An interesting tea!! Very unusual. I think I love it. :)
I know I didn’t brew this perfectly. I just felt like I needed to try this today and so I threw it in my bag to try at work. (So my impressions are based on roughly 1 teaspoon of tea and 190 degree hot spigot water in a 12.75 oz travel tea mug):
It smells like freshly peeled corn husks!! With slighty sappy, crisp evergreen and watermelon-like notes.
Tastes delicate and sweet, yet somehow has substance. No strong floral notes or spice—maybe a wisp of clover and grain with a sprinkle of sugar.
I love the scent the best and I also feel very calm and centered while drinking this.
It looks like a full-size order of Late-Winter Budset Yabao is in my future!
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I too love this tea! The beautiful thing about this tea is that it is almost impossible to brew it incorrectly. It is so forgiving. Good description of it, too!
Yay! Thanks Nathaniel! I especially love teas that I don’t have to “baby”. This one is practially perfect in that way.
Ditto Nate’s comment. This tea is so ridiculously forgiving! I’ve definitely just thrown leaves (buds?) into a cup at work, and let them sit in water all day as I refilled with hot water.
The only way I wouldn’t recommend this tea is putting it into a fill-yourself tea bag. The ones I tried, at least, were made of a linen-y paper, and they ended up absorbing and masking a lot of the sugar-crystal sweetness and replacing it with..paper. Also, since the buds are so big, you don’t fit as much into a bag as you probably really need.
Glad you enjoyed this one! This kind of pu’er was the very first sheng I fell in love with, and my gateway drug into pu’ers. It’s so pleasant and forgiving; there’s no way to do it wrong, and everyone who tries it invariably enjoys themselves.
I’ve heard that Verdant is trying to bring in some Yabao pressed into bricks and much older than what they have already. If they ever do (fingers crossed!), I’d recommend you try some of that, too.
Hi Spoonvonstup (such a great name…how come I never thought of it??) I agree with you about forgiving teas! I think puerhs are forgiving in general, since they’ve had so much time to “mellow out”.
I don’t have much time for temperamental teas nowadays. So, to a tea, I say: “Just let me throw you in my tea mug and let’s see how you hold up!” ;).
I loooooooove Ya Bao. Lemoniness and sheng pu-erh. What better combination.
I too love this tea! The beautiful thing about this tea is that it is almost impossible to brew it incorrectly. It is so forgiving. Good description of it, too!
Yay! Thanks Nathaniel! I especially love teas that I don’t have to “baby”. This one is practially perfect in that way.
Ditto Nate’s comment. This tea is so ridiculously forgiving! I’ve definitely just thrown leaves (buds?) into a cup at work, and let them sit in water all day as I refilled with hot water.
The only way I wouldn’t recommend this tea is putting it into a fill-yourself tea bag. The ones I tried, at least, were made of a linen-y paper, and they ended up absorbing and masking a lot of the sugar-crystal sweetness and replacing it with..paper. Also, since the buds are so big, you don’t fit as much into a bag as you probably really need.
Glad you enjoyed this one! This kind of pu’er was the very first sheng I fell in love with, and my gateway drug into pu’ers. It’s so pleasant and forgiving; there’s no way to do it wrong, and everyone who tries it invariably enjoys themselves.
I’ve heard that Verdant is trying to bring in some Yabao pressed into bricks and much older than what they have already. If they ever do (fingers crossed!), I’d recommend you try some of that, too.
Hi Spoonvonstup (such a great name…how come I never thought of it??) I agree with you about forgiving teas! I think puerhs are forgiving in general, since they’ve had so much time to “mellow out”.
I don’t have much time for temperamental teas nowadays. So, to a tea, I say: “Just let me throw you in my tea mug and let’s see how you hold up!” ;).
I loooooooove Ya Bao. Lemoniness and sheng pu-erh. What better combination.