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I found this tea intense, complex, and intriguing. It has a velvety quality that is buttery, soft, and yet very stimulating. You could find any vegetable flavor in this tea if you look hard enough in between sips. I found brussle sprouts, kale chips, buttered herbs, and pronounced fresh nori. There is a pleasant returning sweetness, as well. There is a lot of caffeine in this tea. It’s perfect for all-nighters.

The various hues of greens in the dry leaf bits reminded me of the moss in Kyoto’s temple gardens.

As a revision of my previous review, I want to emphasize the huge impact the quality of your water has your tea tasting experience. I’m in Seoul for the summer, and water in Korea is historically known to be exceptional. There are so many natural mountain springs that hikers regularly refill their bottles with water seeping out of the rocks—no exaggeration.

So, I brought some of this particular tea with me to test the city’s tap and what I experienced was an intensified aroma in the cup, extra body, and a much more pronounced, long sweet aftertaste. My friend and I were literally tea-drunk with glee.

I highly recommend serious tea tasters learn more about how to enhance the quality of their water to get the most out of the overall experience.

Addendum to my last tasting note:

I’ve tried many teas samples in between these two postings and I decided to purchase the entire cake based on the quality, uniqueness, and price. It’s a neat exercise to go back to earlier tasting notes while sipping on that same tea to compare current to previous flavor descriptions (and writing ability). The description still holds true.

Jim from the Puerh Shop claims it’s “truly grown wild”, and I think I can believe. It has that extra-long pleasant finish that fills the mouth and unique sharp edge (not astringent, but herbal and sweet at the same time) I’ve picked up in “wild” teas from other vendors. It’s also true that Jim doesn’t seem make that claim very often. Puerh Shop has gotten some bad press in the Western online puerh universe, but I won’t go into those issues.

The dry leaves are intact, attractive, and fragrant, and brewed leaves are olive green with an intoxicating orchid-like fragrance. It’s really quire remarkable. The tea liquid is a cloudy pale yellow and is thick in body. This tea is sweet, vegetal, flowery, medicinal, and packs a strong qi. It leaves a long gentle sweet finish and a pleasing sensation in the throat. This tea has that deep forest sweetness that I’ve come to associate with good quality sheng pu’ers.

Cake is very compact and is filled with fuzzy buds that are more stout than those from other regions. The dried leaf smells very sweet and the brewed leaf has a refreshing scent that reminds me of high quality Japanese sencha. It brews a golden hue that is somewhat cloudy. The tea is gently sweet with notes of crisp spring greens, plums, flowers, rock candy, and sweet wine. It has a very pleasant, flowery, and uplifting huigan (aftertaste) that lasts for at least 5 mins.

I actually prefer this tea to its 2014 Wuliang counterpart, which I find overwhelmingly sweet without that uplifting sensation of this tea.

This is a very impressive tea. It’s aging very gracefully, with no wet storage characteristics at all. It starts out very sweet with a sharpness in the background reminding you it’s a sheng, but one with a flavor that has matured into something very balanced and refined. This has a honey-like sweetness with notes of ripe plum, pine, bourbon, roasted barley, and flowers. The tea liquid is champagne in color the leaves are a golden olive hue, mostly intact, and highly fragrant. It starts to reveal its aged nuances in later steeps.

This is one of those hidden gems.

I’ve been wanting to try quality Wuliang sheng for a while and my samples just arrived last week.

I noticed my experience with this tea is quite different from previous reviews. I pick up barely any bitterness until the 5th steep. Dry leaf has a sweet, candy-like aroma and wet leaf has that musky, orchid-like, deep forest fragrance. The first few steeps have notes of sweet peach, honey, and tannin. It’s very smooth and leaves a pleasantly sweet finish lasting more than a few minutes. Following steeps are similar to the first one except gradually reveal subtle tobacco and woodsy notes. Prominent honey and ripe peach notes, with increasingly more tannin, minerals, and cedar wood in the 5th and 6th steeps. Astringency is minimal and the flavors continue to please past the 7th steep.

Honestly, I find this tea to be less interesting than those from the Lincang, Baoshan, and Dehong regions. I’m just not into very sweet teas. The 2014 Qing Mei Shan is just as sweet, but has a much more impressive aftertaste that I got me considering to put some money down. Also, despite its name, this one also doesn’t have that wild tea tree element YS’s other teas have, but it’s very enjoyable to drink now.

The cake itself fragrant. The fuzzy silvery buds are mostly intact, quite attractive, and can be easily picked off the cake. The tea has distinct notes of ripe Korean pear and honey. Later steeps reveal more interesting textures and subtle sweet/savory/nutty flavors. It’s very flowery and light with a velvety texture that may evolve with age.

The dry leaf is intact, attractive, and has a candy-like fragrance. The wet leaf is especially fragrant, reminding me of a wild orchid and sweet ripe plum (hence the name of the mountain where it’s from). The brew is pale bright yellow, pure in flavor, crisp, smooth buttery texture, very flowery, and sweet like candy-cane. I can walk away from this tea now and still taste it in my entire mouth and in my throat. Makes me wonder why people purchase expensive oolongs when you can get much more complexity and superior aftertaste from quality sheng like this one.

Upon trying this tea the day after it arrived, I noticed the smokiness overwhelmed all of its other nuances. I decided to return to it in a week or so. I find the flavor of teas change in a positive way after being broken into. After brewing it again 2 weeks later I realized I was right. This time the smoke was in the background and the savory, piney, honey-like, camphor, mineral, deep forest flavors showed themselves more prominently. The leaf aroma reminded me of other quality shengs I’ve tried. This tea definitely has a rustic quality that adds to its charm. I imagine it will only improve with age as the smokiness gives way to its true nature.