Yu Lu Yan Cha Black

Sipdown #28!!
I had my tea count figured out, but more tea arrived in the form of an awesome trade, & I have to factor it in, so I’ll get back to you on that.

I shared this tea with a 30 something friend of my daughter. He’s having some rough times, so we’re keeping his dog for awhile, & trying to help him get back on track. Ari had to go to work, so he spent the earlier part of the evening hanging out & drinking tea with me. He had only ever had Lipton tea, which he didn’t care much for. Needless to say, he enjoyed this one, & we went through several steepings of it. We also drank a few others.

This is my least favorite of Verdant’s Black tea offerings. In fact, the only reason I had some on hand was because they included a sample in one of my orders. Sure, there’s some chocolate in there, it’s roasty & sweet, but there’s an undertaste that just doesn’t appeal to me. Nothing wrong with the tea, & I don’t mind drinking a cup or 2 once in awhile, but it’s not a tea that I will ever crave.

I didn’t detect any smoke, Sil, but I wish I did, LOL. My sample has been around awhile, so it may be from a previous batch.

i’m back. I was really excited to be able to come home after work and sit, drink tea, organise my cupboard and catch up… however after 3 hours of sleep, followed by an 11 hour work day to come home and fine no food in the house, laundry all over the house to be put away and my other half having apparently done nothing today except washing the laundry…let’s just say i get no time to myself tonight…and i’m a grumpy bear. Oh and my other half? gone for the evening to dodgeball…won’t be back for another hour.

this was my morning tea…and apart from this and my other tea, i haven’t had a chance to eat all day. On the upside, at least i had this tea and my other morning tea…which was a welcome cup of warmth and comfort now that we’re back in the cold.

December 1, 2012 Yu Lu Yan Cha Tea arrived as a present to me.
I should be considering others, but couldn’t resist the temptation!

My main concentration was on taste and scent (which is what I will discuss). All measurements were as suggested by Verdant.

Method: Gaiwan: http://youtu.be/bp31QnuVPd4 (Wang Yanxin Brewing Yu Lu Yan Cha Black Tea)
There was 1 quick wash, followed by multiple steepings of 5-10 seconds (longer steeps with each pour). The liquor was medium gold then deeper gold, clear and vibrant.

Taste and Scent:
There was nothing predictable about this tea.
No taste or scent that I could compare it to. This isn’t Laoshan Black or Zhu Rong. Not a cleaver morphing of Golden Fleece either.
To compare one to another would be a type of Tea Blasphemy.

I took one small sip of the golden liquor and thought ‘butter’….
Off in a trailing thought…‘butter’…‘butter’….smooth and sweet and then… ‘potato’…and nothing after that.

I sat.

“What is this tea?” I wondered. There’s no chocolate flavor like the others (comparing the incomparable Verdant Black Tea’s), it’s malty, but not with a maltiness that I’ve ever tasted before.

Again I calmed myself, remembering not to rush even though I was excited. This was like opening a gift I’d been waiting for!

I poured the second steep and drank again, noticing the fragrance.

Sweet Vietnamese Cinnamon with a hint of honeysuckle floral that began to wrap around my head like the ‘Dance of the Sugerplum Fairies’. Oh yes…sweet…pastry and candies like a plate of Snickerdoodles in the Copoco Honey Shop.

There I was, sitting on my sofa but not there at all.
All I was thinking about was the Sweet Shop in Old Town.
The zillions of white twinkley lights in the trees up and down College Avenue that turn on magically at dusk every evening from October to March. Kilwins Candy Shop with handmade candies begging me to enter with the scent of fresh caramel popcorn and chocolates.
It was the buttery caramel, the spun sugar so light that a breath could crack it that drew me in past the doorway.

The tea tasted and smelled like that thinnest sweet, buttery spun sugar with a hint of honey. Somehow, the feeling is like the candy commercial on TV where the lady is looking in the window of the store and what you see is the reflection of her as a young girl.

I don’t understand how the sweetness, potato, butter, malty, honey, caramel and cinnamon flavors all dance together with such abandon on the lightest of tea toes without a mishap. What a show!

This is another exquisite tea!

Happy Tea To You! Happy Tea To Me! My Holiday’s Are in Full Swing!

http://youtu.be/eQemvyyJ—g Dance of the Sugarplum Fairy on the Glass Armonica

http://flic.kr/p/dtcfQA The Lights.

So I wanted to do more sipdowns today but after looking through the choices I had only one cup left of, none caught my fancy. This, however, has been on my mind for the past few days, especially after Indigobloom`s note on it. I wanted to do this gongfu at first, but I am feeling exceptionally lazy today, maybe because I did a lot of gongfu brewing with my pu’erh yesterday, so I decided to do western. Also, I want to save my leaves, only have 7 g of this :(

The dry smell was quite chocolate and yum, reminded me of Laoshan Black. I steeped for 1 minute in boiling water. The wet leaves were BAM, pure honey, I was very pleased. I love honey, had a lovely honey toast for breakfast, so this was very promising.

Now for taste..this is pretty delicious. I do get the sweet potato that others have mentioned, and although I am not a huge fan of them (aka NEVER eat them haha) this tea tastes quite delicious. There is a strong honey taste and lots and lots of chocolate, but it’s a different type of chocolate than the Laoshan Black. That one was more rich and decadent, this one is more of a honey sweet chocolate with some grain. Not as much malt, but in the last bit of the sip it definitely is present. This isn’t as thick as other black teas either, more along the lines of the Mi Lan Dancong for mouthfeel. Regardless, this is a darn tasty cup, and now I want to try it gongfu at some point to see what happens to the flavors.

I will have a few more cups of this today, going out for bday sushi with friends tonight so don’t want to be too waterlogged, might have to save some steepings for tomorrow.

Overall, this is a nice, sweet black tea. Lots of honey and chocolate, yet lighter and a bit different from the other Verdant Black teas. Oh, and I feel the caffeine in this one hehe :) thank you for yet another excellent tea, Verdant!!

ETA: I actually enjoyed the latter half of the cup a bit more than the first half, it just zipped down and now I will have to make more. It is even more honey, if that is possible, and smoother too? Mmmm ok this is a darn good tea.

Finishing a not-too-shabby amount of work today, I decided to stop, probably for the day, put on some Opeth, think about what to make for supper, and try something new tea-wise.

Promises of sweet potato, malt, chocolate, and honey notes initially drew me in when I ordered this back in the fall. As soon as I ripped open the packet and took a whiff, the expression on my face must have changed when I smelled sweet smoke. Smoke. Not a favourite note. But it’s not overwhelming. But still, where are the aforementioned notes?

This tastes very similar to the smell. Actually, the sweetness is coming out as it cools. There’s the syrupy honey in the background. I appreciate how this lacks astringency. Hmm ok, well out comes the chocolate, but it’s quite dull. Smoky chocolate with an emphasis on smoke.

Glad I opted for no more than a sample.

After working seven days in a row, I have a day off today, and I couldn’t be happier. I’m spending the morning researching Antonio Vivaldi and listening to some more of the Four Seasons… I feel like a bad musician for not being more familiar with Vivaldi or his most famous work. Baroque-era music is rarely my choice to listen to (I’m a stormy minor-key Romantic by heart), but now that I’m giving it an educated listen, it’s quite lovely.

I still really enjoy this tea. It came out very wheat-y today, and that’s growing on me. I’m on infusion 2, and I hope I can get at least another cup out of this (I’m doing it Western style). I’m glad I’ve found some Verdant teas I really like. I feel like I’ll be restocking this.

Wow. Wow. WOW. I am floored.
There is sweet potato, chocolate and absolutely no astringency. Like drinking a cloud. A silk one. Dipped in gold?
Don’t wanna spend too much time online since I’m at my friends place… but I could not resist logging this asap.

Edit: So the second infusion was pretty bland. I almost didn’t drink it but then decided to add a dash of milk and that spruced things up quite a bit.
The third steep however, was great! It had a distinct mineral quality to it, with a warm cinnamon/potato background to it. Very nice.

So, I was pretty apprehensive about brewing this tea up as I’d seen (I thought) a few notes about people not being big fans, or about it being quite strong/bitter, etc., but this doesn’t seem to be a problem for me! I was cautious and used about 1.5 tsp in boiling water for 1 minute (the low end of the given parameters, which were 1-2 tsp for 1-2 minutes… I think…) The aroma was reminiscent of Laoshan Black with chocolatey notes, but it’s definitely not quite as intense, and the flavour fits perfectly with this, being chocolatey and malty but less so than Laoshan Black, but also with a bit of… hay-y flavour, aka that flavour that I attribute to bagged blacks. I’d be tempted to call it “Laoshan Black Light” or something to that effect, as that’s how it’s coming off to me.

I’m happy to have an ounce of this added to my collection – it will help tide me over until the 2 oz. of Laoshan Black that I ordered last night arrives! (Also, it’s neat to have tried another tea with a cool story behind it!)

ETA: Second infusion (2 min) still has chocolatey notes, and more of that “classic black” flavour. Still pretty decent. I’m wavering on going for a third infusion though… getting awfully sick of reinfusing things, haha (I’m sure it would hold up for one more though).

I bought this because Sil was so excited about it that I was curious to try it as well. Also, I needed to spend $40 for the free shipping to Canada! (I love this policy by the way.)

So this tea seems to be the lovechild of Verdant’s Laoshan Black and DAVIDsTEA’s Ceylon Spring. It has honey and chocolate and oats like the LB, yet there’s also CS’s grassy notes present too. It’s almost like a burnt grass, but without being unpleasantly so.

Hmm. I love that we can describe things as burnt grass, or earthy, or fishy and in this sense it’s a good thing, but if it were something else I consumed a lot of like steak or cake or carrots, it would be very disappointing.

This is good. I’ll keep resteeping is at I’d like to get a better idea of which one I like better – this, or either of its “parents.”

Orange is the new black everyone!

I am on an orange slice kick again. I added a slice of orange to a cup of this tea. It is a delicious balance of sweet orange, and dark, malty, black tea. It is quite a bit sweeter than usual with the orange mixed in with the natural sweetness of the tea. Just enjoying the day today!