Bai Sha Xi "Imperial Grade Tian Jian" Hei Cha from Hunan

On my second box of this. Bought the first one a few years ago and drank straight through it. Really dug it. I remembered it solely as “that tea I dank through really really quickly”, but didn’t remember what about it was so appealing.

This second box I bought about two months ago. After sampling straight from the mail, it went into a mylar bag with 69% bovedas. I don’t know if this tea had sat in YS’s Kunming or Seattle storage, but it was bone dry.

1st impressions: Cherry wood, smoke, peat, vanilla, clove, some green/herbal notes. Really love the aroma of Tian Jians. If I had the money to make it a habit, I’d be buying these by the basket. The taste is pretty minerally to start with a sharp green herbal note in the background. The best thing to compare these to is a roasted oolong. It has that roasted taste with the sweet spice and green profile.

Finishing: The small tippy leaves brew out relatively quickly (relative to other hei cha, they last quite awhile compared to hong cha). The texture is a bit thicker than when I first got it in the mail, but still not remarkable. Being a tippy tea, this can get really astringent and bitter if you aren’t careful. When brewing carefully you get a little astringency and a nice solid cocoa bitterness in the background.

Overall a well balanced, comfortable tea. I’d recommend it of you wanted to explore the world of Tian Jian and can find this box for a decent price. The price on this has been shooting up lately and I’m seeing it less in listings.

This is worth experimenting with to see if it agrees with you, but I don’t think its for everyone. I did enjoy it. It was smoky, but not so much that I couldn’t enjoy it. A hint of molasses sweetness was sensed in the background.

This tea is interesting. I have come to the conclusion that Tian Jian is an acquired taste. And I have not completely acquired it yet. In any case this is much better than the last one I tried, also from Yunnan Sourcing. This one starts of with a taste that is described as peaty by Scott at Yunnan Sourcing. This peaty taste lasted about four steeps and the tea evolved into something nicer. It did not get sweet an the way a ripe puerh does but it did improve. Unfortunately, I just don’t have a word to describe the note I get from this tea once the peaty taste is basically history. Not that it completely disappears. even in later steeps there is a faint taste of the peaty taste. But it does evolve into something else. I don’t quite know if to say a sweet note is the right description. Better anyway.

I steeped this eight times in a 100ml teapot with 6.3g leaf and boiling water. I gave it two rinses, one for 10 seconds and another for 5 seconds. I gave it a 10 minute rest. I steeped it for 5 sec, 5 sec, 7 sec, 10 sec, 15 sec, 20 sec, 25 sec, and 30 sec. The leaves were not really done at eight steeps but I was.