Yunnan Sourcing

Lewis & Clarke TTB

Ah, silver needles, always so lovely. :D This is the first white tea I’ve tried from Yunnan Sourcing, though I love their blacks. The buds are a beautiful combination of white and green with bits of grey in there, and they’re super fuzzy. Dry, they smell strongly of honey with a little bit of fruitiness and a touch of grass, also some grain. I did 2 minutes at 185 degrees.

Mm, the aroma is lovely! Creamy and grainy with just a touch of grassy freshness, along with some cucumber. Oh my goodness, this is delicious! There’s a light fruitiness that reminds me of apricots along with a lovely malty flavor combined with the ubiquitous grain of white tea. I also seem to pick up on a little touch of floral (honeysuckle?), but it’s not the heady variety and it goes nicely with the lightness of this tea. There’s also maybe a hint of spice, cinnamon perhaps? Along with all of this is a lovely fresh note that’s some combination of cucumber and a sweet grassy note. Definitely the best silver needle I’ve had so far! :D

Edit: I am finding this one to be quite astringent as I continue to drink. It doesn’t bother me, as it causes me to recall apricots more clearly. :P

http://yunnansourcing.com/en/whitetea/2887-silver-needles-white-tea-of-feng-qing-spring-2014.html

Marco Lewis TTB

This is either my first or second unflavored white tea to try. I’ve always read that it has a very light, subtle taste and that’s very true. I think white tea’s just not my thing. But you can tell, however that the leaves themselves are very high quality. So cute and fuzzy! And most of them are whole leaves. How do they keep them from breaking?!

http://yunnansourcing.com/en/whitetea/2913-yunnan-yue-guang-bai-air-dried-white-tea-spring-2014.html

Another new sample to try! YAY!

I drank this one all day. It is a solid shu. I found the first couple of steeps to be quite sweet, but also had a lot of camphor notes. Apparently I like camphor notes in sheng but not shu… After that the steeps were more balanced, and quite nice. I will definitely finish the rest of my sample but this is not one I would seek out to purchase. I love trying new teas though, it’s my favorite! :D

This is an interesting tea. If you like Special Dark, you should give this one a try. It’s the same style. To me it tastes like a cross between a shu and a yunnan black. It’s got that golden bud shu flavor, coupled with some sweet notes typically found in yunnan black teas. Pretty smooth, though it is definitely somewhat bitter.

This is a very affordable (currently $17.50 for a 357g cake) flavorful everyday ripe puerh. Moderately compressed cake making it quite easy to pick off leaves to brew. Chocolate brown leaf interspersed with many golden tea buds. Good woody flavor with decent energy. The dark tea soup presents a low level of sweetness with definite cocoa and berry undertones. No real bitterness. Enjoyed six dark infusions and I think I could have probably used the leaves a few more times

Yay, I’m back on Steepster. For some reason Chrome seems to hate it these days and it is causing me problems. Hey ho! So, for today’s tea I am drinking this 2012 Qiu Yun. It’s good. The leaf smells of sweet, fresh hay and the leaves are big. I had to jam them into my pot! The taste is fruity, rounded and sweet. The aftertaste is tingly with apricot or peach notes. It leaves me salivating and citrussy for ages afterwards. Yes, this tea literally makes me drool! ;) I certainly recommend it.

This is some good stuff, nice floral roast with minerally fullness that opens up on the tongue and lingers. Some pepper very late. got a sample of this from a friend and will keep it in mind for a purchase.

I brewed this tea quite differently. I added organic cacao nibs to it. It came out somewhat sweet from the puerh and very bitter from the cacao nibs as well as spicy and smoky. This needed sweetener so I added sugar to the first steep. It was good but I wanted to add more depth of flavor. I then added maple syrup to the remaining steeps. The maple nicely cut the bitter flavor of the cacao nibs. This did not taste like milk chocolate puerh.

I steeped this five times in a 180ml teapot with boiling water. I used 6g leaf and 4g cacao nibs. I steeped it for 15 sec, 15 sec, 25 sec, 30 sec, and 1 min. I suspect I would give this tea a lower rating by itself.

This was a sample from my dearest MzPriss! Thanks, pookie pie!

I like this one. It’s putting some pep in my morning. It’s pretty smooth, though it does have a little bite at the end.

I think it’s a pretty decent price for the quality and the age, too!

Got a sample of this at the urging of one of our fellow sheng peers here on Steepster. It is a great choice if you are looking for a safe to drink young sheng. Kind of like YS Wu Liang. Very floral, kind of tasted like honey and pollen. I know, you are saying to yourself ’he’s never tasted pollen’ but it probably tastes like this. Sweet with no bitterness. The first couple infusions had a nice huigan, but that faded quickly. Pretty high kick factor if that is something you desire in your sheng. Also very reasonably priced at $34 currently.

This is a lovely sample from my TeaFF, MzPriss! Thanks, honeybelle!

Method: 8 g, 6 oz, 200 degrees, rinse-10-15, sheng yixing, Goldie

Aroma: sweet and fruity

Flavor: Well the first two steeps are kicking my ass a bit. This is an interesting mix of very pleasant flavors with a sharp bitterness. It has a nice astringent finish. Some sips taste quite mild, and some are like a kick in the shin.

Steeps 3 and 4 are calmer. I have a little sheng glow going and the apricot notes are coming through nicely. I’m starting to feel a little tea woozy. Yay!

This one is definitely a keeper and I think it will age nicely and the initial bitterness will soften up.

A whimsical add-on item that has really paid off. This little 100g cake was quite a surprise – nice flavor, promising chaqi, and good potential for resteeps. The cake is fairly easy to pick apart; the leaf looks beautiful and whole; the tea soup seems clear although not the brightest gold I’ve seen. There is definitely smoke in both the scent of the wet leaves and the flavor of the sips but it is not too heavy and feels more like an underlying rather than dominant theme. The liquor tastes quite fresh and sweet with a bit of astringency but this is quite pleasant and a nice complement to the subtle fruity sweetness. I’ve been through five infusions today and will likely try more tomorrow. The tea is a bit reminiscent of the White Whale and a bargain at $5. I went back to pick up two more to hold onto for two years before I pick off leaves again.

I got this from an amazingly generous Steepsterite, who just wanted to expand my puerh horizons! You know who you are and thank you SO much!!!! <3

It was so much fun to have a WHOLE tangerine to bust open! I have to say, this is much better than the 2009 stuffed tangerine puerh I had a sample of from Teavivre. The shu just seems to be higher quality! The tangerine flavor itself is very subtle (I don’t think I got any bits of peel in my gaiwan this time though.) The shu is rich and creamy and earthy without any ‘off’ flavors. I was sad when the leaves finally gave up, which always speaks well of any tea :)

Creamy texture and caramel, spice, and fruit notes. Slight mineral quality, excellent cinnamon/floral aroma.

This is the best Wuyi I’ve had, though that being said I haven’t had very many.

L&C TTB

Sweet
light
hay

lovely mouthfeel

gets really sweet when it cools off

I really enjoyed this tea. I bet it would have lasted many more infusions, but I’m trying to get through as many teas as I can before I have to send the box along.

http://yunnansourcing.com/en/whitetea/2887-silver-needles-white-tea-of-feng-qing-spring-2014.html

L&CTTB

somewhat sweet. reminds me of darjeeling or wine. kind of peppery. interesting.

http://www.yunnansourcing.us/store/index.php?id_product=441&controller=product

L & C TTB

This is the spring 2014 version

Kinda sorta nutty, roasty flavored, but still nice and green.

Tasty.

But it doesn’t pair well with chocolate and peanut butter.

Also, don’t oversteep or this gets really bitter and nasty.

http://www.yunnansourcing.us/store/index.php?id_product=459&controller=product

L & C TTB

I had this tea today at work. I don’t remember much except I liked it. I think it was a little malty, a little chocolately. It was good.

Sorry.

Today has not been a good day at work.

http://www.yunnansourcing.us/store/index.php?id_product=460&controller=product

Just a quick cup a work.

The dry leaves smell sweet, bitter(chocolate, but not really at the same time) and refreshing piney. When wet it has a more apparent bitterness combined with a robust malty and sweet brow sugar-molasses scent and the refreshing pine.

The liquor can be from a range of a deep yellow to copper-amber and finally a reddish copper in stronger steeps. And the taste matches the scent of both the dry and wet leaves with plenty of sugary sweetness followed by plenty of malt, cocoa-like bitterness and pine-woody notes. I prefer the Spring offerings, but that doesn’t make this autumn ones less pleasant or desired.

Great tummy warming and throat refreshing tea for this chilly weather.

If you have a few minutes, check my blog
http://thetinmycup.blogspot.com/

Dry – Sweet, malty, chocolate, cream, faint pine-wood.
Wet – Warm sugar, molasses, maple, woody-pine notes, chocolate, spices, hints of cream.
Liquor – Bronze

The first steep is sweet, thick malty, woody with pine notes and hints of chocolate. As it goes down, it maintain its thickness and malty notes with subtle chocolate notes and lasting wood-pine notes.

The following steeps feel more sweet and thicker with very apparent malt notes, wood-pine notes and seems to become almost savory in the middle with a broth like quality. As it goes down, it feels thick again with sweetness, chocolate notes and a roasted note that gives deeper notes of wood and malt.

The final steeps are weaker, but still pleasant with a sweet but cleaner front, apparent malt and wood in the middle with almost no broth-like middle, it is mostly wood-pine like with the chocolate notes now switched to a very subtle roasted cocoa nibs like taste, more bitter to bittersweet side of chocolate notes.

Very pleasant Yunnan Black. I prefer Spring offerings so far. By comparison I’d say that Autumn offerings have a more malty and wood profile and ‘deeper’ perhaps roasted notes, while spring has a lighter yet more complex profile.

This tea holds a special place in my heart, it was the first pu erh cake I ever bought, going back a couple of years. I was looking for an organic ripe, and this was practically the only one i could find. I drank the entire contents over a period of months, western style at the time. I noticed YS had a couple cakes in stock last week, seemingly from nowhere, as I was making my last order during the recent sale. I was curious how I’d like it now that I am an experienced ripe pu drinker.

The tea is pretty good now that i try it again. Not great, but good. It is pretty smooth, though there is still some bitterness and harshness. But it lasts through many infusions. Kind of a clean lighter taste, with hints of coffee. If you insist on an organic tea, though it’s not clear what that really means in China, this is a pretty good one.

Lewis and Clarke TTB

malty, but not overwhelmingly so

almost sweet

Rich.

As it cools, it gets sweeter. Almost kind of sweet potato.

I like it. I got multiple infusions from it, WEstern style. The third, I oversteeped on accident because I forgot to set my timer, but it didn’t get bitter or bad. It was nice.

http://yunnansourcing.com/en/yunnan-black-teas/2934-wild-arbor-feng-qing-black-tea-pure-assamica-spring-2014.html