2006 Yang Qing Hao Shenpin Chawang Raw

This tea is a great example of YQH productions. It has a pleasant taste profile which makes it easy to drink, soft mouthfeel, strong huigan and expansive aftertaste. Above all, however, it presents a strong, dreamy qi that is anything but aggressive. It is surely a feel-good kind of tea. Even with heavier brewing parameters, It also lasts for a while, easily surpassing the 200ml/g mark.

In terms of specific notes, there are aromas of whiskey and licorice root. I can’t detect much bitterness or astringency at all. The taste is a little sour and woody with notes of apple and straw among others. In any case, this is certainly not the tea beaming with complexity.

I bought a blended brick through Emmett, and he was kind enough to send me a free sample of this tea. I brewed the whole sample in my 120ml jianshui pot, and got a fantastic result. Some of the strongest qi I’ve ever felt along with mouthwatering aroma and a robust, thick body. I don’t have the budget for a whole cake of this, so this review is written based only on the experience I had with my sample, not bearing in mind the price.

Ahh finally took the plunge and picked up my first full cake of YQH in Emmett’s last group order. I won’t get into too much detail because 1. It’s almost 3 am and I’m supposed to be studying and 2. I want to give the cake plenty of time to adjust to my environment before I decide how I feel about it. Visually this cake is beautiful! Super thick, healthy looking browned leaves with plenty of golden tips. The taste is very light throughout but with ample thickness. Light might not be the right word because I really dig the soft plummy sweetness but it certainly isn’t the most complex of the YQH. Qi is very nice and relaxing and there is a lasting throat feel/huigan. Overall I’ve quite enjoyed my first couple sessions!

Coming back to this note a couple months later…
I’m not as enthusiastically in love with this cake as I was when I first got it. It’s got nice flavors and decent qi though. It just seems to be missing something that the other top YQH teas have. It just doesn’t change much over the course of the session. Good but not super complex

Brought some random samples to my parents for the xmas weekend and this the the second one I pulled out. Started it up around 2pm and it’s 7pm now.

This tea is like a ghost. There’s this reminder that this tea once had a light smokiness to it, but if you try to pay attention it’s there but at the same time it just doesn’t present itself so you have to look. The color doesn’t give an impression that it is 10 years old, but the taste comes through as a 15-20 year old dry stored Mengku with some more moist/wet notes to it. For what it is, it’s incredibly clean making it the easiest to drink YQH yet. There’s this tough tasting sweetness at the upfront notes that reminds me of that nasty fruit that it popular for looks called starfruit. At $.65/g, it provides a $3 session that last hours requiring little attention as it is an easy drinker. Not going to remark on feels because I was and am not in the environment in which I would feel heat go throughout me; unless it somehow had combustible properties and my cells began to spark fire.

Liquid is thin. Lasting taste fades over three minutes and comes through by stimulation of tongue. Leaf has a dead color but the stems show quality through the thickness and light magenta color. Easy to brew and needs pushing as you go on.