WymmTea

After a 15 second rinse, the tea leaves smell sweet and floral, a bit like chamomile, and with a bit of a fruit note. I’m already sensing some similarities in aroma with WYMM Tea’s Mangnuo Cane Tea, which is truly a prized tea to me.

I am drinking the initial rinse infusion of this tea, because after testing it, it tastes great. It is light and honey-like with a floral nectar kind of character to it. The liquor is a beautiful golden yellow and smells like honey too. There’s no bitterness present and the flavor is light and refreshing, leaving a slight cooling sensation on the tongue.

The second infusion has a bit stronger floral taste and isn’t quite as sweet. Again, I’m reminded of chamomile somewhat, though of course it’s also got the complexity and variety of “green” flavors that is unique to sheng Puer. Still, it tastes quite like I’m drinking a flower tisane.

By the third infusion I realized how clean this tea tastes and how clean it feels in the mouth. It isn’t really strong in flavor. It has just a bit of lingering bitterness at this point, but it’s a clean and enjoyable bitterness. The flavor overall is mild and sweet at first, then gives way to the bitter finish, which is to be expected from a young Puer. The next infusion is a bit sweeter, and despite the accompanying bitterness, there’s a lingering sweetness. Further infusions maintain a balance between a subtle floral honey-like sweetness and a lingering clean bitterness. A lingering sweetness follows much longer after the bitterness subsides. This Puer seems like one that would be really sweet and light after aging. I like how smooth it is, especially in the first few infusions. This one definitely has my attention. I think it has great aging potential!

I’m always happy when I get samples from WYMM Tea. Their teas have a really unique and pure quality to them. I feel an impression of closeness to the source.

The leaves in a warm gaiwan smell like dried fruit with a little hint of fennel. After a 20 second rinse infusion, they smell much more like dark dried fruits, fig or plum, and a hint of perfume. I’m reminded of high quality artisan incense from Japan crafted with rare resins (like those you might find from the 300 year old Shoyeido company).

With raw Puer, I often taste the rinse infusion to see how it is and if it’s good, I’ll drink it. With higher quality ones, I find that the rinse tastes just great. This one is no exception. The rinse infusion tastes like dried fruit, similar to golden raisins. It has a really juicy, wet mouthfeel, no drying astringency or bitterness at all.

By the second infusion, the flavor is more robust and the texture more juicy and mouth-filling. The taste is still of dried fruit. This is a really gentle and easy tea to drink, despite its depth of flavor.

The third infusion seems to exhibit a hint of bitterness, though it’s subtle. The flavor is less intense overall, so I will let it infuse a bit longer on the next.

On the fourth infusion I’ve let it steep a bit longer, and while the flavor is more full, overall it is less sweet and fruity than the first two infusions. It has a hint of bitterness that lingers, but it’s still really subtle.

The fifth infusion is a bit more fruity sweet but still with some lingering bitterness, a bit stronger now. I could see these flavors registering as “apricot” and “smoky” to many Puer drinkers. I see these descriptors used a lot for raw Puer. Sixth infusion is similar. The seventh is even a little more bitter and the taste has a bit of a tropical fruit note to it. From here forward the flavor tends to wane and if you try to push more out of it, it gets somewhat bitter.

Overall, this tea tasted best early on. I enjoyed the first few steepings so much. After that its flavors diminished a bit, but it was still enjoyable.

Thank you so much for the samples Wymmtea

This is a particularly awesome sheng! SO creamy and sweet and floral but still complex and interesting. Definitely just my style and up my alley. This is one I would drink again and definitely purchase if I could afford a cake :)

Happy Mother’s Day to all the Moms out there and thanks to Wymm for this sample. Nice to have a shu puerh on this day we are having, which is mostly cold and overcast.

I steeped this tea about 4 times this afternoon and have been really enjoying it. Has a rich, earth taste with a little bit of sweetness. With my first steep, I was reminded of mushrooms and cherries. I had about 4 steeps only because I was worried about the caffeine. Definitely a decent shu and one worth checking out.

Bouncing back and forth between painting, researching tea, redoing my tea area, and general reorganizing the bedroom. I have that restless feeling of wanting to do a lot, but my typical butterfly like habit of fluttering from thing to thing keeps me from staying focused. Sadly this bouncing around means I have not actually accomplished anything, well except stew, but it is still cooking so it does not count! At least the storms that have been promised have arrived, if I am lucky they will not fall apart and we will get a nice show this evening. Hooray for storms!

Wymm Tea recently stocked their shop with some new teas, and they were awesome and sent me samples of said new teas, yes, yours truly has four new Sheng Puerhs to spend time with, I seem to be developing an addiction to the stuff! After much debate I decided to dig into the Bingdao Laozhai Huangpian Sheng Ancient Tea Tree Pu-erh 2014 first, because I find myself enamored by the story of Huangpian Shengs, see, this tea is made from the not quite so pretty large, yellow (Huangpian means Yellow Leaf), scraggly leaves left over once the super fancy Puerhs are made. These are the leaves that the creators of the Puerh usually keep for themselves, because the tea that is exported needs to be pretty to fetch the best price, as a chef friend once told me, ‘we eat with our eyes’ the same is true with tea, but sometimes overlooking the standards of beauty will give us some treasures. The particular Huangpian comes from the same trees that the very sought after Bingdao Laozhai Puerh cakes that you sometimes see going for quite a bit of money. Way out of this blogger’s financial means! The aroma of the rather rough and green leaves is very sharp, like wet hay and, well, fermented tea leaves, it has that distinct fermentation smell that you get off of things that have started to become great friends with the microbes that are now hanging out with them. Mix in faint notes of honey, green beans, spinach, and a soft note of wet barn. Like the wood in a barn after a rain, you can smell the hay and the barn at the same time, luckily this is only the barn that stores hay and not animals or that would be a whole different smell.

Unlike the last Huangpian I had from Wymm Tea, this tea is fluffy instead of super compressed, so I did not need to poke at it in a vain attempt at breaking it up. The aroma is more potent this time, though less sharp, sweet notes of wet and freshly broken hay and honey along side lima beans and spinach. The liquid is fairly mild, mixing honey and hay with a hint of lima beans.

The first steep is pleasantly sweet and mild, blending notes of wet hay and honey at the first with sour cherries and a gentle note of smoke, spinach, and the distinct mustiness of old leaves at the finish. Not like falling in leaf loam, more the smell of it than taste. The aftertaste is lima beans, which is fun, because those things are delicious. The mouthfeel is smooth, not very thick, just smooth and a bit silky.

The aroma of the second steep is honey and hay with a touch of spinach, it is still incredibly mild, one of those I accidentally dipped my nose in the tea moments trying to get the aroma. The taste is definitely not as sweet as it was in the previous steep, it starts out with sharp wet hay and sour cherries and then quickly moves into green notes. The main notes of green-ness are lima beans, spinach, and a bit of grass and smoke. The finish is a surprising note of cranberry, that lingers into the aftertaste.

Next steep! The aroma is still faint, but the notes I am picking up are spinach and a touch of hay. This time the sweetness is gone, I am left with all savory spinach and lima beans. It is fairly smooth, though not overwhelmingly complex, but I don’t mind. I continued steeping this for a bit, once it hit the savory vegetal notes it did not really evolve much, which is fine, sometimes having a tea that is solid while being tasty is good for drinking tea while being able to focus on other things…like art or reading, without insulting the tea by ignoring it.

For blog and photos: http://ramblingbutterflythoughts.blogspot.com/2015/05/wymm-tea-bingdao-laozhai-huangpian.html

Thank you for the sample Wymm Tea!

The dry leaf and packaging from Wymm is always so lovely. The first thing that struck me about this tea was as soon as the water hit it the aroma was quite intoxicating. Mostly like tart apricots with a hint of flowers. VERY aromatic in the first couple of steeps. Flavor is very nicely balanced between sweet and pleasant bitterness. It held up very well through many steeps too. It seems like a nice everyday type of sheng that is difficult to screw up. I oversteeped one since I brewed this up and work and I still found it quite drinkable when a lot of sheng would not have been!

So, I am shamefully overdue on these tasting notes, and a few others for tea I received for review. It isn’t that they are bad, or that I am not grateful, but I’ve sadly had to cut back on real tea, largely due to some unreasonably bad heartburn, that is made worse by tea. How could the Gods be so cruel? So anyway, reviews will be few and far between but I am here drinking things on occasion.

The beau and I had this one throughout the day while doing other things. I did brew it gong fu style but rather than dedicating ourselves only to the tea, we also played Magic (one game each!) and BBQed. The first BBQ of the season! I also got to wear my Birkenstocks today, and hung out with some baby goats down the road. It was only a one day weekend for me, but it was a good one.

And part of that, was thanks to this tea. I’m going to say up front that it wasn’t crazy complex, and it didn’t demand a lot of thought or attention – in fact, I had a hard time coming up with descriptors. But that’s okay. Instead, this was an easy drinking tea that demanded nothing from me. I think it would stand up well to Western style brewing, and I intend to use the other half of my sample for that.

In the gaiwan, we did 4 steeps with 95 degree water (only because I get tired of hot porcelain on my fingers with boiling water). 10 second rinse, then 15, 20, 25, and 30 seconds steeps. I found the first two to be sort of barn-like, but in a positive way. Then 3 and 4 morphed on me and were very earthy. There was some initial sweetness in 1 that disappeared by 2. There was never any bitterness, and it was very easy drinking. Easy gulping, even. The beau, on the other hand, found the first 2 steeps to be earthy, and found it a little more barn-like (leather, wood, damp) in 3. Same tea, steeped the exact same way, and opposite tastes. We both found it smooth and easy drinking though, which is excellent.

I don’t know if I would purchase it, as I am no longer in the market for easy drinking shou, but this is the sort of tea I think would introduce people to shou quite nicely. There’s nothing offensive in it, but there are some of the hallmarks of shou pu. Nice tea, great day. Thanks, Wymm! :)

Interesting. A young sheng that does not grab you by the throat with bitterness. In fact it has very little when short steeps are used. The dry leaf was field and leather scented. The wet was leather, asparagus, seaweed, and mint. The cup was apricot colored. The first thing I caught in the taste was a hint of smoke. I never catch smoke in poo. Everybody else does. Not me. Until today. Woot! The taste goes from light mineral to leather to cooling bite.

The next cup had a spicy cedar/cinnamon mixed with leather. Behind it was a light metallic brightness. The combination was an interesting cooling heat.

The qi hit me hard on the second cup. The medicine I take for my lungs reacts with caffeine apparently. I really want to indulge in more of this but I am putting it away until morning. Probably shouldn’t have taking the meds with poo. Yeah, I’ll be more careful next time. Anyway, for only a few years old, this was an amazing sheng.

This is a better sheng than what I thought it would be. Once brewed the leaf looks fantastic and I actually found the taste to be less bitter than I have experienced shengs to taste like.

I drank all of what I had of this in one day because I just had a root canal and I wanted that tea drunk sensation and to hydrate myself a lot :)

Thank you, Wymm Tea, for this sample! I saved it for a late night Gongfu session with hubby and we finally got that opportunity tonight!

The first sheng I gave hubby was from an unknown company, and he pronounced it “not his favorite.” A few weeks ago I gave him a Wymm sheng and he liked it, so I thought he would enjoy this, too, and I was right,

The first steeps were kept short, and the tea was surprisingly smooth and sweet for a fairly young sheng. Something about the flavor begged to be paired with something, so I fetched the box of Pierre Marcolini chocolates that my daughter bought for me when she was traveling and had a couple of those. They are very fancy – I believe some of them have flecks of actual, real gold. Yes, gold. The flavors are unusual and the chocolate intense. Good stuff, and a great pairing with the tea for the middle steeps.

One steep apparently sat longer than I realized and when I took a sip….WOW. It was strong! Then I realized that though it was oversteeped and had a bit of astringency, that faded really fast into a minty, camphor freshness that I actually loved!

This is grassy, but also has a nice sweetness like honey rather than sugar. This translates to a nice, round bottom note to the tea for me. After almost a liter of water, which is cooling appreciably now, hubby has departed for bed and I am drinking alone. One last steep, and I will save the leaves for tomorrow elevenses.

Very good sheng. It will be an interesting one to experience as it matures.

This is a pretty awesome shou. A medium-dark amber color with a sweet earthy taste. I guess the word is “meaty” even if that doesn’t make much sense to anyone else :P I enjoyed multiple steeps of this tea. I noticed a distinct difference between this and the other grade that I tried (either fifth or seventh, I can’t remember). This is more clean and pure tasting to me – definitely enjoyable and would have again.

“…the pale yellow liquor contains some grassy flavors, which remind me of a pleasant green tea mixed with a sheng.”

“In my third cup, which resulted from another thirty-second steep, I note that the sheng flavors have come forward. Those green, aromatic, almost-pungent (in a good way) tones that so often fill sheng pu’erh have reared their heads and now lurk in the body and aftertaste. Steep number four (another thirty seconds) reveals those flavors to an even greater degree. The dark vegetation aroma is warm and soft, yet seems full of vigor. Much as I am also enjoying them, these cups are being consumed quickly.”

“…with this tea, I could see it becoming a regular in my cup. On my personal enjoyment scale, I would rate this tea a 95/100.”

Read the full review on Built from Ink and Tea, here: http://www.createwritedrink.com/2015/04/tea-review-tuesday-review-of-wymm-teas.html

This is quite mild for a pu-erh which was surprising. I got back to my host families host last night after traveling in the rain and wanted a lot of warm liquid so I decided to brew some pu-erh with six steepings… this was just rather mild which was odd. The fifth grade is better than this one for sure (both are still smooth though)

Ello Kiddies, today I finally feel up to some pu time. I love the packaging on these samples. Clever and interesting. It kind of involved all my senses right from the start.

This is a loose leaf shou. The leaf is chocolate brown, large and lightly twisted. It has a boot leather aroma to me.

I tried doing 3 rinses as Wymm recommends on the website, but after drinking the first and the second, I gave up on the idea. The third was my first full cup. Copying straight from my blog: The taste is much like the rinses. Instead of boot leather like the dry scent, this is old family Bible leather. There is a gentle sweetness to it. I find it immediately warming and comforting. There is no bitterness and nothing off about it. This is nicely smooth with no rough edges. There is a woodsy cedar spiciness late in the sip that adds just enough bite to be interesting without adding distraction.

I’ll continue steeping this throughout the day. It has been a while since I have had pu-erh and my tummy is rumbling in appreciation.

Finally getting to try this Wymm tea sample today. I don’t want to try new teas unless I have time to really sit and savor them properly, and since I’ve been office working the past 2 weeks that hasn’t been really possible!

Thanks to Wymm tea for sending me a sample of this to try. For a young sheng, it is definitely on the sweeter side and less bitter than most. There is a bit of bitterness in the finish but that is kept at bay by doing some nice short steeps.

This sheng has a lot of really lovely flavors. It is more reminiscent of a green tea than many shengs I’ve tried. There is a definite vegetal note with some sweet peas and floral. I am also getting the custard-y and buttery notes up front but it’s the bitterness that lingers a bit in the back of your throat. It has a lot of relaxing energy as opposed to a kick-your-butt kind of experience.

By the third steep I decided to use slightly cooler water which brought out more of the buttery notes in this tea. It has a very enjoyable flavor, but sadly is quite out of my price range at the moment.

I want to apologize to Wymm Tea for taking so long to taste this sample. I wanted to give it the attention it deserves and have not had time until tonight!

A few weeks ago I picked up an unknown puerh tuocha at a coffee shop nearby that was labeled “Black Tea Puerh”. I got it home and found it to be Sheng. It wasn’t bad, but hubby was not a fan and left me to finish it alone.

Fast forward to tonight. I got this out and informed him that he was going to taste tea with me and it was a type he had before and didn’t like, so he should brace himself. I wasn’t really trying to prejudice him against it, just give fair warning, because he is rather picky and I am not.

I rinsed the leaves for about fifteen seconds, then gave it a short 7 second steep. The tea was pale at this point. It had only the tiny sour bite of young sheng, nothing objectionable. The flavor was very light at this point also.

Second steep was a bit longer and each subsequent steep was increased by only a few seconds. Yet now it yields a golden brew, rather darker than I expected. On about the fourth steep as the cup was being passed to hubby, a strong aroma hit me and it was a really nice one. My first thought was bright citrus, so maybe that is what they call grapefruit, although it reminds me of the white rum flavoring in another that I own. It has a nice medium body. Not creamy, but not sour.

The big surprise is that hubby is constantly holding his little cup out and shaking it at me to hurry up the refills. He kept saying, “This is good!” So now I know it was just the one sheng he disliked, not the type in general.

We have made a full liter of tea thus far and I think I will heat another pot and see how much longer we can keep these leaves going. They don’t seem to be completely spent yet.

Thank you, Wymm Tea, for these lovely samples!

Finally, my first pu’erh that does not taste like it smells. Th smell of pu’erh tends to always be rather strong to me and somewhat off putting. This loose leaf version of pu’erh is fantastic because it’s quite subtle tasting for the tea that it is. It keeps the integrity of a pu’erh but has a sweetness to it that normally is masked behind bolder flavors when teas are normally brewed. While I like the smoothness of this tea, the flavor itself lacks somewhat because it is subtle- while I like it, it does create a gap in the experiential part of pu’erh tea.

I’ve been just enjoying my tea lately rather than rating; a combination of allergies and too much else going on. However, I need to catch up on my reviews of these samples from Wymm Tea.

I usually try to drink teas that are older than this. My first attempt I really enjoyed the flavors, but the tea was acidic and bothered my stomach. My conclusion was that it needed a lot more aging.

Shortly after this experience I read the review by Boychik saying she was careful not to oversteep the tea, so I tried a second pot with shorter steeps. This second pot was much more to my liking. The tea was smooth and sweet and very enjoyable. In both pots, the cha qi was so strong that I had to space out my cups in time or I would have been in such a fog that I couldn’t give an accurate review. (My unedited notes say : “Hard to tell where the finish ends and the strong cha qi takes over. I’m just sitting, enjoying the buzz”)

The flavor was a mix of wood and straw but at various times I detected toast in the aroma, and a bit of mineral. After about 4 steeps, it settled down into a very pleasant smooth straw flavor with caramel highlights. I’m at about the 10th steep now and it is still pleasant.

I really enjoyed the tea but hesitate to recommend it because it is quite pricey.

Going from the YS Blue Label shou that I didn’t care for, I found this shou to be more to my liking. I seem to be enjoying most of the pu that’s menghai, so that might be a deciding factor for future pu choices.
Anyway, I used the whole sample from wymm in a 100ml gaiwan. I didn’t measure, but I think it was about 6g. It has a very nice smooth and creamy texture with the foresty/mushroom taste that I’ve come to find in shou. Definitely a nice way to relax this evening.

The leaves from this raw Puer cake are very dark brown and black. It already looks very well aged even though the leaves are only from 4-5 years ago.

The dry leaves in a warm Gongfu teapot (100ml) smell first and fore most like leather or dried meat, a secondary scent that I get if I inhale very deeply is menthol. After a rinse, the wet leaves have a very complex and strong aroma. The smell is of prunes, wood, and a musty forest floor kind of smell like you’d expect from aged Puer.

The brewed liquor is a deep golden yellow. The aroma is of croissant dough. As it cools it begins to smell more like cake batter and there is also a slight aroma of menthol just like before.

Whoa. The flavor is very nice. Tastes like pie crust, a hint of vanilla, a lingering aftertaste of fig. That is not at all what I was expecting! And that was just from the rinse infusion.

The second infusion smells more strongly of menthol. The wet leaves have a nice spiced aroma to them. The flavor still reminds me of pie crust with hints of fig, vanilla, and spice. There’s a little bit of wood as well. It’s got a very creamy texture.

Have you ever had a Necco wafer? Because that’s what the third infusion smells like, menthol and powdered sugar, sort of. The taste is very mouth-filling, very mild. This tea lingers on the light end of the flavor spectrum, vanilla, dough, minerals… it doesn’t have the woody, leafy green powerful note of many other Puer teas.

The fourth infusion tastes a bit deeper and mellow, some hints of wood peaking through.
The fifth infusion brings more of the rich, smooth vanilla bean flavor. This tastes like a flavored tea or specialty tea drink from a coffee shop that you could get in the winter time, like a tea latte.

There has not been any bitterness at all in tasting this tea.
After the sixth infusion, a lingering taste of pepper stays in my mouth.
Seventh, a little bit of menthol is coming through in the flavor.
Eighth, the flavor is quite a bit lighter. Ninth, the same, even after infusing for a full minute or so. Tenth, I let it sit a few minutes. Tasted a lot like dried fruit but with some bitterness coming in at the end.

I didn’t really add much time to each infusion. Each one was about 10-15 seconds long, other than the last few.

I’d say so far this was the second best tea I’ve tried from WYMM Tea, the first being their Mangnuo Cane Tea. Their selection may be small right now, but you can be sure you’re getting the quality you pay for. I respect that in a tea company much more than when one has a huge selection of hit-and-miss teas. I am eager to see how WYMM Tea grows as a company. They have started with such a great lineup of unique and delicious Puer teas.

Sipping this away today and I’m not really tasting or experiencing anything that would define this tea as something ‘unique’- I understand that sometimes green teas are just green teas with variation of quality, but this tea is just eh in my opinion. Hopefully there is better news about the Mangnou sheng when I get to it.

The leaves of this cake are deep olive green and brown. In a warm gongfu sized teapot (100ml) they have an earthy smell that quite reminds me of the aroma of ripe puer. After a rinse, the leaves smell like forest floor, pepper, a hint of leather, and night air in dry grasslands, a scent you’ll be very familiar with if you grew up among them. There are hints of wildflowers.

I decided to brew this tea at 194F/90C rather than my usual 203F/95C for raw puer. With young raw puer, brewing it at this slightly lower temperature really softens the flavor and keeps the bitterness most young raw puer has at bay.

Mostly, the scent I’m getting from the rinse infusion is of sweet dough. The color of the liquid is a muted peach. The flavor is very mouth-filling and rich. It tastes leafy and a bit woody, but more on the leafy side. There’s a really nice earthiness to it, and it is mild on the palate, almost sweet, but not quite. As it cools, the flavor is more like vanilla bean and mineral. The taste really lingers after a sip.

Jingmai is a tea producing region I am very fond of. I have only had a few teas from there now, but every one I’ve had has been really special and of such distinguished quality. The terroir there produces some flavors you just can’t replicate elsewhere.

The second infusion of this tea offers a bit more of a peppery note in the taste, and hints of bitterness, but overall the flavor is very smooth just like the first. Again, I’m quite impressed by how this tea seems to hit the palate all at once, but in a very mild way.

So far, the flavor of this tea is not changing drastically from one infusion to the next. It’s a pretty straightforward woodsy puer, but it has a really nice calmness to it. Like the other teas I’ve had from WYMM Tea, this one has a very clean taste. I imagine this would be a great one for those who like a nice woodsy/herbaceous raw puer. As I steep this further, a little note of floral emerges, but it is subtle. By about the fifth steeping there’s a subtle note of citrus, and this continues on through the later steepings.

All in all, a really agreeable Puer. While this one didn’t have quite the exciting and unique flavor notes I’m used to from Jingmai Puer, it did teach me more about the diversity of flavors in that area, and this was a solid, really nice Puer, one I kept wanting to drink and not put down.

This tea is part of very generous box of samples . Thank you so much for such a great opportunity to sample your great teas.

i went with the entire sample which was about 6g .
95ml gaiwan, 200F rinse/pause/3/5/5/5/7/7/10sec etc

The tea is wonderful. I was cautious not to oversteep it, so my steeps were very short, some even flash.
started mild, then progressed to a nice minty cool and spicy flavor. i cannot say i experienced any harsh bitterness or astringency. It was very pleasant. i really liked that minty cool freshness.
Later steeps lost the mint flavor but again no bitterness ( or maybe im getting used to it so i dont notice haha)

i highly recommend to try this tea. i really enjoyed it.

http://instagram.com/p/0tGFd5hwlW/

http://instagram.com/p/0tIu3fhwqd/

http://instagram.com/p/0tJVjNhwrn/

http://instagram.com/p/0tR3PBhwsd/