Yunnan Sourcing

Well, now, I’ve had this Changtai raw/sheng for a couple years in my dark tea cabinet at 62 %RH, making it now 18 yrs old. Let’s see how it tastes today! The leaf in this cake is in large pieces, 1-2 inches long, and not too tightly compressed, so it was easy to pick off 5 g.

Gave it a quick rinse of 5s under hot tap water, then 5s more with boiling spring water. Successive infusions in 3 oz boiling alpine spring water:
15s- Golden orange soup, withered tea on the nose. Slightly tannic in the first sip, with notes of wood and malt coating the tongue and mouth.
20s- Same, but a little smoother.
30s- The tea leaf flavor is picking up here.
45s- Same golden orange soup, but the tannic notes are declining, to reveal some astringency and a longer smooth finish. No defects, but no other flavor notes either.
—[paused an hour, boiled more water and continued infusing]—
30s- Same golden orange soup, tea, wood, hint of chamomile taste.
90s- Same golden orange soup, returning astringency while other flavors decline.
2min- Ditto.
3min- Ditto.
Overall, while this isn’t a bad tea, it is a disappointment. Going back into storage for a few more years. I have better tea to drink.

A dark and comforting tea. Easy to drink, with a decent amount of sweetness and very little bitterness. Works well for me brewed western style, and I typically brew it for 3 or 4 steeps (starting at 2 minutes and working up to 5 minutes after an initial 30-second rinse). Might even have a few more good steeps, but that is too much for me. Not sure what the difference between sandalwood and oak would be, but I guess if sandalwood is on the softer side with more floral and spice tones, I can see that. I’m not feeling any root beer or cinnamon here. Vanilla and cherry notes for sure. No really strong earthy or funky tones – smooth is the name of the game here. Not super complex, really, but very pleasant. I’m not a total shu-poo-head yet, but after trying this tea I might be on my way.

This 2019 Ba Da Mountain ripe Puer from YS is an “older brother” to the 2020 material which I previously reviewed. It is very similar to the 2020, but not quite as complex in its flavors. YS’s description is pretty accurate. I really like it (which is good since I have a full cake of it).

I gongfu’d this session across 12 steepings of 30 seconds each, in succession, using hot alpine spring water well-off the boil (measured at 85°C), poured on 5g leaf in 3 ounce porcelain espresso cups (pre rinsed in the same water for 10 sec), using a stainless steel infusion basket. The earliest infusions were very dark brown liquors, lightening as I proceeded. See them all in the attached photo, going diagonally from left to right. You can see that a few jumped in intensity, because the wet leaf rested a minute between steepings as I heated more water (#6) and fetched more cups (#9). The flavor and aroma were remarkably consistent across all 12 infusions.

It is possible that additional flavors and slight bitterness might have been noticible had I used boiling water, as usual for Pu’erhs, but I was wanting to try and achieve a higher level of smoothness in this session. And I think it was successful in that! In the future I’ll go back to western-style steeping because the effort of all this just isn’t justified by the result (nevermind all the washing-up!)

Brewed and noted on 23 Sept. ‘24. This was a 25g bag I’d bought last year from YS, and I’d forgotten about it until looking over the comments from my review 2 yr ago of the 2020 Yunnan Sourcing “Ba Da Mountain” Ripe Pu-erh Tea Cake and seeing that user looseTman had asked about it back then. I must have brewed it previously and not reported because 5g is missing.

Anyway, I did my version of a gongfu session, using 5g tea, a stainless infusion basket, 3 ounce espresso cups, and alpine spring water at 90°C. Started with 10 sec wash, discarded, then six infusions of 15 sec each, then an hours’ pause, and six more infusions, again 15 sec each. I suspect I could have done a third set for a total of 18 decent cups, but stopped. The first two of each set were very strong and could have been yet briefer. The attached photos show the dozen infusions, from right to left. The weakest ones were #11 & #12.

I was not thrilled with this tea, as I have been with my other recent ripe puer tastings of late. There was still a bit of wet-pile humidity odor and taste in the first four infusions that masked any more subtle flavors. Not astringent, not fishy, not creamy either. No bitterness. It is a decent, solid tea, and I was pleased by the camphor arising in #5 & #6, and later by the lingering finish with notes of hazelnut in 10, 11, & 12. I didn’t get any notes of cocoa or fruit or leather. Next time, I’ll cut down the leaf by half, and try to control the early infusions to produce a less inky brew. YMMV. I’m also going to transfer the remaining tea from its mylar pouch to a filter-paper-covered jelly jar in my darkened tea cabinet for 6 months, so that the wet-pile notes can dissipate before my next session with it.

Full cakes are still for sale on YS and YS.us, and I’ll leave them for others who prefer potent shou.

Spring 2024: It’s okay. Not bad for the price, I guess. Not much lingering flavor, and not nearly as much of the nice fruity/floral/minty/etc notes you can get from white teas sourced from other areas. This one kind of has softer floral notes and more of a vanilla flavor going on. Some nice hoppy notes. Doesn’t linger too much. Kind of simple and boring.

I wasn’t a particularly big fan of this tea. I tried it using a bunch of different changes to the parameters over the course of several sessions, and I wasn’t able to get much more than a light cereal milk-tasting soup. The bark is certainly more present than its bite, and that disappoints me quite a bit given my general appreciation of the Jin Xian cultivar.

A simple and pleasing ripe pu-erh. It is brothy and nutty with savoury finish and a thyme flavour.

Texture is very oily and smooth with an almost unnoticeable bitterness. The aroma is sweet, fruity, honey-like with a tiny bit of booziness. It also has a note that reminds me of a medicinal beverage named Banlangen. I used the Fujian/Taiwan Gongfu tea method to brew this tea with a gaiwan as brewing vessel. I described this tea purely from memory so I gotta drink it one more time to get the maximum experience.