Yunnan Wild

This was on my wishlist and variaTEA obliged! I have to say, that this is a really good cup of tea. I’ve only had the one steep right now, but plan on having a few more today while i get through work. It’s smooth, some sweet potato like notes coming through…sweet and not at all astringent. This isn’t a BOLD brew but rather more of an easy drinking tea – a good intro tea for someone who wasn’t really a fan of black tea i would say.

Count: 110 (down from the 120 VariaTEA has me up to….need to get to 80 by end of july…)

Picked March 2014
Dry Leaf: black and wiry
very aromatic: dried berries, cranberries, very light smoke, sweat, medium roast coffee, medium dark chocolate,

Wet Leaf not as aromatic. More earthy, foresty with a very distant campfire.
liquor more chocolate and malt on first infusion
sweet potato
sadly, later infusions don’t reveal much further. certainly a fine tea, but lacked mid-palate to back up its initial aromas
low astringency, medium body

It’s listed as an easy-drinking tea, which I would certainly agree with. It’s good, but not really worth the price

Apparently this was more special than I have it credit for because I thought about it all day. So mild and yet filled with rich honey and malt notes. Lovely!

Beautiful dark leaves with some deep amber hues. Incredibly aromatic with a nicely balanced taste. This black tea is rich and complex yet delicate and sweet. I would never add milk to this tea! Made it in a gaiwan for at least 8 infusions. It held its characteristic notes all the way to the end, just at slightly lower tones.

Sipdown (120)!

Thank you VariaTEA!

This is a queued tasting note.

Went into this one without much of an idea what to expect; there’s very little information on the retailer’s website (it looks like they’re more set up for local in person shopping than online orders) and there aren’t any Steepster reviews yet. But this was really good!

In fact, it was actually so good I did two infusions of it which is something I hardly ever do for anything other than oolong when I’m steeping Western style. It’s really rare for me, personally, to want to drink the same tea multiple times in one day; I just want to experience as much as possible! So that definitely says something.

The dry leaves are really pretty; they’re long and twisty and have this rusty kind of tint to them that really popped as they were steeping; very tawny and autumn like! The steeped up brew was a really pretty amber colour. It kind of reminded me of the colour of a good beer, actually.

This was actually a lot less brisk and full bodied than I had expected it to be; there was some light astringency with the first steep but that went away with the second. Other than that bit of astringency both infusions were very similar though; they had a gentle sweetness to them with top notes of fragile honeycombs and really gentle undercurrents of malt and fresh baked French bread. The finish went back to sweeter honey with floral notes as well.

This is NOT a tea to drink with milk; you would absolutely drown out the subtler, delicate flavours that are present. It’s a shame it’s not really something I can get online and it’s not available to me locally because if it was available for a reasonable price I’d totally be interest in getting a bit more of this one.

Unrelated to tea: My landlord has decided to continue renovating his house and for the last two hours all I’ve been able to hear is him hammering, essentially non-stop, right over my bedroom. It’s fucking 8PM at night! C’mon Rob, you’re giving me a serious migraine here!