Yuchi Wild Black Tea

The tea features a mouth-watering aroma of honey and fruit, the combination smells like some sort of candy.
It tastes of peaches, forest fruit, floral honey and gingerbread or biscuits. The body is light and the tea leaves a strong candy-like sweetness that seems almost artificial, as if from corn syrup or sweeteners.
An excellent and unique black tea.

3 years is no time at all to a tea well made and well stored. I had a modest-sized 2019 harvest from Leafhopper that I decided to split between 2 western brews instead of one gongfu session.

I don’t know anything about this leaf since the The Tea doesn’t have a description on their site for it right now. But I am convinced my sample of the 2019 harvest was of the TTES #8 cultivar and not a ‘wild’ tea because both western sessions I had of this tea screamed at me: https://steepster.com/derk/posts/398397 In my sense-memory, an undeniable deadringer. Same year and everything. Leafhopper, I see you’ve had What-Cha’s tea, too. How do the two compare for you?

Anyway, awesome tea! Not often I’m blown away by western preparations of tea, nonetheless those distractedly brewed at work and with water cooler hot water. I have mad respect for this leaf. It has everything I want from a high-powered black tea while managing to be wonderfully refined in taste and possessing great structure. Malty and savory in a way that doesn’t bog me down thanks to the bright citrus and fruity berry tones combined with the full, smooth body, cooling finish and both light astringency and sweetness (that was a mouthful) —

Hot damn! This tea sings.