Yunnan Sourcing

I rarely do gongfu sessions first thing in the morning, but I think I need to change that, because my taste buds are probably at their best. (Although having allergies, I feel that my taste buds aren’t at full function, like I’m missing alot of nuances right now). With that in mind, I pulled out this tea.
This is a beautiful golden tea, with the leaves looking so robust that they remind me of insect legs. Not much dry aroma, but if you heat the leaves up in a warm little pot, they begin to give off an essence of honey & buttered toast.
5G + 4oz tiny teapot (rinse) X 15/30/45 sec = buttery caramel with a growing bass note, ultra smooth bee pollen, & the beginings of a tongue tingle! I love tasting the leaves as they open up.
1min: My favorite cup, so satisfying
2min: tingly almost metallic tongue, spreading to my throat & sinuses & I feel as if my sinuses are opening, as if my circulation has improved.
3min: Making my mouth water & my throat a little dry…kind of a strange combo.
4min: I rarely go this far with a gongfu sessions, but am enjoying the moment. The taste has remained pretty much the same throughout all steepings, & although it’s beginning to wane, there’s actually still plenty of flavor here.
5min: Just a light taste of honey & wood, almost like an elixer of life.
6min: This final cup is sweet, kind of like agave. I have a pretty good tea buzz going.
Time for some Taichi.

I’m very happy to report that the mini fruit trees in my sun room are starting to bloom!! Yay!! The Key Lime tree has buds emerging & the first one opened today. There isn’t much in the way of fragrance, the flowers on that tree don’t fill the house with their essence like the Meyer Lemon does. But it’s so nice to see them! The Olive tree has clusters of flower buds emerging along all of it’s branches! It’s the newest member of my little group, & I’m very excited about it! The Meyer Lemon hates winter & also hates being indoors, so it’s not a happy camper right now. It’s also in need of a pruning. The Kumquat is covered with fat juicy fruits. If you’ve never had one, they are the size of a large olive, but basically they are a miniature orange. They ripen during the winter, & I eat one or 2 a week, as a special treat & source of vitamin C. No flowers blooming there yet, but I can see signs that it’s thinking about it. :)

I finally got a chance to try short steepings of this tea. It’s beautiful, with big sturdy buds in shades of Gold, rust, & a light charcoal highlight. The aroma is really that of Honey, like raw honeycomb, straight from the hive, & sweet malt. Flavorwise, it’s like Imperial Mojiangs brother, with some similarities but a more robust profile, if that makes sense. There’s a beautiful honey & pollen taste, especially on the tip of the tongue, a rich maltiness like a bowl of maltomeal, nice thick mouth, & great energy!
5G + 4oz tiny teapot (rinse) X 15/30/45sec/1min/etc…

Big Golden Hairy Buds!
What does it sound like I’m describing to you? Some kind of homegrown?
LOL
I think this is one of the teas I’m going to be sending to my BBB sisters this month. Maybe. It brews up a nice mellow Dian Hong, with that thick kind of mouth. I haven’t tried a gongfu session with it yet, but I plan to. Not as fancy as The Golden Fleece or Mojiang Golden Bud, but very nice just the same & the buds are huge!

I’m sorry this will be a lame review, not because the tea isn’t delicious, but because I can’t really think of anything to say!
It is another very nice yunnan, very tasty, with that thick sort of mouth that I love. I promise to say more next time :)

It’s been a long busy day, with students, rehearsals, more students, & it’s time to post about the teas I drank.
This morning I continued my new gongfu protocol, of starting the day with a gongfu sessions, & this was the tea for it.
5G + 4oz (rinse) X 15/35/45sec/1min/2/3/4/5

So, the earliest steepings started out as toast & honey, with a little bit of a creamy vanilla mouth, but this quickly began to morph into a grapey bright oral sensation.

At 1 minute I was drinking a mix of Dark Ale & Dark Bittersweet choclate, with an almost coffee-like quality.
At 2min the bitterness faded a bit, but there was a tangy grapiness to the tongue, & kind of Hoppy Spiciness.
3min – Wood, grape peel, I didn’t care much for the direction thing were going.
I sipped a bit of the other cups, but honestly had lost interest at this point.
To be fair, I have enjoyed this tea before, & some of my loss of interest might be due to allergies & the effect that they have on my tastebuds. My favorite steeps were at 30 & 45 seconds, & maybe next time I should continue with 15 second intervals.

My taxes are finished!
My son Drew’s taxes are also finished!
My son Leif & I will finish his taxes tomorrow, & then we’ll do everyone’s FAFSA.
And then we’ll sign up for Health Care. All by Friday.

This was the tea I drank all afternoon, this was the one that saw me through.
I don’t have much to say about it. It is a lovely Dian Hong, & although the needles aren’t as Golden as the name would imply, it is still delicious, sweet, lightly malty, & thick in feel.
And now I’m going to bed. Hopefully the raccoon won’t be back at 5am again!

You might think that because this tea & the Imperial Gold Needle Yunnan share similarities in their names, they would be similar, right?
Yes & No.
They are both beautiful, straight buds, but this one is more charcoal shades, with highlights of gold, rust, & olive, whereas the other was much lighter in color. This one is not nearly so lovely in the aroma, however if I hadn’t drank the other one first, I’d think this one smells awesome too, LOL. The warmed leaf has an almost incense quality to it that I find alluring, & a sweetness as well.
I followed the exact same parameters:
5G + 4oz X 15/30/45/60 seconds, continuing to add 15 per steep.
This tea makes a much darker cup, which starts out sweet & then leans to savory. Instead of Maltomeal, I’m having a dark slice of toasted whole grain bread, the dense chewy slightly sour kind of bread that you’d enjoy with a winter pot of hearty stew. It’s also kind of hoppy, in my opinion, & bolder.

I think the last time I drank this one, I did a standard cup of tea, rather than gongfu steepings, & I got a completely different flavor profile! More experiments required! :)

Now this is more like it!
The lovely rich aroma that reminds me of Bee Pollen…sigh…
The buttery sweet sugarcane flavor…sigh…
Thank you!

Great taste and nice lingering qualities. I’ve always been enamored with YiWu raw puerhs. There is such an unmistakable fragrance and taste that come from this region. I know that could be said for most all teas, but this one is very easy for me to pick out.

The leaves are whole and complete, not broken up. The cake has a medium tightness, which allows for easy prying off of the desired amount for brewing. I got a deeper and brighter cup by stretching my normal 5sec brewing, to 12sec in my gaiwan. Very nice tea and the cost for a whole cake is very wallet friendly. It could easily sell for 50% or more for the quality you receive.

It’s been awhile since my last tasting of this tea and based on the subtle changes, the rating must go up. There are some definite yabao-likeness as it has mellowed out in the smokiness and turned more camphor in its brew. Very nice thickness and calming impact on the body. I’m really, really surprised and love what this has evolved into. Good stuff!

Very smoky and savory, with a thicker broth-like feel in the mouth. This one is already starting to change its character from when I first purchased it several months back. Very unique purple leaf, not as tangy as some. Very mature and nice chaqi. Seems to be one that will be special as it ages. We shall see.

this morning I am finishing off this sample I got from Terri

I just went to the Yunnan Sourcing website and I noticed they have some 2014 black and green teas in stock. I don’t know if I will be able to restrain myself in the near future but I should hold off for a while because I overspent the tea budget in the past few weeks.

This is a lovely lighter tea with notes of honey, apricots and malt. It ha a nice natural sweetness and needs no additions, it’s a delight to drink plain. Thanks again for this one Terri!

Tea of the morning here — thanks to Terri for sending this!

I feel like I am coming down with a cold so I decided to stay at home today, take care of myself and drink a lot of tea. It’s always appropriate to drink a lot of tea anyway.

The thing that first struck me about this tea was the aroma, intense like honey, malt and buckwheat. Very nice! I love the look of the light curly leaves. Reminds me a bit of a golden monkey tea but it’s got light, fruity apricot type flavors. I like this a lot and I plan to gongfu it when I feel like my tastebuds are more back to normal.

I’ve been avoiding steepster for awhile. I’m back.
YS is the company I buy the majority of my teas from, and this one is among my favorites.
Today I’m attempting to compare the Spring and Fall versions of this tea, both from 2015. So far all I can really say is that I enjoy them both, but the Spring rendition is probably preferred over the Fall. Why?
It has a sweeter taste and a creamier mouth.
Also, the Fall version is a little heavier in the kind of grassy hay-like flavor.

Having said that, I will happily drink either one of them on any day of the week!

Still among my favorites from YS, it really is a gentle & delicious cup, especially nice made in the yixing, although today I’m just doing 1 T + mug X 3/5 min. My head hurts, I have things to do, and I don’t feel like extending any effort.

On a side note, today I’m renting my harp to a harpist from out of town to play at her cousin’s wedding. I’ll deliver the harp at 1:00, complete with music stand, bench, etc, and go back to get it around 3 or so. She came over to practice yesterday and turns out, she is a tea lover! Guess what, she works at Teavana. So while she was practicing, I put together a box crammed full of samples from Verdant, YS, & Teavivre, all companies she had never heard of, and told her all about Steepster, which she also didn’t know about. So we may have another harpist joining in the near future :)

So the tea…honey, pollen, sweet potato, yum

I thought this was going to be a sip down, and a part of me wanted to break down & cry out to the Heavens, “Nooooo, not this one!”
Then I realized I have another small bag of it in my secret stash!! Yay!! I am saved!!
(when the zombie apocolypse comes, you’ll find me hiding in the attic, guarding my tea stash until the world ends).
Anyway, this is one of my absolute favorites from YS, although I do have several absolute favorites, this is def one of them. It’s beautiful straight golden leaves yield a sweet & malty brew. I’ve written better descriptions in some previous post.

Oh Glorious Day Off!!
Yes, there is no school today, no bratty kids to attempt to mentor, no 5am alarm, no real schedule until my private students start arriving at 4:00, so I slept in until I was well rested (8:30), & have been sipping many short steeping with this lovely lovely tea, truly one of my favorite Black teas from YS. I have quite a bit of desk work to do this morning, a few errands to run (maybe), & then NaNoWriMo! Hopefully I’ll get caught up to where I’d like to be!
Now for more tea :)

Not much to say about this tea that I haven’t already said in several long winded reviews :)
It is a wonderful start to my day, with the prominent aroma being honey.
My LH gongfu technique is pretty good, & since I don’t have much to do other than fill out financial papers for the hospital, & listen to music (currently Coltrane’s album Blue Train), I foresee a day filled with back to back gongfu sessions!
The silver lining :)

I love working from home!
I slept in until 8:30, such a luxury these days. It felt good just to lie in bed & gradually unfold into the world, sunlight streaming through my south window, filtered by the plants that reside there. I knew I wanted some kind of golden yunnan type of tea, with a laid back gongfu session, using my golden yunnan yixing & other beautiful teawares.
5G x 4oz yixing (rinse) X 15/30/45sec/1/2/3/4/5min
And breathing…lots of slow deep relaxed breathing.
This is such a lovely tea, perfect for waking up to. It’s not bold & brash, it’s comforting.
Dropping the long beautiful leaves into a preheated yixing, the aroma of honey & malto-meal immediately rises to greet me. I breath it in, & exhale, saying, “Thank You”.
The tea itself becomes toast with butter & honey. Sweet, rich, satisfying, delicious.
I savor every drop.
Thank you!

Breath…yes, that’s what I need to do, just breath & relax, & drink this tea…
Cream of wheat, honey drizzle…oh, the aroma… oh the tongue tingle…thank you…sigh…

I think some of you know me well enough to appreciate the sudden shift in my life from lounging in my home, playing with tea & tea ware, cooking, gardening, knitting (the new hobby), playing instruments, yoga, Tai chi, students coming & going, on & off Steepster sessions all day. It’s been pure bliss, to be honest. I could continue this way forever…

Suddenly I’m out the door at 6:00am mon, weds, & fri (ok, really, that’s my goal, but to be honest I still haven’t left the house earlier than 6:30, barely arriving on time), arriving home just in time to teach private students from 3 – 7pm. Tues & Thursday are still work from home days, with students (& lots of tea) from 10 – 7.

It’s a somewhat rough transition for a night owl like me, but I think I needed to challenge myself a little, to be honest, maybe I was getting a little too relaxed, & the extra income will be enjoyable. Having to make lesson plans, prep food the night before, & figuring out how to fit in maintenance activities & practice time will push me to new heights of organizing & time management skills (dream on…but it could happen)

In spite of my lack of posting over the last few days, I’ve drank my usual amount of teas:
Golden Fleece
Persian Princess
Golden Monkey Black
…just to name a few…
So, now I’m having this, & I really need it!
5G + 4oz blue lotus porcelain beautiful tiny teapot X (rinse) 15sec/30/45/ etc
I warmed the leaf in the preheated pot, & it smells like some kind of heaven.
…sigh…just letting go & breathing for a few minutes, that’s all I need.
The Breatharians are a sect of people who claim to live on oxygen & water alone. They tend to become very thin & frail, meditate a lot, & there are stories about the famous leader of that belief, who appeared much more robust than the others, & was seen secretly eating a hamburger somewhere, LOL.
I have no desire to give up food, of course, & I have no doubt that my body needs it. But sometimes it’s nice to just sit & breath. To sit & breath in the aroma of something wonderful, like this the lime flowers in my sunroom (the meyer lemon & kumquats are also getting ready to start blooming…oh heaven!). And of course, like this tea. The aroma is cream of wheat cereal, with a big blob of butter melted on it, drizzled with a really good honey. Once I rinsed the leaves, the honey aroma became even more real & prominent.
I could get by just on the aroma of this…I could almost just breath it, but no, I drank the rinse water, I wouldn’t want to waste a precious drop. I’m drinking multiple cups, & with each cup, like magic, I’m becoming happier. This tea has excellent qi, & in spite of it’s lighter golden appearance, brews up into a rich & dark cup of tongue tingling sweetness. I’m sure I could go on & on, but I think I’m gonna do a little Taichi, to further enhance my mood, & then work on my taxes, for a little while anyway. Namaste.

I’ve been really happy with almost every tea I’ve tried from Yunnan Sourcing, & it’s also been fun sharing them with my BBBB Sisters. And by the way, girls, I’m still covered on my box offerings for at least a couple of months, & there is another box, somewhere between here & China, with a few more goodies in it. I’m hoping it will arrive in time for my birthday :)

This is a gorgeous tea! Beautiful buds in the straight ‘needle’ shape, in shades of gold, caramel, rust, wheat, & with an occasion hint of olive drab (one of my most favorite colors in the world). Opening the bag, the aroma of Maltomeal drizzled with honey rises to greet me this morning.
5G + 4oz porcelain blue lotus teapot X 15/30/45/60seconds etc…

Someday I’ll probably have a yixing for yunnan black teas. But I still LOVE this little porcelain pot (thank you Garret!), it’s so adorable sitting in a lineup with my yixings, like their cute little sister, & for now it’s become the gongfu pot for blacks for me.

I prewarmed the pot, dumped the hot water into cup #1, put the leaf in the hot pot & closed the lid. When I opened it, the already aromatic tea was even more so, & the sweetness of the inhale was, dare I say, ecstatic? The delight of breathing in the sweet aroma of this tea almost cancels out the need to actually drink it…sigh…almost!

Thick, malty, honeyed, buttered toast, maybe a hint of floral. I need to remember to shorten my steepings next time, maybe 10/20/30 etc, as it did develop a bit of a sharp edge around the 4th or 5th cup, which didn’t render the cup undrinkable & then that faded, replaced by rich bee pollen. The dark chocolate was more of a mouth-feel than a taste, that gradually built up over several steepings. The flavors of this tea were present from start to finish, not really changing much, just growing & then fading. I think I’m on my 8th steep, the color is still dark, the flavor still satisfying, though not as sweet at this point. I’ve loved every sip.

I drank this one earlier today while I was practicing, but at this point in the day, I can’t really say that much about it. I know I enjoyed it, & it had a thick maltiness to it. I brewed it western style, but next time I hope to take my time with it, doing multiple short steeps.

I’ve reviewed this tea several times, so I’m not really going to say much, except that it is pure enjoyment, and perfect for this morning…oh, I guess now it’s afternoon! Heh…
It’s been 3 weeks since I quit my job, & I’ve slipped comfortably back to little terri mode, sleeping in, doing my morning yoga/workout, gardening, & for the last 2 weeks practicing like crazy for an orchestra gig, which was completed on Saturday night. Today I’m sipping tea & practicing for a different orchestra gig that is tomorrow night. We’re doing the Harry Potter Symphonic Suite :)
I love my life, again.