes it a bit different is a lot of honeyed and brown sugar- like sweetness combined with spice. Not a calming tea: this drink has a definite vibrancy. However, overall the taste is pretty mild and the aroma is not overpowering.

The aftertaste is long and pleasant and the taste is consistent across multiple gaiwan steepings.

I am not sure if I like this tea a lot. Such strong and almost cloying sweetness is not something I am looking for in teas . However, I can see how someone (and even me!) can grow to like and appreciate it after drinking this Wu Liang Hong for a while. It certainly expands the borders and expectations of what a tea could be for me – I am just not sure that I would like to visit that part of the tea spectrum often or only occasionally as change of pace.

Flavors: Blackberry, Bread, Brown Sugar, Flowers, Honey, Spices, Sweet Potatoes

Preparation
Boiling 0 min, 15 sec 6 g 3 OZ / 100 ML

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81

It is a typical Yunnan. Pleasant, sweet, no astringency. It smells of malt, baked bread, sweet potato and dark berries. The taste is consistently pleasant but there is no wow factor or anything unique. In addition to malt, baked bread, sweet potato, and blackberry it also has notes of baked apple, caramel and raspberry.

All of these components blend together well creating a unified taste without any differences in the second taste, aftertaste etc. The problem is it loses its complexity fast when you have it Western style as I did: there was still some baked bread and pleasant caramel sweetness but a lot of the previous undertones disappeared and some gooseberry-like sourness surfaced. That made for a very muted and way less interesting second cup. So if you are to brew it Western style you better add a lot of water and wait a bit longer to produce e a lot of tea from the first steeping.

You cant go wrong with this one but I did not find anything remarkable that would make me want to reorder.

Flavors: Blackberry, Bread, Candied Apple, Caramel, Malt, Raspberry, Sweet Potatoes

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91

This is the tea that confused the heck out of me. The 2018 harvest. It is showy: long twisted black leaves that smell of malt, dark chocolate, smoke and dark berries. Very few golden tips.

I just threw about 3 grams in a teapot and did it Western style, steeping for 30 seconds. Since I have been having a lot of tippy Yunnans lately I somehow expected some variation of a typical Dianhonh and it was nothing like that. First it hits you with a maltiness that is quite Keemun-like, which is quickly and completely replaced by a lingering beguiling sweet floral / berry aftertaste that reminded me of Wild Lapsang Souchong. Quite complex, actually. I was confused but liked it.

Then I made the second cup. It smelled very strongly of ash (?) and chocolate and had a completely different, unified taste of complex and pleasant honeyed sweetness. Totally different from the first cup. Oh, and it also had a noticeable minty undertone- so convincing that I had to physically change my cup to make sure that I had not accidentally poured it in a cup from which one of my kids had just drunk mint tea or something. Now I felt that this tea was just messing with me!

Finally, with some apprehension I added the water for my third cup . This time I let it sit for 3 minutes to get all it out. Now the tea smelled of cocoalte and baked bread and, despite the dark color, still tasted rather subdued. You could still discern some notes of malt and mint but now chocolate, cherry and wood predominated – with a lingering aftertaste of mint.

What kind of wizardry is that?! I am certainly going to gong fu this ever-changing tea to death tomorrow. I don’t know how to rate it: the taste and aroma are not strong (which I usually strongly prefer) but it are pleasant, always unexpected and sometimes baffling. The whole experience was almost like some tea-induced tripping.

Flavors: Ash, Black Currant, Blackberry, Cherry, Dark Chocolate, Flowers, Honey, Malt, Mint, Wood

LuckyMe

This one took a while to grow on me but I really like it now. Tastes like a chocolatey darjeeling

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Bio

I like to drink teas to recreate a specific mood, or just to take a break at work. The world of tea is so endless, patiently waiting for exploration and rewarding you in many ways big and small.

I am looking forward to years of playing with tea leaves, gaiwans, cups, and YouTube videos.

My ratings:

90 or more – a very good/excellent tea, I can see myself ordering it again.

80-89 – it is a good tea, I enjoyed it but not enough to reorder.

70-79 – an OK, drinkable tea but there are certainly much better options even in the same class/type.

60-69 – this tea has such major flaws that you have to force yourself to finish what you ordered.

<60 – truly horrible teas that must be avoided at all costs.

Location

USA

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