yubang Silver bud

Just got my TuochaTea order and this was the first tea that I tried. I love the silver bud pu-erh teas, as they are very approachable: almost like a white tea with added depth. Probably a good tea for someone who wants to gradually ease into sheng.

Things started out badly. The photo on the website shows a perfectly silver beeng, but what I got was more like salt and pepper. Also, the tea came in an original wrapper that was all Chinese (Greek to me) and an outer wrapper that had a sticker saying 2008 silver buds, rather than the 2011 on the website. I’m not going to complain, since one normally pays a premium for older tea. I noticed that once I steeped the tea, the volume of buds vs non-bud was about 10 to 1 so can’t really complain about the non-bud leaves either.

My first cup was wonderful: exactly what I was hoping for from this tea. It was very light, with a sort of honeysuckle aroma and a taste of raw cane sugar (we used to buy sugar cane as a treat when I was a kid). The finish was wonderful. In the second cup, the cha qi became very noticeable, putting me an in excellent mood. The third pot was also great, but the fourth was noticeably weaker, with a woody flavor replacing the sugar and honeysuckle. I was able to get a couple more pots out of it by using longer steeps, but they lacked the finesse of the first 3 pots. I use 2 grams per 2 oz water and 10, 20, 30 s steeps, so typically get fewer steeps than those who use more tea. Still, I usually get more than this.

This was a great value at $26 per beeng. My only complaint is that I ordered it two days after Thanksgiving and it arrived 3 days after Valentine’s day. Next time I’ll pay (through the nose) for air mail.