Yunnan Bao Hong Spring Early Green Tea

This is what I said about the tea when doing a comparative tasting in March:

Used 1.8 grams of tea in small 40 mL gaiwan
Infusions 160°F/71°C-170°F/77°C
30”, 30” (probably too long, with all the bitterness coming out in the 2nd infusion), 30”
Dry Leaves: flat thin small leaves and fragments, some stems, scent of hay, grass
Liquor, 1st infusion: yellow liquor; thicker body; hay, warm, less camphor, but very similar to the Jade Pole (also a Yunnan green tea from Yunnan Sourcing)
Liquor, 2nd infusion: nutty, dark, vegetal, astringent
Liquor, 3rd infusion: sweet, vegetal, bit nutty, but much less astringent
Wet Leaves: more broken pieces, leaves are quite small, yellow-green,and also mostly buds and small leaves

Tonight used a lot of leaf, water about 170 degrees, filled the gaiwan with leaf and steeped enough infusions to fill the quart thermos with nutty warm lightly sweet tea. Mellow and tasty, but not as good a control of the sweet as I sometimes can get with my chinese green teas—under very difficult performance conditions, of course, with the ‘bulk’ brewing.

4:46 am Saturday Indianapolis, IN

I have been drinking this for about an hour and felt compelled to write a small review off the top of my head.

First thing I would like to note are the few simple flavors. Nutty smells and flavors, I tasted spice (cinnamon, peppercorn) a few times. Although simple, (and yes, obviously delicious) there were many variations to them, if you play with the steeping parameters: temp and water to leaf ratio. I wish I would’ve made notes during my session because the tea is now beginning to fade and I can’t remember what happened while I was drinking it.

I do remember that I used an easy gaiwan, didn’t measure the leaves, and used many different temps and amounts of water. Each steep was enjoyable. To me, that is a testament to the quality of the leaves. You can mess the entire brewing up and it will still come out fairly ok (or great).

I think this specific tea inspired this playful attitude of this session. So I feel that it deserves a fairly high rating. 85 may even be a low-ball rating.

I love the smell of this dry leaf––so intense and delicious, that toasty chestnut flavour you associate with Dragon Wells, along with some brown sugar. It has that heavenly 冲天 quality aroma that I think Chinese people associate with really primo tea.

After doing some research, this Bao Hong Tea（宝洪茶）is apparently also called Yi Liang Dragon Well（宜良龙井）.

1st infusion: (15s)
Pale yellow liquor, as expected of a Chinese green. The tea smells so similar to a good Dragon Well, but the taste is sadly more bland. But it is a good round thick mouthfeel, with juicy almost fruity aftertaste.

2nd infusion: (30s)
The wet leaf has some seriously complex aroma going on that I don’t even feel equipped to try to analyse right now. Maybe roasted plum and golden raisin? The tea smells and tastes like Dragon Well, except with a stronger fruit note and lacking that crisp edge that I recall 龙井 has.

Verdict: Overall a beautiful, interesting green for people who love Dragon Well but want to try a variant. I’m drinking the March 2016 harvest in the first week of April, pretty much as fresh and splendid as a green tea gets. Note: It’s possible I underleafed, will try this again with the ridiculous 5g they tell me to per 100ml.

Rating: 87

Oh well, forgot I even had this tea.Broke out the old “Large Teavana Perfectea Tea Maker II”, since I had forgotten that I had that in the closet as well. Used quite a bit of tea ~10g since there is a lot of empty space in that maker. Brewed each batch for about a minute and was not that impressed. This 2015 dry leaf is a mix of green, brown and white with a slight hay scent, brewed you get the aromas of butter and pine nuts with a hint of floral. The brewed leaf showing small buds with 1-2 leaves and muted flavors of the butter and pine nuts, no floral but a presence of white pepper and astringency. In no ways a bad tea but I’ve been spoiled by some really good Liu An Gua Pian which is my gold standard.