Qing Pin Black Tea

A delicious tea and everything you would want in a China black. Chocolatey and fruity with an interesting hint of licorice—smooth, refined with a lingering honey sweetness. It also provided great sustained energy. I’m loving this trend towards farm-sourced teas!

I absolutely love this tea. I haven’t tried brewing it gong fu style yet, I used an infuser mug. It has very strong chocolate notes, even more than laoshan black from Verdant in my opinion.

I brought this with me on a trip to the Georgia mountains to visit a friend expecting her first. I knew her as a big tea drinker and thought she would have teaware for gongfu brewing. No luck there so I made due by converting a small sugar bowl into a gaiwan, worked perfectly.

Great bouquet of chocolate malt and dates. Tastes of malt, plum, fig and a decided oomph of my god this tea is fabulous. All subsequent steeps were equally as brilliant. I had this every morning for 4 days and it made my trip extra special being around a person I adore and a tea s well.

Took a short break from the oolongs and thought I might as well try out the last Yezi Tea sample I have.

First off, I want to say that the dry leaf aroma is just enchanting. Like toasted chocolate. Kind of reminds me of Laoshan Black, the last time I had it (which was a while ago).

While the description says smoky, I don’t detect any of that in here. Just sweet, chocolatey, toasted goodness. The sweetness is sort of fruity, but I can’t quite place what fruit it is. It leaves a ‘clean’, yet ‘empty’ feeling in my mouth, if that makes any sense. No particularly strong aftertaste or complex finish, no dryness or bitterness, either. It just feels… blank. Like a sentence missing the period at the end. Hm. I’ll keep steeping this (gongfu style) for a little while and see what comes of it.

I’m sipping down the last of my samples from Yezi Tea

First steep(3 minutes): Rich aroma of damp forest. The flavor is more like old leather with undertones of chocolate and cedar. Very powerful, yet balanced and well integrated. Good finish.

The second steep was significantly less powerful, yet held all the same flavor components. It seemed more refined; almost like tasting a Bordeaux wine after a California Cabernet. I preferred the first steep, but only slightly.

This isn’t my favorite style of tea, but it was of such high quality that I enjoyed it a lot, so gave it a good score.

This sample is another from KiwiDelight. Thank you!

This is putting me in tea heaven tonight! This is taste slightly sweet, with a honey-sh flavor. This has the wonderful breadish taste and is just pure delicious. As before, I think I like this a bit more than Jin Jun Mei. I think Jin Jun Mei has a much stronger cocoa flavor and this is a bit more bready flavored. They are both wonderful though!

This tea has a nice malty aroma. Very enjoyable malty flavor with cocoa and a little hay with a nice sweetness to it. The aftertaste is light and pleasant. This is a delightful tea that is light and tasty.

Truly savoring the richness in this tea. Fragrant comfort-food drink with just the slightest tannin. Mmm if anyone has some they’d like to trade, just used mine up … :)

My tea with Harvest Moon today. This smells nicely like baked bread, and a little malt. The flavour is sweet, and makes me think of a light cocoa. There is a hint of fruit as well. Good to have will virtual farming.

I don’t have a lot to say about this tea except that it’s nicely balanced and extracts a lot of flavor in short steeps (15/25/35). The flavor was peachy sweet, but not too, balanced with just a bit of smoke. It was entertaining to watch the liquor go from reddish gold to dark, then darker orange.