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A Hong Shui with very light oxidation and a superb roast that never takes over the experience. It is very tasty and might just be the best Hong Shui I’ve ever tried. Due to the super smooth texture and not overly full body, it is very easy to drink. I also noticed an elevated mood for hours after drinking it.

Dry leaves smell of chocolate cookies, fruit orchard (pear, apple). Wet leaves then have an aroma of fenugreek leaves and cooked fruit such as red plums.

The taste is initially quite fruity with woody undertones and a hint of walnut shells. Later, it gets more savoury and even reminds me of salmon. The aftertaste is cooling and has a particularly strong character of mountain flowers.

As all Anji Bai Cha I have tried, this one is also quite subtle. Additionally, it is more milky and less grassy though.

At first there are floral and nutty scents complemented by an apple pie note. The wet leaf aroma is more grassy with a persistent apple note and a touch of vanilla ice cream.

The liquor has a texture that’s both thick and light and it has a mildly numbing mouthfeel. The taste is mild, sweet and bright. It has mineral bitterness, milky sweetness and a hint of butter. The aftertaste is warming, very sweet, herbaceous and milky.

I am not a big fan of Long Jing, but if they were all as exciting as this one, I would certainly change my mind. I particularly like its tingling, warming and sandpaper-like moutfeel as well as the unique bitterness present, which is stronger than in many shengs produced these days.

The dry leaf aroma has hints of sponge cake and instant cocoa, while wet leaves smell of thistles, seaweed, snowdrop flowers, and cabbage.

The taste is mineral and peppery. There is almost no astringency and flavours include a quite well-defined sake bitterness, almond skins, morel mushrooms, seaweed, and sunflower oil. The aftertaste is crisp with an additional green pepper note to it.

I got some fresh green teas recently and organized an outdoor tea tasting last weekend to try them out. Personally, I like this one the most among them. It has a pungent and well balanced taste with a great presence in the mouth and a also a lasting aftertaste.

The dry leaf aroma reminds me of meadows, moss and fried green vegetables. During the session, the smell is more butter-like and very green with a mild nutty undertones and hints of fern and green beans.

The taste is sweet and savoury with a nice bitterness and also some sour notes. It is remarkably mineral for a green tea, particularly reminiscent of limestone and shellfish. There are also some fleeting flavours of edamame, lavender and mint.

[Spring 2021 harvest]

This Dan Cong is quite green and floral – it reminds me a of FF Darjeelings a lot, and at times even of high mountain Taiwanese green oolongs. It is quite an aromatic tea with a velvety mouthfeel and strong minerality too.

Dry leaves smell like plum flowers to me, while the wet aroma is more like a mix of hay, apples, nuts, instant cacao, and pears.

The tea tastes savoury, floral and mineral. There are notes of orchid, white grapes, semoline, nut oils and others. Its dry, numbing finish then merges with a warming aftertaste that’s both bitter and sweet and bring further flavours of mountain herbs and vanilla.

A well aged tea that reminds me of some of Changtai examples I’ve tried. The taste is woody and savoury with mild bitterness, earthiness and also very limited astringency. There is a distinct flavour of beetroot, as well as some hints of agarwood, Worchestershire sauce, camphor, nigella seeds, barley and bread. The aftertaste is sweet, nutty and a little cooling. Overall, the tea also induces a decent warming sensation and can get into your head a little bit – though not in an aggressive way.

A new note for this lovely sheng. Once again I noticed a nutty character with a bitterness of unripe walnuts early on. There is a couple of interesting herbal notes later on – rosemary, fennel seeds, gai lan – as well as a bitterness of gin that appears on multiple occassions in the peak of the session. The tea has a really smooth creamy texture and is very mineral (almost sandy), forest-like and has a saline-like finish there. Towards the end of the session I also noted a kind of grapefruit skin bitterness that is certainly more common from regions like Lao Man E than anything within Yiwu.

A unique tea with superb taste, which ultimately isn’t worth the price though imo. It has a smooth, mineral profile with a sort of barrel aged, herbaceous character and hints of ash and Chinese medicine shops.

I got this one as a free sample, I am not sure if it was ever on offer on the website. Unfortunately, this tea takes a while to get going and once it does, it really doesn’t last very long. It has an interesting umami character peeking through the underlying earthiness. Its aroma has notes of nuts, miso, and a hint of peat. The taste is earthy, nutty, and spicy with notes of yeast, tobacco. There is a significant throat warming sensation and the tea’s energy then spreads throughout the body to complement the expanding sweet and cooling aftertaste that includes notes of star anise and licorice.

This sheng is a funny one – first few infusions remind me of yellow teas and it only brings the familiar Mansa profile in the second half of the session. The leaves also seem browner than what I would expect for a tea 1 year old, although they are brown in a non-uniform way so it is clear that’s not an artifact of aging. Also the liquor has a dark yellow colour with hardly any traces of green. Overall, the tea is mostly lacking in aftertaste, otherwise the price tag of 0.4$/g would be appropriate.

The leaves smell like a wooden cabin when dry and more like fresh hops, lemongrass, marjoram, and nuts after the rinse – which is super savoury, nutty and herbaceous. First proper infusion has a soft, cooling, and sticky moutheel and a strong vegetal bitterness. Hay note is strong here, it is somewhat acidic for a fresh sheng and while it isn’t sweet at all, there are hints of honey sweetness in the finish – a sign of what is to come.

Third steep is already a bit sweet, but also astringent now. The pungency and overall sweetness intensifies from the next one onwards. Nevertheless, there is still some fermentation-like sourness that is reminiscent of yellow teas. There is also a celery root flavour there. On the other side of the peak of the session, the tea is very sweet, floral and woody. The mouthfeel remains quite attention seeking, it is a bit like a smooth sandpaper in the finish but not so dry eventually. The qi is not particularly strong, I mostly noticed a chest warming sensation throughout.