Imperial Gold Needle Yunnan Black Tea

I got my first EVER Yunnan Sourcing order in the mail yesterday! Woo! I’m swimming in golden black teas! I didn’t have time to sit down and enjoy a cup, but I wanted one so bad, so I made some and threw it in my timolino for our drive to lunch. This tea was very yummy. It’s similar to the yunnan Dian hong golden tips from TeaVivre, (which I also restocked on Black Friday!), but seemed sweeter. I think there’s a sugar sweetness, and maybe some fruitiness, in this I don’t get in golden tips. It has that wonderful sweet potato malt flavor, but is light and airy. Yum! I definitely want to gong fu brew this one next time!

This tea is super delicious! Probably now one of my favorite black teas, though a little biased as I prefer gold tipped chinese blacks.

Imperial Gold Needle has a gorgeous dry leaf – long threads of gold with slivers of black. The steeped tea comes out bronze, then reddish amber, then gold. The flavor is great – no bitterness, hint of dry later steepings. There are flavor notes of malt, chocolate, stone fruit, honey, caramel, toasted nut with a thick creamy body.

Highly recommended!

Full review – and lots of pictures of this gorgeous black tea – on my blog The Oolong Owl http://oolongowl.com/imperial-gold-needle-yunnan-black-tea/

My first tea from Yunnan Sourcing! Thanks go to Nicole for sending me samples of several of their teas. I chose this one to try first because the leaves are so beautiful, like soft golden pine needles. They’re fuzzy and completely gold in color. The smell is all honey, with just a little malt and sweet fruit. I did a 3 minute steep.

The aroma is full of honey as well, with that same malt and a sweet fruitiness that I would describe as golden raisin. But interestingly, the first thing I taste when sipping this is fresh, bright cucumber. Cucumber? In a black tea? But there it is. Alongside malt and a light honeyed fruitiness. I just kept sipping to make sure I wasn’t crazy, and then I asked my boyfriend who agreed that he tasted cucumber. Success! As I let it cool further, the cucumber transformed slightly into honeydew melon, similar but sweeter. The aftertaste is surprisingly floral with a touch of stonefruit.

This is definitely a different flavor profile than any other Yunnan teas I’ve tried so far, and I enjoyed it. Honeydew is one of my favorite flavors and even though it’s odd for a black tea, I thought it worked really well to lighten this tea and add freshness. Definitely recommended!

This tea reminds me a little of pain au chocolate, or at least a pâte sucrée dusted with hot chocolate powder. It has really has good notes of chocolate and honeyed butter pastry for at least the first two steeps, which it manages to present despite being rather dry on the tongue.

The tea is comprised of flat, folded downy copper gold buds.

I got 4 good steeps out of this, but I think this may be a tea I might prefer western style brewing for as the last two steeps had increasing floral and artichoke notes instead of butter croissant.

The first 2 steeps, at 1 & 2 minutes, had fragrance notes of honey, cocoa, butter, cinnamon, ovaltine, and developing citrus notes, with faint malt.

The flavour contained these notes, as well as oatmeal, chocolate orchid, plum, and cream. As it cools the pastry and malt tones become more apparent.

The last two steeps (3 & 4 min) had increasing floral notes, as well as artichoke mixed with dark honey all mixed in with the fading previously discovered notes.

All together the pastry notes were really delicious in this tea and I would like to try it western style. Thanks boychik for this lovely sample!

Morning session . Trying to sip down my enormous amount of hongcha.
Love this tea.
7g in 150ml pot. I always rinse it.
It was delicious and lasted me all morning into afternoon

https://instagram.com/p/3WdHKUhwgH/

https://instagram.com/p/3We7zQBwkq/

So good. This tea. It’s just so good.

Thank you Sil!