2005 Ye Sheng Wild Tea Log

I got a sample of this tea from Norbu a while back, and decided to try it today after I was looking in the cardboard box that now holds my sheng collection. I read you shouldn’t keep these in the kitchen, but since I have a studio apartment there isn’t a ton of storage anywhere!

1st steep: in the Xiying teapot, and after a quick rinse I decided to steep it for 30 seconds or so. This is a very gentle sheng as it is evidently made from compressed ya bao tea. The tea color is very light and the aroma is that of clover with some very soft vanilla and lemony notes. The tea aftertaste is sweet and almost custard like.

2nd steep: similar to steep #1 but some thicker honey notes are becoming more prominent, this is very enjoyable!

3rd and 4th steep: I decided to combine them together into one nice cuppa. I’m still getting the lemony and custard notes as well as some banana. I don’t seem to be getting a huge energy boost from this stuff, but it is tasty! Overall, very enjoyable.

If you don’t like the standard shu type of pu-erh you might want to give this one a whirl, it’s very gentle…

sipdown! I have a lofty goal today of trying to get down to 160 so that by next weekend i might possibly have reached my black friday goal, two weeks ahead of schedule. It’s lofty because i have a large number of puerhs to drink and those take time..however i’ve been up since 5am because of work so i think i’ll manage a few more than usual haha

this is a light, sweet, floral puerh. It’s pretty meh for me but i think that’s because it’s closer to a white tea than anything.

This has been an awesome afternoon! My son Drew & I went out to lunch, & then I came home & spent the entire afternoon sipping teas like a crazy woman, packing up teas that I promised to send out (almost a month ago), slow roasting tomatoes from my garden, straining both milk & coconut milk Keifers & starting new batches for tomorrow, & drinking more tea! The tea I want to share with my Bodacious Babes arrived, & that’s ready to go! I still haven’t drank much from the HHTTB yet, so I may hang onto that box until next week. Maybe. I’d really like to mail it tomorrow. By the way, it is Huge! Tea Sipper, you’ll never have to buy tea for a year, LOL, maybe longer, as long as you are willing to just drink the stuff that’s in there.

So in the middle of roasting tomatoes, picking & slicing peppers for the pepper steak that’s in the crock pot, measuring out teas, etc, I’ve been sipping. This is a really interesting looking Sheng from NofarS.
It’s not really all that Sheng-like in my opinion, very mild, reminding me of the oaty taste of Ya Bao, but with a tangy twist of lemon! I’ve been sipping cups of this, along side cups of a shu from NofarS as well. I often enjoy the contrast of a Sheng & a Shu, sipped side by side. Other times I’ll sip a sheng for an hour or so, & then break out a Shu. I love them both, & the contrast between the bright ‘raw’ flavors to the super mellow smooth earthy taste is awesome!

An interesting take on Ya Bao, in Sheng format – a kind of combination between toasty white tea and the depth of flavor of Sheng, with a little lemony twist. A very comforting, sweet, mellow drink, that needs several washes and time to unfold its flavors (obviously in a Gaiwan or a Yixing teapot). No camphor taste, for those who avoid Sheng Pu’er for that reason. A nice evening treat to have curled with a book.

Apparently made from the same wild varietal as the Ya Bao tea buds that I’ve enjoyed so much, but compressed and aged. Greg describes a ‘lemony’ flavor and there certainly is a lemony aroma to the dried compressed leaf material, which looks rather coarse and quite clearly includes the fuzzy pale buds along with darker leaves.

Used 3.6 grams of tea in a 2.5 oz/75mL gaiwan (the proportions Greg recommends on the Norbu site) with water just off the boil. Flash rinsed, waited 2 minutes, another flash rinse (wanted to see the leaves open up for the rinsing, but it is still quite compressed, so I’m giving up), and then short steeps—first 15 seconds, up to a minute by the 4th or 5th.

It’s mellow, sweet, floral, and yes, lemony. Quite interesting. It reminds me a lot of the silver needle tea I was drinking earlier today, and like the silver needle, it is delicious with chocolate. It really does not in any way resemble puerh, despite being aged and compressed, except that it does shine here in these short steeps.

The liquor is a rich amber, and the leaves at the end vary from green to tan.

All in all quite interesting and tasty.

Photos here:
http://www.well.com/user/debunix/recipes/2005YeShengWildTeaLog.html

Norbu gives this tea the nickname of “lemony pu-erh”, and for good reason. Of the four infusions I did with this, flavors ranged from lemongrass, to lemon verbena, to wild white tea. Citrusy, nutty, rice-like, and with a floral finish. It doesn’t quite surpass the majesty of Nan Nuo Shan shengs, but it’s just about become my second favorite. And for an ’05, the price was rather reasonable.

Full Review: http://www.teaviews.com/2011/04/18/review-norbu-tea-2005-ye-sheng-wild-tea-log/

Big thanks to TeaBrat for this sample.

This stuff smells like heaven. There’s this wonderful sweet citrus scent to the brewed leaves, or maybe it’s the smell of spiced apples. It’s accompanied by notes of cinnamon stick and pine. This stuff smells like the potpourri smell you catch walking into some quaint little craft shop. It’s nostalgic.

Being made from Ya Bao, the infusion is rather pale, just a hint of yellow. It’s also slightly cloudy, which isn’t uncommon for fermented teas. The flavor is really unique. It has a bit of a smokey and peppery finish, but the main presence in the sip is like a cinnamon-apple peel kind of taste. It’s got a creamy body to it.

The second infusion of this got a little more strong in flavor. It’s got the tangy Sheng Puer vibe now, reminding me less of loose un-aged Ya Bao and more of Sheng. There’s a fizzy quality to this tea. It’s really nifty. In later infusions the smokier qualities emerge more. There’s a lemony tartness to it that I didn’t really think about at first, but after reading other reviews and tasting some more, it’s undeniable.

I’m drinking the 2004. It is very good, it’s like cognac and honey. Very naturally sweet and rich.
The tea is very tightly compressed and you don’t need too much tea because it really puffs and opens up to be tons of tea leaves. There are ya bao pieces in the mix along with all sorts of colors and types of wild leaves.
The liquor is cloudy pretty much throughout the whole session in my gaiwan. I rinsed the tea a couple of times but it remained cloudy even after many steepings. You definitely need to use your strainer with this tea.
After many steepings, the leaves could have kept going and going but the tea started to taste twiggy to me so I ended the session.

I just got this tea today. It is very lemony which is a very nice complement to the sheng puerh flavor. If you are a fan of Ya bao then you will most likely love this tea.