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I really wanted to love this tea, after hearing it compared to Keyyixing and LYM… but it’s just too… yiwu.

This is a great tea, it’s balanced, has a great throat feel and after taste. But at it’s heart it has that powder taste I find off putting in many yiwu teas with age on them. I might come around after the second round of this tea (there was enough in the sample for two)… but I’m coming to the sad conclusion I need to drink up the young yiwus I like… because I’m not a fan of how they age.

If you are into yiwus, especially ones with age, this is a great buy. I haven’t met anyone else who gets geisha powder from yiwu (I presume this is the yiwu floral note)… so I’m assuming this will be a beloved tea for many at a great price. If I wasn’t so broke, I’d be tempted to get a cake just to age in case I ever come around, because the quality of tea is quite enjoyable.

If you need a tea that bites you back… this is not the tea for you. There is a bit of astringency in the form of the after taste of some kind of puckering stone fruit, but no bitterness. The storage this tea was in must be superb, because it’s very clean. To be honest though, part of the enchantment with the Keyyixing for me was the slightly murkier storage that gave it that ocean note.

This is a tea that is clean and will appeal to a wide audience, and has a lot of great qualities… but other than the awesome label (I love spaceships!) there isn’t anything truly unique or outstanding about this brew.

This is delicious creamy fruityness. Much less hay than many jingmais I’ve had.

Thank you Cheri for letting me try this one! I got a sample from her right after it sold out on the site (to neither of our knowledge), so had been waiting for an occasion to treat myself to the sample :P

Wonderful and complex and very enjoyable. Thankfully there are enough good Jingmais I am not in tears at how good this is though! It’s peaches and stone fruit with a creamy aftertaste, and it goes down easy but lingers.

I’m not sure if it’s just my headache I am trying to chase away with this oolong… but I find the taste of this one a bit nauseating. I do feel honeysuckle is apt, but its almost sickly sweet and paired with an oolong so roasty it seems like a black tea. It’s not BAD it just isn’t impressing me. It doesn’t have the complexity I’d expect an oolong too… it’s pretty much a straight forward roasty honeysuckle.

This beauty isn’t the boisterous loud beauty that it’s sister bulang is… you need a lot of time and focus to really open Yiwu Beauty up. This is one of those rare teas that is best long after you think it’s a goner. A phoenix.

The initial steeps are kinda sugary generic yiwu, and around the time you think it is losing flavor… those later long soaks all of the sudden that sugar dusted yiwu is combine with deep fruit flavors. These later soaks is where it really shines.

While I wish the initial steeps were more boisterous and thick, this tea is worth taking the time and patience to get to know, because once she opens up she is a beauty.

I should straight up review this tea at some point… it is like bulang light… as in bitterness but some aspects of florals and more subtle notes you don’t normally get from BULANG. Also delicious honey notes. This is one of my favorite teas, and I could drink it everyday… and need to save some to do that once it’s older and less tummy aggravating.

Anyways, when I was trying a sample of w2t’s 2015 colbert… the menghai blends made me think of each other. They have a lot of similarities… so I ended up having a show down between them yesterday. This is that tea drunk rant, after that Game of Thrones finale traumatized me:

For post 13… we have the Song of Water and Fire… The game of bulangs. You win or you doom cart.
To the left is our Geisha Snow, the Tea Urchin 2014 Bulang Beauty. To the right White 2 Tea’s champion: Colbert Targarian.

With a year of experience under her belt Geisha Snow has a much more refined taste. Future citizens of Bulang Shan will have a well rounded mannered experienced leader everyone can love. And at $99 for a full size cake, many more citizens can afford and enjoy her.

Fiesty and freshly plucked from the province of Yunnan comes Colbert Targarian. You can tell by looking at those big strong leaves that they can handle the heat of firey waters. While this champion is still green, the after taste endures. Colbert is a bit fiesty and still has those rough bulang manners. So he is a champion for those who already support Bulang-Shan ’ s claim to the throne, and is unlikely to convert any devotees to the path of Yiwu. Also at $80 for 200 grams, or $151.20 for a full size cake… This is a great leader this year for hard core bulang followers.

Both are great drinks and have show worthy wrappers.

At the end… I preferred Bulang Beauty… which pleased me because I really enjoyed Colbert but I already have a cake of Bulang Beauty to love and cherish. Based on what people say about aging, I’m sure Colbert will age better in the long term. It has a fuller body and bitterness… so if someone had money they should get both and enjoy them one after another :P

Why oh why does this have to be so good?! It has all the nectar notes of GFZ along with something slightly bitter. I’m still trying to place if it is a menghai or mengla type of bitter… I haven’t ever had LBZ straight, but know TU likes to blend with it, and there is a very light almost bulang bitterness… So I’d guess there is some of that in there. Maybe 10% with another 10% of another source, since it isn’t too prominent. The bitterness makes me think of manzhuan, but it doesn’t have the raw sugary after taste manzhuan or other yiwu sources seem to have to me.

The after taste lingers and lingers. This is fabulous ambrosia. I can see why it’s almost sold out.

Holy… I can see why this is sold out. This tea is so amazing!!! I am sipping on a sample Veck sent me… and wow, I don’t have words yet to describe it, so will hopefully update this later. But the flavor is addictive and unique. <3 <3 <3

The best description I have so far makes no sense… but if mermaids had a tea party, royal mermaids like Ariel, this is what they would be drinking. There is some sort of elegant salt note woven in it, without actually being salty.

Excellent cost to benefit ratio here. Very mellow and enjoyable shou with no off flavors.

Don’t buy this one…

Until I get paid and can buy a tong!

This has a jingmai smokiness, but is much greener. It is wonderfully complex, I can see how it is related to Hidden Song (which I didn’t get a good enough sense of in a serving to review bc it was so unique) but it is so much more complex! It is like Bulang and Jingmai has a delicious delicious baby together. There is the pleasant bitterness of Bulang with the subtle sweet smokiness of Jingmai.

There is a sweet lasting after taste. Mmm.

I have instagram pictures of the leaf and liquor I will post here later.

Edit:
Leaf- https://instagram.com/p/3kK0Kxyc-R/?taken-by=not_phi
Liquor- https://instagram.com/p/3kKj86yc97/?taken-by=not_phi