Imperial Mojiang Golden Bud Yunnan Black Tea

I don’t think I will ever get tired of this tea. Such freshness!

2 heaping tsp for 12 oz

The best Dian Hong I’ve ever had. Thanks to Doug F for turning me on to this. It has all the classic Dian Hong flavor that I’ve come to expect with zero astringency and a very smooth, rich mouthfeel. Love love love…

I might brew it a little stronger next time to see how that goes. It is so smooth, that I bet I could get even more flavor out of it without risking too much astringency or bitterness.

The finest Yunnan gold bud tea you are likely to taste. The heady combination of caramel, chocolate, and pu-erh-like earthiness floors me every time. Stockpile this tea; Yunnan Sourcing’s prices are shockingly low for this tea.

This tea is a prime example of “all looks over taste” when it comes to tea. I got the Spring 2022 harvest of this tea from my YS order, and while this tea has beautiful golden leaves/buds, a beautiful, potent and rich aroma, and a decent liquor, everything else was the epitome of a downhill fall. Flavour was almost non-existent, least flavourful dianhong I’ve ever had. The texture was smooth but uninteresting, the character of this tea is just gone, the discussion about finish & aftertaste is out the window, and the steep longevity relatively is quite bad too. There was a slight buzzy and warming cha-qi, but that’s about it. Not a good tea.

Sipdown 7/22-2022

Logging the sipdown- truly can’t remember anything about this.

[Spring 2019 harvest] This is one of those Yunnan teas that started the golden bud craze of the recent decades. It seems that I, as many other tea drinkers, while liking this tea quite a bit struggle for the words to describe its aroma and taste. It is subtle, fleeting and ever changing.

This dianhong is really strong in any way a tea can impress you: it has an absolutely lovely and striking appearance, a distinct, hard-to-describe but charming aroma, nice murky golden liquor….

The taste is multi-layered and subtle, reminiscent of good greens but with a malty backbone and welcoming chocolate bitterness. Plenty of interesting sweetness, baked bread, fruit. In the subsequent infusions nuttiness becomes prominent. The aftertaste is long, satisfying, and also rather complex.

This is one of the teas that richly rewards experimenting with different steeping times, leaf amounts and temperature by displaying new flavors. I thoroughly enjoyed this red and will order again.

[Spring 2018 harvest]

For my morning brew I chose this black tea sample from derk. It was a good choice, it turns out that this tea ranks among my favourite black teas from YS. I will be looking to add it to my next order.

It has a nicely balanced and delicate taste, while being more bitter and less sweet than similar teas. That’s definitely a plus for me. The taste profile is somewhat tart and bitter with spicy and nutty undertones. One of the highlights is the protracted and evolving aftertaste.

Also, I am not sure if it’s related to my state of mind this morning, but I don’t think black tea has ever had such a strong defocusing effect on me, and this was only 3g. Admittedly, I drank it quite fast. The tea is very infusable too, I could get 12 infusions from it overall.

Song pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zWbsnAHXyBU

While I have a very well trained palate when it comes to black teas, I have to say that I don’t always have the vocabulary to back that up. I have similar issues with describing wines and whiskey, even the ones that I love. I’ll try to do my best though.

Dian hong teas have been my daily drinkers for the last 5 years, and pretty much the tea that made me a tea junkie. I’ve only recently started looking past my local vendors and this tea was part of my first YS order based off of a reddit recommendation. Oh boy, it sure did not disappoint.

Even though I’ll often have yunnan blacks western style, I decided to steep this in my gaiwan. I used 5g of tea in a 150ml gaiwan, starting off with a flash steep and moving slowly up to about a minute. I got 8 really good steeps out of this one. It started off with a light golden colour, becoming darker and perhaps the strongest in flavour on the 3rd and 4th steeps. Absolutely no astringency and hints of caramel and a bit earthy like a ripe puerh. The malty flavour that I love about yunnan blacks is definitely there too.

Most definitely one of the best yunnan blacks that I have ever had. This will surely be a repeat order. Looking forward to trying this western style too.

I’ve suddenly lost the ability to describe the flavour of black teas, weird. This is a lovely golden bud tea, of which I was lucky to get a sample from Nicole. I put the whole 3g sample in my 100ml gaiwan. So far I’ve done two steepings, of 30 and 40 seconds. The wet leaves have a spicy, baked-good scent that is amazing, but unfortunately not really coming out in the tea liquor, which I suspect is because I’m not yet brewing it correctly. Ok, I just tried a longer, 60sec steep. The liquor is an amber/gold colour, like whiskey. The flavour is a bit earthy and sweet, like I expect from a dian hong, but there’s an acidity that I’m not thrilled with. Just tried another 30sec steep, and the flavour is smoother, but not as aromatic. Hmm, I’ll try a few more steeps but this tea and I don’t seem to be connecting today. Oh well, can’t win ’em all. :) Happy to have had a chance to try it, though!

Another lovely tea from the great selection that DigniTea sent over. Thank you!
This is a thumping good Dian Hong, with a smooth chocolatey that is addictive. I’ve been rushing to finish the last two papers for my MA, so I haven’t had time for a proper Gong fu session in ages, but I am definitely saving the last of this for a Gong fu brew. Which is hard. Because it is delicious. I’m starting to type silly things here because I’m not feeling well, and it’s evening, which means that my temperature has probably spiked. But I do stand behind my original assessment of this tea – a delicious, smooth, seductive, chocolatey companion. Recommend.