Yunnan Sourcing

Just revisiting this mini tuo. I have a 2007 version, which I need to check if I can find again because this is getting better, I bumped the score up a bit.

I’ve had them stored in a cardboard cylinder container for +-2 years and it is doing well, the rice is pretty strong still and the tea is even smoother, specially for a mini tuo. I love the scent, it is just satisfying and almost calming to have that floral/nutty rice scent.

I’ve had these for a while now and makes it that much better to go back to them. I feel like now they are a bit less astringent and pungent and and more sweet on the tongue than when I first got them. I love the scent they have when dry and how it emanates when steeped.

I love a well cooked white rice and this just fools my brain into believing there’s some around the corner. Takes multiple steeps and it has a tummy filling sensation. I love it before/with and after foods.

This is a ‘nostalgia’ tea for me. Its smell takes me back to my childhood, just like freshly steamed rice. At first I was amazed at the smell of it had and then I questioned if I was just biased while tasting it. Then, a friend walked in and asked if I was cooking rice; tea true to its name. If you like nutty flavor and a tea that give a ‘filling’ sensation while you drink this is a tea to try.

I tried this Puerh out of curiosity. I have to admit is a NOT an every day tea for me, in fact I rarely drink it. But I love it, It has a pungent taste and very floral/perfume like smell. It has a smoky taste and the bamboo fragrance lingers in you mouth. I’m looking forward to try a ripe bamboo fragrance. (Multiple Steeps Gong Fu style… I could not handle a powerful 2 min steep).

I have been a good girl and done my house cleaning for the day so I deserve a lovely cup of pu erh tea. This was another one chosen at random from my pu erh flavoured samples from Yunnan.

The tea looks lovely with it’s dark coloured tea leaves and light shell looking olives mixed in. The contrast is just wonderful whilst cutting and preparing.

Firstly I can see that the tea is ripe as it leaves a wonderful red coloured tea and from the smell it smells like a strong pu erh. I cannot tell any difference between the smell alone yet but I did see the olive when I was brewing it so I know it’s there.

Again fresh but strong and slightly sweet, this is a nice pu erh. The olive is hard to taste but it is possible to notice the sweet sourness of them in the after taste. Again it’s very subtle and it takes a lot to truly identify it.

I wouldn’t say this was a ground breaking, must have pu erh but it’s a little different. The strength is what sells it for me, without that I don’t think it would really be any different from your standard ripe. The olive would be too strong for raw, yet very subtle for ripe (I hope you understand what I am saying).

A nice drink but I have had better pu erh.

I received a healthy chunk of this as a sample from Yunnan Sourcing. It is very drinkable but does not blow me away. There is a slightly metallic taste to the tea that I cannot quite place. It is not unpleasant, just different. It also does not seem to have much longevity at the moment. I am brewing it in a 170ml Yixing pot with 8g of tea but the real flavour seems to go quite quickly. I am very tempted to get some of this for storage and see how it ages.

I can find very little about this being a tea and only a little as being a rare plant.

‘Glutinous rice fragrance tea
Polished glutinous rice fragrance tea is made by mixing wild Semnostachya menglaensis H. P. Tsui into Yunnan large-leaf tea. Its tea water is red and transparent, and it tastes sweet and mellow. It also has the effects of clearing heat and removing toxicity, etc.’

This was an import I did from Yunnan as part of 50 samples of various flavoured pu erh. The first thing that hit me when I was brewing was the smell. I knew nothing about it when brewing but the smell made me search for it to see exactly what it contains. It’s true that this tea does smell like basmati rice, or some sort of unsweetened popcorn. It’s not unpleasant nor pleasant just very unusual.

It is also indeed a very dark red despite the 30second steeping time (after the initial pre rinse ritual). Also a note that this tea is ripe and also grade A. (I do have this same combination in raw but I have not yet tried it).

My love for pu erh has grown and grown so this tea has truly stimulated my senses and I am shivering with delight. It’s just so unusual…. will it stand up to my expectations?

So far yes it does. This tea is very strong tasting but still light and pleasant. It still tastes like pu erh but similar to the smell there is this ricey tone in the background. You can definitely tell that this is ripe, it smells earthy and thick but still stays mellow. A great example for those trying to tell the difference between ripe and raw. I still have no preference between ripe and raw.

I have roughly two or three cups worth of this left. My mind is blown… all I can think is WOW.

Mmm, tasty. I have been enjoying a pot of this all day. 8g of tea in my 170ml duan ni pot and short steeps. It is slightly smoky and smooth with just a touch of prickly astringency that stays on the tongue for ages afterwards. It has a lovely aftertaste and left me feeling all relaxed and mellow. I doubt I shall have the patience to age this one. Might be time to buy several more bricks of it, just in case! :)

I adore the little dark brown twisted loose tea look that this tea has. As I was brewing I imagined that each piece was a soldier who was giving the ultimate sacrifice to give my cup of tea full on flavour.

It has a beautiful dark golden hue and it smells very earthy but fresh. A dry and slightly bitter taste but very pleasing. It is smoky yet subtle and fresh, there is something magical about it’s flavour.

Simply wonderful.

(Note: I purchased the Spring 2012 varietal of this tea. The description was exactly the same, so I figured I’d post under this entry instead of making a new one.)

Whoa. This is FRESH. And these leaves just don’t stop delivering. I’m not sure I can offer anything constructive, except to say that as of steep 12, these leaves show no sign of slowing down.

Malty and sweet, absolutely beautiful. My only quibble is that they don’t seem to show much in terms of evolution, aside from the maltiness fading a bit as the steeps progress.

5g in a 5oz gaiwan, 5 sec steeps at max. I mishandled it quite a bit near the beginning, oversteeping for my taste. I’m not that good at gaiwaning, see, and the only reason I can manage it with greens and whites is the lower temperature. I burned my tiny little hands quite a bit while trying to get into the rhythm of the correct technique while making this. The result was that my first five or so steeps were overwhelmingly malty. I wonder if any of my yixings in my collection are good for black teas… Hmm.

Anyway. INTENSE tea. I drank until I was tea drunk and then I had some more. I am still vibrating with caffeine a few hours later. Not sure I should have had black tea so late in the evening. Glad I did nonetheless, this tea is gorgeous.

I’ve nearly finished this brick, because I have been drinking it grandpa style a lot while driving deliveries for my wife’s shop. So, to make sure I tasted it properly before I ran out, I bunged a load of leaf in the gaiwan and have been brewing away properly over the past few days.

The dry leaf carries the aroma of a warm barnyard full of horses. It’s pleasing, and the tea responded well to the gaiwan, delivering a light floral liquor that was a mid yellow colour. It gave about 12 or 15 steeps in total, perhaps a little more, before it gave out. I should have made notes on that but I did not, and likely I shall not learn from this either!

My original tasting note from 2 years ago still holds. There is smokiness there and a mild astringency that is pleasing to the tongue. The aftertaste is minimal and there is little subtlety to the flavour. What there is, though, is an unchallenging, workmanlike tea that delivers a pleasant drink at a good price. I could drink this regularly without complaining, were I in need of an everyday sheng. It certainly works for when I am too tired to appreciate something better.

Crikey, I got this tea over a year ago and have only sampled it a couple of times. Well, it is young, irresponsible and needs a firm hand. I like it. As I wrote before, it is smoky and slightly sweet, with a bit of astringency that gives it an enjoyable kick. The leaves are chopped and it is probably not the highest quality leaf you ever saw, but it does the job and is making my day go a lot better. For the price ($15/brick) I think it is a perfectly good tea and I am happy with my purchase still. I’ll give it another year and see how it is doing in 2014, although I suspect that teas age slowly in my house (unlike me!).

Just got this today and could not wait to try it. It was smokey and slightly sweet. I am looking forward to trying it properly and shall write a more detailed not later but it was certainly drinkable.

Recently got this from Yunnan Sourcing’s US site. This tea is basically a yunnan black (Dian Hong) rolled in to a pearl.

The pearls are huuge, I expected them to be around the size of jasmine pearls but they’re almost double in size. The pictures YS has are very pretty, pearls having lots of “gold” to them and a vibrant color, but in fact, their appearance is closer to that of Adagio’s Black Dragon Pearls. That doesn’t mean they’re not attractive at all, simply not as pretty as in the picture. Aroma-wise they are very spicy.

I brewed this tea following typical black tea brewing guidelines since YS does not provide one. Used freshly boiled water and 3 min steep time in a gaiwan.

So far this tea tastes like a regular Yunnan black, the spiciness, pepper notes, and cocoa hints are there but in less strength than a pure Yunnan gold. I also noted this tea has a slight astringent finish. Using two pearls I was able to get several infusions.

Once the pearls unfurl, they reveal to be long thin leaves with a brown clay like color with a strong aroma.

Overall this is your typical yunnan black tea, but what makes this tea special it’s the incredibly affordable price ($11 for about 3.5 oz), ease of brewing (drop 2-3 pearls in your gaiwan or mug depending on strength desired), and great taste. My current “lazy morning” choice whenever I don’t feel like correctly brewing a more “premium” black.

I think that it’s one of the best-valued YS offers.
Very potent and thick cake with hints of vegetables and mushrooms. Little bit of tobacco, strong qi, but no bitterness at all. Definetely great aging potencial! It’s a pity that so good cake is gone!

It is a beautiful piece. It smells good, looks good, tastes good. I did not have to think twice when choosing what to buy. I have already mentioned my new interest in 2011 sheng and I have ordered several samples lately to confirm that I really enjoy drinking them now. This has been one of the blind purchases when I simply trusted my instinct more than any review.

The smell of dry leaf is sweet, the smell which stays in the cup is sugary and thick. The tea broth is sparkling yellow and gives away its sweetness easily with a simple look. It is aromatic, sweet on the tongue with a trace of caramel and in further infusions it uncovers its rawer side at the back of the tongue.

Given the fact that the cake is very young, it can have a powerful impact on a sensitive drinker so for those who prefer softer flavour it is better to keep the steep time shorter. Nevertheless, its rawer, more “aggressive” side of fresh young cha qi is quite interesting too. The aftertaste takes its time before entering the scene but when it comes, it is refreshing returning sweet, bringing the strong aroma of the tea back to life.

If you had a chance to taste 2010 YS NanNuo YaKou, a sample I reviewed here last year, you would probably find her 2011 sister more complex, more aromatic, thicker and also sweeter. When I tasted NanNuo YaKou, I was not very impressed by the sample as its fresh characteristic was not what I was looking for in raw puerh at that time. However, my taste has developed or changed and now I am looking for the exact opposite.

And all this makes me think that the more I taste tea as a simple ordinary consumer, the more I realize how much I do not enjoy comparing anything. I do not like saying what is better and what is worse as I somehow do not believe in these categories, at least they do not work for me. I agree, of course, that the quality of leaf, environment as well as processing is definitely an enormous part of the final outcome and it is something to be taken into account, especially when one is a vendor or a producer.

As a consumer I believe that I can choose intuitively what I like, or what speaks to me. I can therefore say that for me this cake is great which is absolutely subjective statement and again, I am not sure how different it can be after a few years of aging. I really like its fresh flavour as this is something I value the most at the moment but again, all of this is changeable and impermanent.

2011 YS “Ban Po Lao Zhai”
Aroma: Strong, sweet, floral
Flavour: Sweet, thick
Bitterness / Smokiness: Some, very light / None
Aftertaste: Returning sweet, refreshing, long-lasting

Read the whole review and photo documentation here: http://teadropping.blogspot.com/2012/02/strange-encounters-2011-ys-ban-po-lao.html

I didn’t feel much compelled to revisit the Golden Monkey from earlier today and want something I’ll drink a full 200mL per serving of. That generally means puerh for me unless I’m testing something out for work. I’m glad to see someone happened to have this guy already in the system. Scott is still selling the 2006 bingcha that he listed alongside this little guy, but ran out of the mini-bings quite a while ago.

I bought this mini-bingcha right at the start of 2009 and have pretty much left it alone since that summer. I haven’t been moving it around like I should have – it’s been sitting in its wrapper, inside the box, inside an open nylon mesh bag, in the coolest corner of the coolest room in the house since mid-2009 when I should’ve introduced it to a bit more warmth at least once by now. Sitting raw puerh in cool, dry conditions really does nothing for it but allow the outside to stale a bit if it has any breathing room. The innards are still able to shift for the positive a tad in terms of mitigating bitterness, but that’s about it.

Three back-to-back infusions at 85C and 30sec each following a rinse. I used flakes pulled from the top portion of the cake, penetrating to the center depression on the other side, further separated (wriggled, not snapped) into portions .5-1.5cm in diameter and shaken free of any dust. 8g/200mL in my duan ni shi piao pot for young sheng puerh and mao cha.

This is a very green cake with a lot of silvery buds across the top. Underside has a bit more twigs, but the leaf composition is pretty young overall. Steeped leaves are slightly muddy yellow with a greenish tinge (in-between olive and a cooler ochre). Infusion color is gold and very clear.

Dry fragrance is very much like old Bai Mu Dan… Dry fallen leaves, a touch of hay, a hint of carnation and muscat grape. Wet leaf aroma is crazy-scary-smoky. Very potent right after a rinse and diminished to a more approachable mix of burned driftwood, gravelly sand, and juniper after three short infusions. Liquor aroma carries these notes in a milder aspect and accompanied by a distinct pollen characteristic. Combines wonderfully with the taste, which is lacking any smokiness.

First infusion is very crisp, high end of moderate body, and lightly mouthwatering. Mineral impression makes up bulk of flavor. Mixed with liquor aroma it is highly reminiscent of the taste and smell of the air on a cold foggy summer morning on a beach on Mendocino’s coast. I suppose Monterey is similar, but the beaches tend to be a tad coarser sand and the combined smell of cyprus and redwood is a bit more prevalent farther north.
Second Infusion brings pollen characteristics to the tongue in a big way. Pleasant, light bitterness and almost-yolk, slightly cottony flavor pops in a second or two after swallowing with a resurgence a few more seconds later. Leaves the mineral taste (gravelly) lingering afterwards… Comes off as a rocky crisp-sweetness. When cooled, the rocky and polleny flavors merge to form sort of a warm, dry hardwood flavor.
Third infusion has a much more evident crispness to it – I hesitate to say “snap”, as that has more of a vegetal connotation to me and “zing” a tannic connotation, but it is a very refreshing and lasting crispness. Walk up to a waterfall on a warm day ‘til the cold mist is soaking your clothes, open wide and breathe deep. Lotsa oaky leafy-acorny-woody-polleny goodness… Kinda tastes like Yosemite’s Mist Trail smells in late spring or early summer. As it cools, it takes on a sort of cattail characteristic in the nose – this is helped by a somewhat starchy aftertaste. More evidently woody as it cools, too. Body is a tad thicker now, but still just the low end of what I’d call full-bodied… about on par with 20% by volume sugar water. Speaking of sugar – about a minute after finishing my cup the back quarter of my tongue and throat are hit with the same encompassing sweetness I get when emptying a packet of Stevia or Splenda into a paper cup and forget to hold my breath. Certainly not the sweetest tea around, but with this late aftertaste I’ve gotta categorize it as a sweet tea for me.

Very tasty and easy drinking, whereas it was a tad more aggressive than I preferred right when I got it. There’s enough potency that I feel I can let it rest in its cool hiding spot another year without adverse effects, but I do think it’s time that this summer I’ll expose it to a bit more warmth and humidity. Kind of a joke to attempt any aging on a mini-bing, but if I can succeed in not finishing this off super fast I’ll be happy.

Very good tea. Balanced, light and cheap too. No more than three brews.