Yunnan Sourcing

Ru Yao dragon teapot gongfu:

Dry leaves: smells musty and slightly earthy.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BACqRWMp48r/

Wet leaves: smells like wet fall leaves, Forrest floor and earthy. Slightly musty.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BACulu8p44Y/

Light steep: I taste light earth and light fall leaves. Medium camphor, No mushrooms and minor minerals.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BACsMW7p4yM/

Medium steep: I taste earth, medium camphor, medium mushrooms, medium minerals, strong Forrest floor and strong fall leaves.

Quite tasty!

Heavy steep: medium minerals strong earth, strong Forrest floor, strong fall leaves, medium mushrooms and medium camphor.

Extremely tasty!

All in all, this tea is still amazing.

I still rate this tea a 100! Definately recommend this both western and gongfu style! :D

I love this tea! this is the best ripe puehr I ever had

today’s tea: i just love the mushroom and camphor taste :D

I haven’t had this tea in a while either. still tastes great and can be oversteeped

so i used the last bit left over yesterday, and it was just as good as day one :D i have another bar on the way! :)

hmm…. this time around it has a strong camphor taste :P i don’t think there is any shrimpyness but yes, a strong camphor taste :D

maybe because i could break the corners off and the middle did not rinse well?

time for a full review :)

when i smell the brick it smells kinda musty but that’s OK :) when i pry at it, it does come off in some chunks but mostly small ones :P

after i rinse it and steep it the smell is lovely :) then i taste it and it does taste more like mushrooms than camphor i think. also has some sweetness too :D

sometimes i like to suck on the used leaves like a candy and it tastes musty with camphor and mushrooms but that’s all fine and dandy :D

even when getting to the center of the brick, it still tastes nice with little to no shrimpy (fishy) taste :D

keeping score the same :)

what an awesome pu-ehr! I can taste a tad bit of camphor and a lot of mushroom :) although its hard to pry from the brick (as it is dry) there’s like no fishy taste :) (even though I don’t mind the fishy taste) it tastes best when I let it steep for quite a while. many thanks to Yunnan sourcing and scot Wilson for this wonderful tea! :D

Wasn’t sure what to expect with this one. I have several black teas around, including a black tea puerh cake. Usually black tea is about controlling the bitterness, or dumping in milk if all else fails. Wild Purple puerh can be really astringent and this is pretty much the same leaf. So I debated whether to grandpa a bit of this or gongfu, went with the gongfu in xisha clay. The leaves are long and very lightweight, so 3 grams of this is actually a lot of leaf. The usual 100-115 ml of water on the boil, one rinse. Braced myself for bitter.

The results? A floral smelling soup that actually transfers into the cup! Tastes like roses and the wild sweet pea blossoms I liked to nibble on when I was a kid. I am not a chaser after florals in tea, but this flavor is naturally present! Completely smooth with a touch of leather and wood, like a train trunk. Steeping cup after cup, the sweet smell and taste brings tears to my eyes. A harsh day at work melting away.

I don’t give high scores lightly, not that the scoring system is all that meaningful for me, but I really doubt I will ever taste a finer black tea than this.

This tea is quite likeable. It has a nice flavor, some sweetness, a nice bit of astringency and even some huigan. It could be just a little stronger, but it’s not too bad at all. It held up fairly well to a number of infusions. It’s a nice blend, I think it might age like a good Dayi. I am going to order a cake.

Sample from the Terri ‘s box – awesome never ending .
Gongfu
4g 100ml gaiwan 205F
Rinse/15/15/20/30/45 etc
Leaves are long twisted black and some gold. Smells heavenly. This tea is not as heavy sweet as others from YS. Nevertheless I like it. It’s different. Malty, nutty, not sweet, but there is sweetness in aftertaste. Some slight astringency but not unpleasant.
Thank you so much Terri for such a great variety of teas you supplied me with.

When I feel like having something new, I just fetch a pouch from my Terri Box.

She generously sent me what she had left of this precious tea. Delicious little tiny golden snails, so pretty to look at.

Of course, I was curious to compare them to Whispering Pines’s “wee snaily yums” Golden Snail Yunnan Black, already a favourite.

They do look identical, but are completely different in taste. Though I much prefer WP version, this is still yummy, no doubt.

What surprised me the most was to find some smoke in there. Don’t know if my taste buds are playing tricks on me but it’s very noticeable. In a Keemun kind of way.

It’s sweet, but it’s missing that silky barley sugar feel I get from WP.

It’s fuller bodied and maltier, not as delicate and complex. I’m missing the floral and spicy notes I find in WP.

To me, it feels like a good robust black tea, which is something I would seek early in the morning. Just not what I was expecting from what is supposed to be a more mellow and smooth kind of tea.

Maybe I over leafed? Luckily, I still have plenty to try it again.

So yes, compared to WP’s Bi Luo Chun, it looses the battle.

But as a nice breakfast tea, it’s a winner, loved it!

Thank you so much Terri Harlady for giving the chance to try so many teas from Yunnan Sourcing :-)

This is a very nice sheng. At $17/ for a 250g cake, it is fairly priced for wild arbor YiWu leaf. Quite young for a sheng but amazingly smooth and sweet.

The cake has light compression making it very easy to pick off the dark dry leaf. A fairly high number of stem pieces found. The tea soup is a very light gold color and appears very clear in the cup. Sweet fruit aroma from the wet leaf. The taste is smooth with only the slightest bite of astringency. There is definitely the sweetness of raisins and stone fruit. Smooth mouth feel and a nice Qi. In later steeps there are the beginning notes of tobacco.

Frankly, if I had tasted this one blind, I would assume that it was at least five years old (not two). I’ll drink this cake now and I picked up another one for aging because I am really curious to try it in 5-7 years. I’m a big fan!!

Another Yunnan Sourcing tea! This one came from Nicole. For some reason I’m more excited to try the darker teas this time around, rather than the pure bud varieties. I’m not sure why that is! These leaves are medium to large in size and are almost entirely intact, which is nice to see. They’re rather twisty and curly and there are some spots of deep gold among the usual dark chocolate. Dry scent is sweet honey with malt and bread notes.

I’m always a bit weirded-out when a tea just doesn’t have much aroma. It makes me feel like there’s something wrong with my nose! Anyway, this is one of those – I can smell a bit of sweet potato and honey but it’s very faint. Yum, this is a nice balance between a tippier Yunnan and a more earthy one. It has those lovely sweet potato and honey notes with a touch of stonefruit, but underneath there’s a rich and somewhat intense earthy/bready/malty base that really adds a lot of depth and dimension. I’m not always a huge fan of earthy in teas, but I find it works well here, tempered by its bread and malt brethren. Om nommy! Ooh, and I just got a teeny floral hint at the end of that sip! Intriguing.

This lovely tea came from Nicole. I’m almost all the way through her first package but I have since gotten a second. Lol… The dry leaves look quite “wild” to me, meaning they’re very spindly and rough. Almost like tiny tree roots! The color is mostly dark with a few golden buds mixed in. I’m not really getting a smell from the dry leaves, there’s a little bit of sweetness maybe?

The first thing I notice from the aroma is that there are very strong raisin notes. Yum! I also get other dark flavors, like malt, tobacco, and molasses. The flavor is definitely very deep and developed. I wouldn’t call it a super strong tea, but the flavors in here are all quite “dark” and intense. There’s dark, toasted bread with some honey over the top, but then there’s also a definite syrupy dried fruit note. I’m thinking raisins and dried cherries, maybe some fig in there too. Yum!

I continue to be impressed by Yunnan Sourcing, even their “lower-grade” Yunnan teas are delicious! Must order soon! :)

Additional notes: Ah, my poor golden buds, suffering the most with age. It is a shame shame shame. What was once the most complex deliciousness, now could not be more flatter. It’s definitely a lesson to drink what I have before acquiring more teas. I think I have been drinking teas for… fifteen years now. Only fifteen? And I think I know what I like now, what favorites I should have stocked up, instead of the “try everything” phase. So hopefully the teas will sipped down, whittled down and I will have a curated collection. For example: I only have a handful of hojicha samples, but have not drank any of those in a good long while. So I wouldn’t need much hojicha around.

Edited to add: A previous note for this tea mentioned that I wish I had three pounds of this in my cupboard but that would have been a TERRIBLE idea. Even though I’m sure I knew that six years ago. I’m very glad I didn’t stock up. Little amounts of fresh at a time would be much better!

Edited again: Okay, the second steep at boiling tastes much better, but still. Not as complex. The first steep must have been very cooled before steeping.

MzPriss’ Unflavored Tea Box – Tea #19
Oh this is the perfecttt Yunnan. Mostly golden twisty leaves here, but enough hints of darker leaves to give it some character. I know teas like Verdant’s Golden Fleece are all gold. And most Yunnan is mostly dark with hints of gold. The flavors: honeyed squash, sweet potatoes, yams with drizzles of dark chocolate… with some hints of tomato soup. The color of the cup is an orangeish amber. SO so so good. The second cup might have been steeped a little long (three min would be better), but no astringency just tangy for some reason, but it is deeper with more character. It seems all the flavors I previously mentioned have combined instead of being able to pick them out. The first cup is GOLD though… the second needed less steep time. I’d love three pounds of this in my cupboard!
Steep #1 // 2 tsps. // few minutes after boiling // 2 min
Steep #2 // just boiled // 4 min

A beautiful woman awakes from slumber
Slowly rubbing her eyes she looks up
She smiled, stretched out her legs and thought
Starting over again is enough

I kept this tea overnight and drank it again this morning. Still good!

August TTB

Steam rises fragrant
I sip a full cup of joy
Warm hug down my throat

(inspired by shreapops tea haikus! :)

Honestly I don’t have much to say about this tea. I actually thought it smelled really good, and I think it’s my favorite puerh so far. I wish I could elaborate on specific flavors and “notes” but my palate is not very sophisticated :P

This is a real keeper. Very smooth, just a touch of astringency, medium fermentation. Not earthy, more dark coffee. Delicious!

Quite pleased with this tea. The leaf brews a smooth soup and returns a thick mouth-feel with a quick sweet, earthy aftertaste. Overall, this tea offers a tasty, sweet, dark brew with a little spiciness and is a solid choice for everyday enjoyment.

The Tuocha of the week!
Not much to say, and I’m pretty sure I reviewed this one before.
It’s a toasty bread kind of Shou, with a hint of rose, which is enough for me.
A decent afternoon tea, a little leather, a little lace ;)

I brought several shu Tuocha with me to FL, so this is the Daily Tuocha, * its not bad!
It features a decent tasting shu, tasting of whole wheat bread crust, leather, & wood. The rose is noticeable in the dry aroma, but very light in the flavor.