Hong Yu Red Jade

Well, I bought a big bag of this some 8 yr ago, in early 2017, and didn’t care for it as much as I liked other TTES #18 teas, so it has been sitting in my tea cupboard ever since. Now that I am re-exploring this variety from Taiwan (also known as Hong Yu, Red Jade, and Ruby 18), I’m giving it another shot. There is still experimentation going on in Taiwan as far as what to do with this variety of tea, which (according to Teapedia) is a large-leaf “cross between Taiwanese wild tea tree (B-607) and a Burmese assamica (B-729)”. Some will make a delicious dark black tea, others a heavily oxidized oolong (“Brandy 18”), and still others will process it as an awful white tea in cake form, hinting that it could be aged like a pu-erh. Some will encourage leafhoppers to feed on the plants as hey do for certain Oriental Beauty oolongs higher in the mountains, and call it “Honey Black”, whilst others will do the same in the Sun Moon Lake vicinity, all with varying success from year to year.

What I’m reviewing now are large, spindly black dry leaves that unfurl to milk-chocolate brown colored leaves after the second steeping, labeled as “organic” but with nothing about leafhoppers. Tealyra doesn’t list it anymore on their site but, thankfully, user eastkyteaguy captured their description when making the entry for it here on Steepster. The same product was also listed here under the company’s former name of Tealuxe, with a somewhat more detailed description captured by user Jason, along with additional reviews. There is concurrence that it is a Sun Moon Lake area product.

I used about 3g in a stainless infusion basket with 8 oz boiling spring water for 2-3 min in both steepings. I got a strong flavor of honey, with notes of apricot, malt, dates and floral fragrances. The dry leaf had little fragrance. I find it good, but not as satisfying as Brandy Oolong 18 by the same company. I’ll give it a rating of 78.

Here’s another sipdown. To this point, this has probably been the most interesting black tea I’ve tried this month. It has taken me nearly a full week to reach a consensus on this one, but I ultimately found it to be a worthy tea.

I prepared this one Western style. For this session, I steeped approximately 1 teaspoon of loose tea leaves in 8 ounces of 205 F water for 5 minutes. I did not conduct any additional infusions this time, though I have tried it in the past. I avoided it here because I found that a single five minute infusion worked best for me. It seemed to bring out some of the tea’s more unique characteristics. I must say, however, that I never got around to gongfuing this one and I regret that. It would be interesting to see how this tea would react to such a treatment.

Prior to infusion, the dry tea leaves produced an interesting malty, woodsy bouquet. After infusion, the dark copper tea liquor produced intense aromas of wood, cream, malt, molasses, cocoa, and menthol. In the mouth, I clearly detected notes of cocoa, cream, malt, molasses, toast, wood, honey, dates, peppermint, and wintergreen backed by notes of chestnut and walnut which became noticeable on the finish.

Prior to trying this tea, I knew absolutely nothing about this cultivar and had no clue what to expect. After trying it for the first time, I determined that it had to be some sort of Taiwanese Assam because it was so reminiscent of some of the wild Assamicas that come out of southern China and Vietnam. Lo and behold, I was kind of right. This cultivar was at least partially developed from the wild-growing Taiwanese Assamica plants that have produced some of the most acclaimed black teas in recent years. That being said, this tea was not your typical Assam-type black tea. If you approach this tea expecting it to be similar to a typical Assam, you may end up disappointed. Compared to a typical Assam tea, this was much more herbal and much more intense all around. It was a very enjoyable, if rather quirky tea, but it was also not the sort of black tea I would see myself reaching for on a regular basis.