Yong Sheng Tea Industries

Tea of the afternoon……

I still have a good amount of this, so I really can’t count it in sample reduction…because I am sure to finish all that she sent. This one comes to me in a swap with Dinosara from her continental hopping. Thank you so much for sharing this one with me as I love jasmine teas.

I don’t have a huge amount of information on this one. It kind of looks similar to a pouchong, but then again, I am still very much a newbie to green tea. Leaves are long and twisted with shades of dark green and a lighter sage green. There really is not much in the way of a vegetal taste like you would expect with most greens, but it does have the heavier mouthfeel of a good quality green. The jasmine is floral and sweet at the same time. Yum! I wanna go shopping for tea in China! Until then, I will just have to live vicariously through her…. Again, thank you!

Mug method with about 170 water and a 2 minute steep.

Second tea of the morning…..

This one comes from a swap with Dinosara. She went on a small tea adventure while she was in China, and this was one she brought back. I am so appreciative that she gave up some of her precious suitcase space to bring a few things back to share with me. I am pretty certain I may never make it there in my lifetime, so it is always fun to read about her travels and experiences. I love that she tries to include the hunt for tea in her free time when she is travelling, because her work takes her to such interesting places.

This is very, very good. I do think it is a little higher quality than Tan Yang Te Ji from TeaSpring. The leaves are longer and predominantly golden, where TYTJ has only a few golden tips. The brew is very similar, but it reads a little less cocoa and more caramely and honeyed which generally translates to sweeter. I am sure that is pretty normal for a comparison between teas with golden tips and those with fewer. I would definitely not call them interchangeable. Both are very enjoyable, and I will cherish the remainder of this one, as I am not sure I can get more! (I still like the other one just a little better, but that could be my subconscious picking that one because I can get more…..)

Usual mug method.

Finally drinking up the rest of this tea. I got it in China years ago, and it really needed to be drunk. It aged well but green teas can only be hoarded so long. I don’t think I have any jasmine green teas left in my cupboard (just a little Yunnan White Jasmine), which is weird, but I rarely crave them anyway. I may not buy another until I end up in China again!

I don’t usually have a green tea in the morning, but I make an exception for this tea (#102), which was purchased at the same time as the Tan Yang.

I’ve always liked how this tea isn’t just jasmine, but it has a lot of nuanced flavors from the green tea itself. Buttery, sweet, and others I can’t quite pinpoint. I know I should drink this one up even faster than the black teas, but it’s still hard to do, especially when the tea has as much flavor as it still does.

I am going to try to drink this tea up soon as well because it is old. Fortunately when I bought this tea (in Beijing) it was super fresh, because now it is something like 3 years old and it’s still delicious. Pretty amazing! A delicious jasmine green, somehow even more delicious than most pearls I’ve had. Which is why I’ll be sad when it’s gone, even though its time has come.

From the same tea vendor as the tan yan. This is the most jasmine-y tea that I’ve ever tried that isn’t a pearl. I like how the leaves are slightly curled. Fortunately, this tea is still really floral and lovely even though it is 2 years old. I guess it helps that the tea was super duper fresh when I got it!

This is the third tea I bought at Maliandao in Beijing, at the same tea shop where I picked up the Tan Yang Gongfu. I guess I am in kind of a jasminey mood so I am having a cup of this brewed western style instead of gong fu as I had it when I first tasted it in the shop.

When I was tasting jasmine teas there, this was the mid-grade between the basic jasmine and the jasmine pearls. The jasmine pearls were tasty, but not super special… they tasted like lots of other jasmine pearls I’ve tried. So even though I went there thinking I was going to buy some pearls to bring home, I ended up with some jasmine green instead. I think this could probably be properly called jasmine silver needle as there are a lot of silver needles, along with jasmine petals and parts, in the mix. I would normally steep this at 180°F since it is a green tea, but having just followed Teavivre’s instructions to brew their jasmine silver needle at 195°F and reading Life in Teacup’s plea this morning not to brew greens very cool, I decided to keep this one at 195°F as well.

The resulting cup is very yellow, and smells so much like a full-blossom honeysuckle bush. I often find similarities between jasmine and honeysuckle, and I love honeysuckle qualities in a jasmine tea. Here, they are present in spades. And the taste! Better than a non-pearl jasmine has a right to be, or at least better than most non-pearl jasmines I’ve tried. So sweet, like drinking honeysuckle nectar. It even has a smooth, thick mouthfeel that seems like it should be more than only tea in the cup. As it cools, the green tea comes through more a little strongly, making me think that for western style I could drop the steep time to only a minute. Still, this is a super delicious tea.

This tea, this tea (#103; technically Gardens of Anxi appears in my cupboard before this one, but I recently drank down my old stock of that, so I will drink some of the reblend when I get to it and Golden Earl). Bought March of 2012.

This is a true hoarding tea. I have looked for a replacement for this tea (I bought it on Maliandao in Beijing), but nothing is quite the same. I have for sure found other tasty Tan Yangs in my search, but nothing that really captures this one. Once it’s gone, it’s gone forever. Even in it’s old age it is deliciously sweet and honeyed, although I know its former glory has faded a bit. Perhaps I should drink it up before it ages any more, and then its sadder because I didn’t drink what I had while it was still delicious.

By now in the journey we have reached March-April of 2012, my trip to China, which is when this tea (and the next) was acquired.

This is still my favorite tan yang, although I have been casually looking for a close replacement. There is something special about this one, though; it’s sweeter, more caramelly, more delicious somehow. What a lucky score from Maliandao in Beijing.

Well I dug out this one for a cup. I bought this tea in China after a tasting, brought it home, and immediately wished I had bought more. I have a serious problem with hoarding this one as it is definitely impossible for me to get more of this exact tea. I haven’t gone on a thorough tan yang search for a replacement, but I have started drinking more of them in trial.

The first thing that’s obviously different about this one vs. the Harney one I had this morning is the aroma: This one smells darker, chocolatier, with less honey notes. That carries over to the flavor as well. I am tasting more grains and less molasses, but the sweet raisiny aftertaste is similar. Perhaps more burnt-sugar caramel notes in this one as well. I think its a tad toastier overall. Honestly, although I am making them sound pretty different here overall they are close. The Harney version is definitely closer than TeaSprings Tan Yang Te Ji, though I still need to try their Jing Zhi. This one is a little fuller-bodied, and I do like the cocoa notes present, so I think I still prefer this one, but Harney’s is very very good. Now to try Teavivre’s again!

This is one that I should probably drink up pretty fast because it isn’t currently in an airtight container (nor do I really have one to put it in). But that is kind of sad because it is such a delicious, amazing tea, and then it will be gone. Mmm, so caramelly and delicious.

Yesterday I only had two cups of tea, down from my usual four. I am way too busy and stressed! I suppose I should forewarn you all that in about a week and a half I will be gone for two months. Not like normal when I’m traveling and don’t post a lot but occasionally pop up and do a post, but really absent because I will be in Madagascar doing fieldwork! I will certainly miss my tea, and I am still trying to decided what tea bags/sachets to schlepp over there for the mornings (because Malagasy tea is not very good!). Two months is a long time.

I am having this tea this morning because it was calling to me. This tea is stupidly good, and by stupidly I mean that I feel stupid for not buying more when I was in Beijing. So sweet, so honeyed, so caramelly. Almost buttery, which ties into the caramel I guess. Love love love this one.

This is one of the teas I brought back from China. I had a tasting of this tea in the shop in the Jingmin Tea City, and as I understood it, this is the highest of the three grades of Tan Yang Gongfu (Panyang Congou) black tea in the shop. We tried all three and this one was, not shockingly, my favorite. The leaf is long and squiggly, with tons of golden leaves in the mix, which is why I ended up calling it “Golden Tips” here.

I tried this one gong fu style in the shop, but I’m brewing it western style here just to see how it works this way. I used the steeping parameters from Teavivre’s Bailin Gongfu black tea, since that is the most similar tea I have to this one. It steeped to a dark amber color, and it has a great aroma of chocolate, honey, caramel and malty black tea. I remember this tea as smooth and sweet and lovely, and that’s what I’m getting here as well. I’m getting better than I remember, actually. At the shop it was hard to truly appreciate it because by the time I had this one my taste buds were getting a bit overwhelmed by Tan Yangs, but this is really a delicious tea. So so sweet! It’s amazing. With all those lovely chocolatey, malty, caramel, honey, raisin, wheaty notes. Of course I wish I had bought more, and I curse the luggage restrictions that made me buy what will not last very long for me. Shoulda coulda woulda, but I should have tried it while I was still in China (I didn’t want to break the airtight seal until I got home) because I might have realized that I needed way more of this. Sigh.

Gah I am almost angry about how much I like this tea. The funny thing is, I’m sure that this is not super special Tan Yang, it’s probably just your standard high-level commercial grade tea you can probably pick up in lots of those shops in Maliandao, but it’s still so good!

I paid about the same price for this as Teaspring’s Tan Yang Te Ji sells for. I am interested to see how they compare (and it is all I can do not to immediately order Tan Yangs from Teaspring right now! :P)