"Yu Luo" High Mountain Pure Bud Green Tea

Spring 2024: Dry leaves are beautiful white and lighter green fuzzy little twists, smelling grassy but also bread-like. After a lighter one-minute steep, I get flavors of sugar snap peas, celery, and nuts, with a good amount of sweetness. A little bit of salty butter, too. Some dandelion grassy florals in the aftertaste. The scent in the cup is of peas, and the scent of the wet leaves has a surprising spiciness to it. Brewing it up longer with a second steep of two minutes, you get more of the same.

With a longer first steep of 2 minutes, you can bring out more of the strong vegetal notes. I like it either way, depending on my mood.

Feels like being wrapped in a warm quilt, or gardening in the morning , a hint of dendelion, reminds me of a combination of Bi Luo Chun’s green snaily-ness and Mao Jian’s foresty dustyness. Flavor of grape stem lingers on the tongue after more rounded mouthfeel has gone.

This is a green tea that can take some heat. In my first session I used 75°C, which I then upped to 85°C in the second session today together with using high leaf/water ratio and short steeps. The latter session was more enjoyable if, like me, you prefer some bite to your green tea as well as thick texture. The former, on the other hand, was more mellow in taste with no astringency whatsoever and a smoother, silkier mouthfeel. It lacked a bit of staying power in the aftertaste, but the taste was definitely pronounced and complex enough even with lower temperatures. In the end, it’s up to one’s preference, and I feel like it is a sign of good quality tea when you can get a satisfying and distinct experience with varying parameters, rather than having to stick to a precise optimum in order to avoid the pitfalls of a flat profile of overpowering astringency.

Another aspect of the tea that is noticeable no matter how it is brewed is its pungent aroma. Dry leaves smell quite floral rather than vegetal with notes such as honey, popcorn and cinnamon. The wet leaf smell is complex and also very strong for a green tea. I found scents of meadow, mint, courgette, and white grapes, among others.

The taste profile is sweet and earthy with distinctive (root) vegetable flavours like celery root, kohlrabi, cassava, and pattypan squash. With the more aggressive brewing, there is also stronger mineral taste, a marine character, and a slightly more fruity flavour. I noticed carambola-like note in particular, but that’s quite a faint one. The aftertaste is then cooling with grassy and buttery notes.