Ya Bao - 2012 Early Spring Yunnan Wild White Tea

Yay! Our last reservist came back today and I made a large batch of Norbu’s Ya Bao to celebrate (he loves white tea). He was 36 days on reserve duty, which is a long long time, and we are glad to have him back.
Now if only there was a permanent ceasefire…

P.S. This tea is awesome. My favourite white tea and one of me favourite teas. Recommend.

sipdown. um so yabao is REALLY not my thing. I’ve tried verdant’s and now this version and i can’t get around the taste. I’m sending the last of this off to a friend in the hopes that maybe it will be a tea for her.

My Norbu Ya Bao is from spring 2013, but I’m posting my tasting note here because I don’t have time to erect a new tea profile. Does Ya Bao vary enough from year to year to warrant separate entries? Perhaps for connoisseurs. I’m a serious gringo, however, and this is the very first time I’ve even HEARD of this wild tea.

To prepare these unique buds—which bear zero resemblance to tea, I might add!—I rinsed them first with hot water then steeped them at about 180C for three minutes. The liquour is extremely pale—only barely tinged green. The color is more green than yellow, as can be seen if the glass is held up against a sheet of white paper. (I’m using a Bodum double-walled clear glass, as I usually do for green and white teas.)

The scent is ever-so-slightly vegetal and astringent. The taste is perhaps mid-way between a very light green and a white tea, but it doesn’t really taste like any particular green tea or any particular white tea to me. The texture of the liquid on the tongue is silken, just like the dried buds feel to the fingertips.

I bought a package of this hoping that it might be caffeine free, since it looks nothing like tea. However, it appears to derive from a tea-esque plant, so now I’m not sure… I’ll find out later tonight, when it’s time to go to sleep.

second infusion: tasted, smelled, looked, and felt just like the first!

Another Sipdown from NofarS!
Every time I drink Yabao, it makes me think of a creamy bowl of steel cut oats with soymilk drizzled over the top. In the background is the taste of cedar or maybe pine, but only mildly.
Yabao is a tea that I don’t really get excited about, or have cravings for, but then I make a cup once in awhile, & even though part of me is saying, “this is really boring”, it’s also really nice. Kind of like white tea, in a way. It’s got a creamy texture to it, a bland milk-toast kind of character, but there is something homey & relaxing about it. I probably should have a cup more often.

I love to play with the seeping time of Ya Bao. I thought that Verdant was the only one to sell this tea, so I was pleased to see that Norbu did At $4.75 for 50g it was hard to pass up. Since this was just picked I can notice differences between this and a more aged Yao Bao like Verdant’s. This has a sweet cedar taste to it. It seems like the aging of this tea brings out more fruit notes.

Sipdown.

I decided to try this one tonight since it’s been staring at me whenever I rummage through my sample bin.

After reading the few notes, I decided to do a super short rinse (maybe 5 seconds?) then a shorter steep. I’ll resteep this later.

After wetting them, I definitely get a cedar smell out of the buds. Not cedar chips, but crushed cedar green “leaf” part. It’s quite gentle. The steeped tea is barely greenish. But it tastes so nice.

It’s a little sweet, thick, a tiny bit green, with a hint of cedar. I like this one. Verdant’s is really piney, which is interesting, but I think I like this one better.

Thanks, Sil!

(1.5 tsp 12 oz)