Yunnan Sourcing

This was a nice ripe puer. I got it A.because I wanted to try something from Menghai and B. because it was quite inexpensive for a 100g cake. The taste is strong and pleasant, with fallen leaves and dry wood. No fishiness, not danky. Nothing too complex or changing over multiple steepings but still consistently pleasant.

After trying this tea in a gaiwan I decided to do the western brewing and steeped the heck out of it. I used out 3 grams and let it sit in the amount of water equivalent to a large coffee mug for 3-4 minutes. It produced a very lightly-colored yellow-green brew with a pleasant strong taste: grass, tulips, peaches, and a lot of naphtalene mothballs – but in a good way.
By the way, “but in a good way” became my perennial copout for an usual but pleasant taste… although my wife keeps making fun of me every time I use it after I described one of the raw puers to her as “It tastes like throw up – but in a good way”.

In any case, this tea is very forgiving to a long Western-type brewing, and while not as complex as doing it gong fu style it produces a lot of tea with intense pleasant smell and taste ( I got three steepings out of it for 3-4 large coffee mugs). A keeper for sure.

My second oolong from Yunnan Sourcing and a very green oolong it is. This tea smells and looks like a lightly oxidized Ti Guan Yin but with a much stronger grassy component. The taste is quite complexand includes spinach, broccoli, grass, rubber, spices, grass, butter, something floral… And naphtalene mothballs… but in a good way.

This tea goes the distance and lasts for multiple steepings (at least 5-6) without losing much of complexity or becoming bitter. I started with a 20 sec. infusion but it was to short of a time so I transitioned to 25-35 secs afterwards.

All in all, it is a very tasty and fairly complex tea that is suited well for gong fu, which is quite typical for oolongs. It is inexpensive, distinct enough from a green Ti Guan Yin offered by Yunnan Sourcing, which makes it a good buy worthy of a reorder.

This tea has a mild aroma of forest floor with some wet wood and mushroom notes, which I found very calming. The body is medium and it is also slightly mouthwatering.

In the taste I mostly noticed bread crust and a bit of mushrooms. Even though I could tell the taste is fairly complex, most of the notes were too subtle. However, I guess the fact that none really dominates enables a wider range of flavours to come to the front than what is usual for a shou tea. All in all, it has a balanced and pleasant taste, which I enjoyed a lot. Given the price that this is selling for, I would say it is a total steal! I will definitely be getting at least one cake.

I overleafed this quite a bit, but since it is not all tea leaves it didn’t present that much of an issue. The steeping times I kept very short though nevertheless.

The smell seems to be dominated by the chrysanthemum flowers, it is slightly sweet and spicy and has a strong lemon note. The liquor has a very deep brick colour and medium body.

In the first few infusions, the tea was also on the back foot in terms of the taste, but that has changed throughout the session. I found the taste to be nicely balanced in these latter infusions with considerable bitterness, a little sweet, but still very floral and citrusy. The aftertaste has mostly the floral and spicy notes, and the drying sensation seems to be limited to the throat only. It actually reminds me a bit of some chili peppers.

Overall, I think this tea presents a nice alternative to standard teas. It is sufficiently different, but still has many qualities of a decent red tea. I can imagine that with a normal amount of leaf it can be a bit mild, but the way I brewed it this time it wasn’t a problem.

Got back to my collection of samples with this. I’m getting a lot of tobacco and smoke and something else I can’t name. Not a great combination of these flavors, so I’m hoping to try it again with a lower temperature. Still enjoyed it enough to finish the session. I also like the loose compression and whole leaf, it fills the gaiwan nicely.

Good bitterness and good body, however, also a certain degree of astringency without particularly noticeable Qi. Good endurance and good quality but nothing special, what would set this tea apart from others.
Images and more at https://puerh.blog/teanotes/2016-shan-hou-ys

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.

It was my first purple puer. The cake was not particularly tightly pressed but still required patience and my newly purchased puer needle to separate without turning half of it it into dust. The leaves are large and appear to be black but steeping reveals them to be mostly green.

I have not had much of luck with my puers so far: I stick to cheap products and in that range raw puer is barely drinkable and ripe ones are pleasant but rather lack in complexity. And this purple puer turned out to be a very pleasant surprise in that respect. First, its taste and aroma are decidedly different from other puers I tried. I did the short steepings (10-12 seconds), which produced an interesting mix of lingonberries, red currant, cranberries, black currant leaves and the overripe blackberries that were sitting in the hot sun for a bit. And some honeyed sweetness. The aroma is very intense and consists of the same components.

I got no less than 7-8 good steepings out of it. As usual, only the first couple of them were remarkably complex , but the next 5-6 steepings were very pleasant nevertheless, with the cranberry/lingonberry sourness coming to the fore in the steepings 3-5 , while last steepings were full of calming sweetness. All in all, it is a very interesting tea that gives you a very different taste depending on the duration and number of steepings, which gives ample space for exploration and experimentation. Every time I drink it I pick up something new., it is never boring and repetitive.

I tried this (very economical) tea because my daily Tie Guan Yin routine was starting to eat holes into my collge student-budget.
It comes in tightly rolled balls and the smell of the dry leaf is very reminiscent of good Tie Guan Yin. It takes about 2 infusions to open up and fully develop flavour. Although it lacks the complexity and freshness of high-quality Tie Guan Yin, it’s very well-rounded tea with a long aftertaste and quite some cha qi.
I started drinking it daily. If you like rather green Oolongs and if you’re in need of an affordable daily drinker, this is a very fitting choice.

Out of the few shou samples I got from YS, this one is among my least favourite. It’s not bad at all, but I find its flavour profile flatter than Yong De Blue or Man Tang Hong, and its texture thinner than Yang Luo Han for example. The mouthfeel is still fairly coating and milky, just not too thick. The liquor has a nice, standard shou taste, no surprises there, apart from maybe some prune taste throughout the session and red wine in later steeps. It is not as sweet as Yang Luo Han and not as savoury as Yong De Blue though – kind of average.

It definitely has a noticeable caffeine content, more so than I’ve noticed in other ones. Overall, I think that for the price this is selling for, one can find a more exciting ripe pu’er.

I used quite a lot of leaves today and I am glad I didn’t split it into two sessions instead. I got a really nicely balanced and well rounded taste with a lot of depth. The combination of vegetal, nutty, floral, sweet and sour notes together with the astringency, without any of them dominating, is what makes this tea a great choice.

This time I can smell a strong dried apricot note in the dry leaf, it reminds me of apricot danish pastry a bit too. Generally, I found the smell somewhat more fruity, with some peach and nectarine hints too. Some new notes I got from the wet leaf smell include tobacco and strangely enough quite strongly also the smoke generated by smoke machines at concerts and such. That took me by surprise somewhat. Generally it’s quite a sweet smell compared to the taste, which also has some sweetness (this time I also noticed bubblegum in at least one of the infusions), but verges on the savoury side overall I would say.

This is an enjoyable white tea that is very affordable. It is also very forgiving and easy to brew. As such, it is extremely suitable for a casual drinking kind of white tea.

Dry leaf smells like some pastry whose name escapes me right now. It reminds me of Provence for some reason too, I think there is a bit of lavender and dry grass in the smell. In the wet leaf I get some brandy notes as well.

As for the taste, honey sweetness is very present, as well as (phyllo) pastry, nuts and mediterranean shrubs (I can’t quite tell which one). There is literally no bitterness when brewed like this (85°C) and only a little astringency that one can control by adjusting the other parameters.

The mouthfeel is mouth-watering, bubbly, cooling and fairly light bodied overall, although it can get a little thicker and coating when brewed for a longer time obviously.

I don’t know if I’ve just been unlucky and tried the wrong teas, but my track record with Yiwu teas so far has not been very good. I know a lot of people really like them and on paper they sound like something that might be up my alley, but after trying a handful of them so far, my hit rate has been rather poor. Granted, what is commonly referred to as the “greater Yiwu region” is a rather large area which encompasses not only the Yiwu mountain range but the six famous tea mountains and more. One would expect to find plenty of variation within such a large region even if many of the teas might share some similar base characteristics. The small sample size of teas I’ve had doesn’t even begin to cover all the various mountains, villages and price ranges.

With all that out of the way, let’s get to this tea. Like the YS 2016 Bing Dao Lao Zhai that I reviewed recently, I actually have a cake of this, but much like the Bing Dao, it’s at the bottom of my pumidor supporting a couple of stacks. As a smaller, more premium cake that I bought mainly to age and didn’t want to break into just for this session, I went ahead and ordered a 10g sample just for this session. This saves me a lot of hassle and leaves me with more tea. I used all ten grams in a 140ml gaiwan that is the largest one available to me. Smelling the small foil packet the sample came in, you get a wonderful sweet fruity scent that reminds me of pineapple. My sample was a single large piece from the cake along with some smaller loose bits to round out the weight. I decided to not break it up at all by hand, because in my experience Yunnan Sourcing pressing have typically been very loose and come apart on their own after the first couple of infusions, sometimes even just the rinse.

I gave the tea a brief five second rinse and it had about five minutes to soak up the moisture while I tasted the wash. Even these first drops that had graced the leaves carried a wow factor to them. The tea was soft, sweet and oily. The mouthfeel was wonderful and for just the rinse, the briefest of rinses, there was already a surprising amount of flavor. I followed the rinse with twelve more infusions, the timing for these being 6s, 6s, 6s, 6s, 8s, 10s, 15s, 20s, 30s, 45s, 2 min. and 4 min.

The first proper infusion was thick, creamy and sweet with plenty of flavor. I could already tell this was going to be an excellent tea. The second steeping was brighter and strong, really strong. I struggle to find the right word to describe the flavor. I think fruity is decent enough, but I’m not sure if it’s quite right. The mouthfeel remained wonderful and the flavor changed considerably once the tea cooled down. This holds true for most steeps in this session and the tea revealed very different facets of it when it was hot, warm and cool, always tasting great.

At this point I noticed that the large chunk I’d tossed in was still intact and decided to give it some encouragement. Following the different layers, I tried to separate it into a couple of much thinner pieces that should have a much easier time coming undone on their own, and while doing this I discovered that the chunk was still completely dry at the very center. I don’t know if this bing is just more compressed than some other Yunnan Sourcing productions, at least their 400g pressings, or if I received a more compressed part toward the center, but I think I actually lucked out, because I fear this tea would have been overwhelmingly strong had I received a less compressed bit or tried to pry it apart earlier. Thanks to how things turned out, my steepings ended up brewing out much more evenly.

Although I was dreading a much harder kick to the face after sorting out the compression issue, thankfully those fears were unfounded and the tea still retained its soft character in the third steep, albeit there was definitely some more edge, some more young raw pu’er backbone to it now. The tea was still quite wonderful, I would actually call it delicious. The raw pu’er edge was only amplified in the next steep, but there was none of the nastiness you can sometimes get in young sheng. The tea continued brewing strong. While there was less body now, the mouthfeel was still quite nice.

Steep five brewed sweet, really sweet. The sweetness was accompanied by a mineral nature and followed by some dry astringency in the finish. The tea was still brewing strong in the sixth steep. It was oily and aromatic with some minor astringency in the finish. Steep seven is the first time I extended the brewing time by full five seconds and the resulting soup was almost too strong. There was much more edge to the tea now, but still no nastiness, although there was now some fleeting bitterness. The tea was very clean, very bright. The texture was getting lighter, but we were entering a stage where the tea is quite easy to drink and similar to juice in a way.

Steep eight was delicious. Super strong. There was a pleasant bitterness to it that disappeared after a few seconds. A small wave of heat washed over me while drinking this steep. The tea continued simplifying and getting thinner in the ninth infusion, but in return it became REALLY easy to drink. It gained a refreshing, slightly mood lifting quality and brewed with really pleasant sweetness and strength that was still incredibly strong. I was really enjoying the tea.

The tenth infusion is where the tea began losing sweetness. The mouthfeel was still decent, but there was hardly that much taste. This was a sign for me to finally start pushing the tea much harder and the eleventh steep was in fact stronger again. The tea soup was nice and refreshing and there was a fleeting bitterness to it that was becoming more prominent. I really appreciated the fact that the bitterness wasn’t persistent as you would have expected with a lot of other teas. The bitterness was even more pronounced in the final infusion, but still nothing abrasive. I thought this was a good place to call it, however. The strength was still very good, and I happily drank all of the tea, but although there may have been more to see, I didn’t want to risk ending a good session with a steep that left a bad taste in my mouth.

Overall this tea was excellent. Really wonderful. This is exactly what I’ve expected from Yiwu teas based on people’s descriptions, but not really what I’ve experienced so far apart from maybe one or two exceptions. Although during the session the Man Lin didn’t seem to exhibit much noticeable qi, later during the day a couple hours later I suddenly noticed I was actually in a very good mood, feeling good and more aware and awake than I normally am. That could just be a coincidence and unrelated to the tea, but it would be a very rare coincidence and as such I’m attributing my state to the tea. I was actually really glad this tea wasn’t one of the teas that feels like you got your face pummeled by a sledgehammer, because the tea itself was already so strong in terms of taste that a potent cha qi that would have made you woozy and put you under the table would have been just too overwhelming. This tea was incredibly yummy with no bad steeps and I really appreciate the very subtle cha qi that makes it a real feel-good tea at least for me.

After a series of lukewarm encounters with Yiwu teas, I found myself wondering why’d I pick up a cake of this blind, but now after having tasted the tea I couldn’t be happier that I did. I actually wasn’t quite in time to pick it up before the price went up for the first time, but I got mine before it recently went up again. I paid $133 which puts it at $0.53/g. At the time of writing this, you pay exactly ten cents more per gram if you pick up a bing. Is the tea worth it? In my opinion, absolutely. This is a genuinely high-end tea, one that you can drink now and fully enjoy, or age and end up with what I have no doubt will be a bomb of a tea. It’s not the highest of the high-end, but in typical Yunnan Sourcing fashion, the quality of the tea is very indicative of the price, if not better. If you want to experience genuine high-quality Yiwu, but the price of a tea like this is simply not something you can justify, I highly recommend you to sample some autumn harvest teas. I know some people are not fans of autumn teas, but what little experience I have with them so far, I haven’t really been able to tell a huge difference between them and spring teas and the price is often half of the spring counterparts if not less.

If you are looking for something truly yummy, even if it’s just a sample, I definitely recommend giving this tea a go!

I like the progression of this tea, one of the cakes that has been in my collection for the longest time. It has a strong and unique taste that balances sweet, savoury and bitter flavours well. The notes remind me of dried fruits, ginseng, taro root, but also camphor and grain in the aftertaste. The mouthfeel is very thick and engaging too.

I didn’t pay a super close attention to this tea today. I found it to have a pleasant woody bitter and juicy sour character with a supple body and notes of spices in the aftertaste. There was also a funny savoury flavour of baked potatoes which is not very common.

This winter I am storing my pu’er warmer than in the past and it shows. The aroma is definitely more pungent and I consistently find the flavours more lively as well.

Among the best teas as far as such comparisons go is this cake, which I’ve had for more than two years now. It shows clear signs of aging now, such as the liquor colour moving into the orange territory. It still has a smooth, oily texture and a nice calming cha qi just as before.

The taste is a bit more nutty and displays a nice honey sweetness. Overall, it is very comforting and retains a lot of the qualities that I remember – vegetal bite, well-integrated bitterness, apricot note (a bit like an unripe one), and towards the end of the session also a marine, yeasty character. Among the new flavours I picked up today are thistles and apple, the latter especially in the aftertaste.

Today I am tasting one of the very first tea cakes I bought. I am quite happy that it doesn’t seem to lose pungency in terms of its fragrance. It is, however, entering a sort of transition period in its development. The flavours are not as bright, although still quite vegetal. There is definitely a strong pine note in the finish and a distinctive lactose sweetness that I can’t quite recall from sessions a year ago. Overall, it is a very flavourful tea with good bitterness, sour grass note and a marine and yeasty character. It is also super smooth with an extremely soft and oily mouthfeel.

I haven’t had a session with this tea in a while and I decided to revisit it to check on its progression. Let me add some more observations I had during today’s cupping.

The aroma of the wet leaf is somewhat marine like and woody. The liquor is mouth-watering and oily. In this session, the taste of the early infusions seems to have more of vegetal and umami flavours, verging on salty at times. I get some grass and alcohol notes too. Middle infusions see the rise of woody and pine flavours. Late infusions are still slightly vegetal, but not really that much savoury anymore. They display more sweetness to complement the sourness that persists. Flavours like taro, butter and mint emerge. Aftertaste is very long and evolves in various directions. At certain points it gets kind of sweet only to give way to the original sour/umami flavours of the liquor returning in brief bursts. After about 10 minutes, the aftertaste displays also some spices, most prominently black pepper I’d say. Cha qi is strong, especially if you let yourself get lost in it, because it is not so overwhelming by itself, like I also mentioned in my first review.

What a wonderful tea this is! I am a novice in the world of pu-erh, but I am already a big fan.

The smell of dry leaf is fairly floral, while in the wet leaf tobacco seems to be very present. The smell is very thick and sweet and induces somewhat cooling sensation in my nose.

As for the mouthfeel, the tea is medium to full bodied and oily. At the start of the session, it seems to be drying the throat only, but develops a more allround astringency later on.

Taste wise, I found it to be pleasantly sour with nice fruitiness along the lines of gooseberry and apricot. The aftertaste is very protracted with returning sweetness on the tongue and a bit more sour in the throat. It seems to have a balanced taste even when the steeping time is pushed longer, the bitterness is fairly mild generally.

The effects of the tea seem to appear very quickly, but the cha qi is not overwhelming. I found it to be slightly warming and with a numbing effect.

100C, 5g/100mL, gongfu.
I apparently deleted my note before uploading it to steepster, so here goes, from memory:
First of all, thanks to fidgetiest for the tea! It was very much appreciated
The smell of the dry leaves is just…roasted which was concerning as someone who doesn’t like 1 note roasted teas (like hojicha). However, upon placing the leaves into a pre-rinsed hot gaiwan, there were some nice aromas that started to wake up like cherries. I chose to not rinse the tea per Scott’s recommendation, and I’m glad I didn’t!
1- (10s): Now the wet leaves smell like pomegranite, the roastedness has taken a backseat, I’m glad this has more to it than just roast. In aroma, this reminds of a dancong. Upon tasting, I’m hit with a really thick, rich broth. It reminds me of the richness in hong/black tea but without having any malt or chocolate characteristics. Goes down super smooth. I wish that the fruitiness had made it to the actual liquor but it makes for a nice incense-like aroma in the air.
5-7 (20-30s): This tastes really mineral and nourishing, but not quite as thick as before. Still, goes down super smooth for how rich this is.
8: Well….something went down last night and I left the leaves in the gaiwan for like 20 minutes after pouring boiling water on them. I decided to take a sip and…not bitter or astringent at all. Still rich and dare I say a creamy texture. I decided to leave the leaves overnight and come back to them in the AM
9-12: I’m surprised I’m able to keep steeping this after the 20 minute long steep yesterday. Two things—1)these leaves have a lot to give, though I’m having a hard time picking out individual tastes beyond mineral and a rich texture. 2) I feel safe calling these leaves bomb proof—steep them aggressively if that’s your style, I think you’ll get a lot more out of these doing that!
All in all, bombproof tea, with qualities of a lot of other teas: creaminess like a taiwanese oolong, aroma like a dancong, minerality like a wuyi oolong, richness like a black tea. An interesting hybrid but unfortunately only excels in minerality which is not one of my favorite flavors but I can still appreciate it.

A very nice midpoint between Ye Sheng black teas and Wu Yi oolongs. The dry leaf smells of almond/marzipan, while in the wet leaf I can smell more of sauna, pine and light roast coffee. It is also slightly cooling in the nose. The taste is savoury, fragrant and spicy with a very sweet aftertaste. There is also some mild bitterness. A great aspect of the tea is definitely in the mouthfeel, which is fairly soft, heavy and a little bit effervescent. I feel like overall it is growing on me as I get more accustomed to its characteristics. At first, I couldn’t quite appreciate all of its nuances, because it is ultimately different from any other tea I have had, although the base layer is similar to other Ye Sheng varietal black teas from YS.

Even with me going through black teas like General Sherman through Georgia this week, I managed to make the time for a green tea and a couple oolongs. I finished the last of a pouch of this tea last night and was finally able to arrive at an opinion of it after going back and forth about it for several days. I ultimately decided that I greatly enjoying this tea, though I suppose that should not come as a surprise considering that I have professed my adoration of Yunnan green teas numerous times in the past.

I prepared this tea gongfu style. After a quick rinse, I steeped 6 grams of loose tea leaves in a 4 ounce gaiwan filled with 176 F water for 5 seconds. This infusion was chased by 14 additional infusions. Steep times for these infusions were as follows: 7 seconds, 9 seconds, 12 seconds, 16 seconds, 20 seconds, 25 seconds, 30 seconds, 40 seconds, 50 seconds, 1 minute, 1 minute 15 seconds, 1 minute 30 seconds, 2 minutes, and 3 minutes.

Prior to the rinse, the dry tea leaves produced aromas of sorghum, hay, and corn husk. After the rinse, I noted fresh aromas of malt, straw, spinach, and seaweed. The first infusion brought out hints of damp grass and pine on the nose. In the mouth, the tea liquor offered notes of corn husk, hay, straw, grass, malt, and pine underscored by hints of sorghum molasses. Subsequent infusions saw the nose take on grassier, fruitier, and more marine characteristics with a strongly brothy umami presence also apparent. In the mouth, seaweed and spinach emerged with new impressions of sour plum, lemon zest, chestnut, butter, minerals, umami, and lime zest hot on their heels as the tea turned more noticeably astringent. I could also note some hints of smoke on at least a couple of these infusions. The closing infusions offered lingering notes of minerals, malt, corn husk, and sour plum backed by subtle umami, seaweed, chestnut, and hay impressions.

A strong, lively, pungent, and rather astringent green tea, I could see this one being an acquired taste for a number of people. I, however, love Mengku teas and have been especially fond of the very few other pine needle green teas that I have tried in the past. With that in mind, it makes sense that I eventually came to the conclusion that I loved this tea. If you do not mind a sharper, more biting, more powerful green tea, consider giving this one a shot. I doubt it will disappoint.