Yunnan Sourcing

Broke open another orange today — to me this is the pinnacle of natural flavoring in pure tea leaf. Gong Ting fermented in an orange rind and it is delicious. You break off as much orange peel as you want to add flavor to your puerh. This is a highly enjoyable find!

Not available from Yunnan Sourcing at the moment; sourced from Grandness Tea on AliExpress.

Over the past week I have been sipping on two lovely “dark teas” (both are new to me) – this one and a 2012 Supreme Purple Bud Raw Puer Mini Cake (8g).

This is a highly enjoyable find! Gong Ting fermented in an orange rind and it is delicious. The first 2-3 steeps are a bit strong with a pleasant astringency but the later steepings are more mellow – very enjoyable cups from the first to the last. If you break up a bit of the rind with the tea leaves, you can adjust the flavor to match your individual preferences. I find the orange flavor to be quite subtle and the leaf itself is of a good quality. Each orange package weighs 22-24 grams so it’s good for four different sessions (each session with many resteeps).

Not sure if I have the 2012 or 2013 since it came as an unlabeled freebie. Was really kinda nasty when it first arrived (from the overpoweringly pungent chrysanthemums, not the puerh), but after airing out for a few months it’s starting to settle down and get drinkable, and after aggressive rinsing it’s actually surprisingly nice. Sweet, and kind of a medicinal and spicy sort of flavor. After cursing this tiny brick (and it is tiny, that 100g is so densely compressed) for completely stinking up my entire YS order on it’s long journey here, I’m now actually enjoying its existence and looking forward to its future, so long as it promises to stay far far away from my other tea (and from my yixing).

I had planned to get out in the garden early this morning, but slept until after 8, laid in bed meditating for awhile, made myself some egg drop soup with mustard greens, caramelized shallots, & a side of bacon. Now I’m sipping this tea. Usually I go with 1 T x 3 & 5 minutes, but since this is the very last cup I went a little heavier (basically what was left in the bag), x 1/2/& 5 minute steeps. My final notes on this tea (until I allow myself to place a huge order from YS, which, according to Ms. Theresa “is NOT going to be today”, is that I like it. Honey, Malt, Cedar, & Buttermilk are the things I’m tasting today in my cup, and enjoying every last sip.
Some part of me is really wanting to just lay up today, sip tea, & accomplish nothing, LOL. But I hear my garden calling my name…there are berries to pick, more squash plants to put in the ground, things to harvest…guess I’d better get on it then.

Tea to go! I’ve combined a couple of steeps of this one into my thermos to sip during the wedding reception. I wish I had better descriptions to offer, but all I can say right now is it’s sweet, lightly floral, & enjoyable. And it travels well in my stainless steel thermos (not all teas do). It will still be hot & it will still taste good in a couple of hours.
That makes me happy.

Another Sipdown from Yunnan Sourcing, & the 2014 version is on it’s way to me, so it’s sort of a joke to even count it. In fact, if the truth must be known, my sipdown extravaganza is a bit of a farce, as I have received boxes of tea from several sources & placed a couple of orders. I won’t add those teas in until the last day of the month, but will probably end the month with more teas than I started with, LOL.

However, it won’t be a total waste of sipdowns, simply because I will have polished off all the older samples, TOMC & TOMCR, etc. Everything I have will be fairly new!
Except for all the puerh…sigh…but that’s a different story all together, right?

I like this tea (I should say something about the tea, right?)
It has a savory & floral quality, & a bit of spiciness that lingers & builds up to a tangy quality, kind of like buttermilk.

Monday is maintainance day at my house. I just finished breakfast & watered ALL the houseplants, accompanied by this tea. It is not particularly special, but it is tasty, with notes of malt, fruit, & a touch floral.
Next maintainance activity: a shower (don’t worry, I do that more than once a week, LOL).
The main maintainance activity of the day is….you guessed it…
“Quit screwing around & finish those damn TAXES!”
yes…that was Ms Theresa…

Enjoyed a cup of this earlier today: lightly malty, lightly floral, today I picked up a little Cedar.

I’ve been enjoying a couple of steepings of this one. We’re on season 3 of Supernatural. I have things to do at my house, but for now, Tony & I are enjoying the moment. :)

This is delicious!
It isn’t super chocolaty, or crazy malty, or anything like that.
It’s just a really nice cup of tea, rich & smooth. I’ve been drinking it all morning, & I’ve been really enjoying it.
Sometimes I don’t need a tea to be over the top awesome, I just need it to be really really good, & to taste like tea. This tea has floral elements, & a sweet fruitiness, and a bready maltiness, all in a one honest cup, & it resteeps well too.

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!