Yuchi Wild Mountain Black Tea, Lot 641

Cracking open my sample of this after seeing a recommendation from Courtney. I made an order of sample sizes from TTC a while back, luckily they’re all sealed or vacuum sealed, so I’m sure they’ve held up marvelously.

Dry scent was a dried fruit explosion, some sweet and sticky but also with pops of tartness.

The steeped aroma is quite different, all cinnamon and creamed honey. Yummy. The honey and cinnamon are also present in the flavor, thank goodness. They meld perfectly with the soft bread note to make me think of thick homemade wheat bread toast slathered with creamed honey and sprinkled with cinnamon. There’s also a lovely sticky dried fruit note, so perhaps a touch of fig jam as well.

Yummy, sweet, fruity, bready, cinnamony tea. Breakfast in a mug! ;)

Starting with a conservative rating until I’ve had some more Taiwanese blacks to compare this to!

I’m finally polishing off my 250g package of this after hoarding the remaining bits of it during COVID. I ordered another 250g this week and now I can comfortably finish this off knowing more is en route. This is one of my all-time favourite teas and I usually order the 250g package once per year. I would describe this as waffle-y and delicious. I can’t wait to see what the new lot (864) brings!

Second tea of my Taiwanese black tea sampler. The Sun Moon Lake T-18 was bust but this one did not disappoint. The long, graceful yancha like leaves are interspersed with orange twigs and smell like a mixture of cocoa, flowers, berries, and dark molasses. I brewed 3g in a 160ml teapot following my standard gongfu method for black teas: 30s initial infusion at boiling followed by flash steeps.

The first steep opened with sweet potato and then as it cooled, revealed chocolate and a hint of blackberries. Subsequent steeps were noticeably lighter. The second steep tasted of cocoa with overtones of vanilla bean and buttercream. The remaining 3 steeps were similar with prominent notes of berries, vanilla, and cream.

This was a mellow and tasty black tea that doesn’t hit you over the head with anything. The flavor profile was similar to some wuyi black and lapsang teas I’ve had. Enjoyable but doesn’t really set itself apart from other Chinese black teas.

Received this tea as a sample with my massive December order. Normally don’t drink a lot of black tea with the exception of bud teas like Jin Jun Mei or Dian Hong, so I was excited to give this a try. Happy to say that Taiwan Tea Crafts has impressed once again!

The dry leaves were surprisingly aromatic. Notes of candied apricots, plums, and fruit leather. The wet leaves, however, were much more interesting with a spicy/sweet combination reminiscent of cinnamon rolls beneath a familiar black tea earthiness.

I took this for five steepings at 6/3/6/8/10 seconds accordingly. I was starting to get a little jittery after five, since I was drinking alone, but could very easily have taken this tea for more. The liquor was light amber with a medium body and an immediate hit of stone fruit sweetness on the palate. Plums were the dominant flavor to me but dates, figs, and candied apricots all came through as well. There was a spiciness like cinnamon beneath the surface if you looked for it. Flavor was consistent through the first four infusions with maybe a slight shift toward the teas spicier notes in the fifth.

Overall, a pleasantly sweet black tea with no overwhelming or imbalanced flavors. I could definitely see this tea becoming one of the go-to black teas in my shelf.