2007 Xiang Yi "Hei Cha Zhuan" Hunan Brick Tea

The scent of the wet leaves brings back memories from forgotten summer holidays. North eastern italian seaside. Maritime pine trees, sand. The small flat my grandparents used to rent. The liquor is sweet, full and holds the same mystery.

Then flowers, honey, cream, medicinal herbs. Spicy but polite. Good presence in the mouth. Delicate honey aftertaste. Feels different from puerh (it’s my first heicha).
I find it very enjoyable and comforting.

On the later infusions it gets dryer, floral and spicier. Raw potatoes. I like the aroma at this point but also I find it a bit heavy. Feels slightly stimulating and relaxing at the same time. I got around 8 infusions.

Edit 01/09/21
In the last few months the tea changed a lot, especially in the aroma department. Deep cherry/plum sweetness and floral/ancient furniture. All this elements combined remind me of cough syrup, in a good way. The body and taste tends to be thin, I have to push this tea a lot to extract the right intensity.

I wonder if there is something about this tea that I am just missing. Usually, hei cha from YS has an awesome price/quality ratio, and this one is among the best received overall. In spite of that, I just can’t get into it and find the tea mostly uninteresting with mouthfeel that’s unusually unpleasant.

Both the taste and aromas are fairly muted. There’s nothing offensive about them though, it is just a sort of basic mix of wood, nuts and wet rocks with hints of resin, lemon and sage. As for the mouthfeel, it induces the kind of metallic mouthfeel you can get from lowest grade Tie Guan Yin, which is one of the few aspects of tea I actively despise.

All that being said, I do like the aftertaste of this tea. But in the grand scheme of things, it can’t save the tea from the conclusion that I am certainly not going to be looking to buy more of it.

This is easily my favorite of the Hei Cha samples I bought from YS. Unlike the others, this was not muddy or earthy at all, but honey-sweet, slightly minty, with creamy vanilla and birch bark flavors.

It’s also a powerhouse of a tea and will last all day if you keep the steeps short. Overall, this is a really nice, friendly tea that fits somewhere between a ripe and a raw pu erh.

Ordered a sample of this in my last YS order. Got a nice chunk of cake with a couple smaller chunks that were quite compressed but easy enough to break apart to the size I needed.

The dry leaves smell welcoming and earthy, and after a quick wash, they give off a mouth-wateringly sour aroma with a hint of woodiness. I do a quick 15 second steep to start and I’m getting a light, fruity sweet and sour flavor with a very nice woodiness.

The following steeps deliver more of the same, and I definitely get that umeboshi flavor I’ve seen mentioned about this. I’m finding the flavor to be very good and consistent across steeps, even after longer steeps. A great, fruity aroma clings to the empty cup.

I can definitely see myself buying a full brick of this and sharing with folks who may generally shy away from aged teas. Definitely very drinkable.

I’ve been pretty pleased with Hunan hei cha, and this one is no different.

It’s plummy, a bit sweet, but with a rich slightly earthy undertone. Very easy to drink warm or cool.

Really enjoying this one all day. Lots of sour plummy taste & aroma – I actually didnt like it oversteeped, in fact ive been flashing it all day with lower temps and its just going and going. It can explode with a funky sour taste if left to its own devices imho.

Really interesting tea, a bit like aged sheng but a differentdeep sour, some bark flavour & age or storage but nothing that puts me off. pickled plum/umeboshi tea? :)

I did write a big review all day but closed the tab so its been shortened.

Glad im getting to try these Hei Cha, as I have enjoyed the two ive had so far, & want to try some more (of the nice ones).

A bit one sided in its taste perhaps, and not as complex as I really like but the aroma is a nice one & the huigan was nice in the early steeps. Now im on something like steep 10 & its softened but still pleasant.

I would buy some of this, A good alternative to having aged sheng imo, and a 250g brick would last me forever. (& only $30) I dont know where this one falls for people who know Hei Cha – is it a good one or not? Who knows but its fruity & different :)

This tea is very enjoyable… smooth and round, fills the mouth no astringency or bitterness at all. The dried fruit sweetness is unmistakeable and yummy. I also detected a woody flavor, or maybe grassiness, but in a bright and lively way that only served to compliment the dark fruit flavor.

I drank this tea while doing computer stuff in a rather distracted state of mind… I was pleasantly surprised and excited to find that even when subjected to very long steep times (captain space cadet here), the tea was still incredibly sweet and very consistent. Steeped around 9 times (for varying lengths of time) and the tea was nice at every stage.

Sweet, pleasant and highly drinkable!