Yunnan Sourcing US

Dry leaves smell smoky and you get a bit of the “old library books” smell, too. Brews up to a pleasant and savory mushroom broth, with “medicinal” top notes – spicy cinammon/anise/fennel-type notes, but slightly transformed into the medicinal taste that only seems to be found in some aged puerhs. Oak at the front of the sip, and, despite the smoky smell, not really that much smoke in the cup at all.

Spring 2025: Definitely some of the largest-leafed green tea that I’ve ever brewed, the dry leaves are impressive and formed into longish wrinkled strips of dark green and silver. Interestingly, the dry leaves give off an aroma of tropical fruit.

Brewed up, the aroma transforms into a more familiar green chestnut type of scent, and you get a strong cup of green tea. The light tropical fruit notes shimmer on the front end of the sip, but quickly give way to a balanced but thick, nutty, and lightly sweet potion which lingers a bit and fades a few seconds later. Surprisingly, not any bitter edge to this green tea! I was expecting more of a fight from a pure Assamica large-leafed Yunnan green tea, but this is a smooth and pleasant ride all the way through.

This sheng has notes of tobacco and slight smoke with some apricot fruitiness hiding in the background. There is more going on, too, but kind of subtle and difficult to describe. I can feel maybe some orchid-like florals and some herbaceousness going on, with parsley notes and maybe just a whiff of mint. A friendly sheng without much of a bitter edge to it. A little bit of citrus rind bitterness in the mix. The tobacco and smoke notes are lighter and easy to confront.

Grapefruit and kind of a vegetative “jungle-i-ness” to it, this tea has plenty of a citrus bitterness. I enjoy it quite a bit.

Lovely guava and passionfruit aromas, which translate into “white sangria” fruitiness in the cup, with an alcohol-like strength behind it I’ve recently noted in other Yunnan white teas, particularly the Schedule White from white2tea. That element is not quite as strong here, but definitely present. A nice white tea experience.

Ashmanra’s sipdown challenge – April 2025 Tea #1 -April 4 – Qing Ming Festival: drink a Chinese tea, preferably an early spring green

TWO sipdowns today and both of them Chinese teas!  Not sure why I gave this one such a low rating.  I mean, it isn’t remarkable but it also isn’t bad.  Also, this low rating was from eleven days ago, so you’d think I would remember the reason. I will raise the rating from 64. Maybe overleafing it helped the flavor.  It sure helped to get it gone.  I also finished a sample of Teavivre’s dragonwell today.  Delicious.
2025 sipdowns: 22
2025 unique sipdowns:18

oh no, another tea I never wrote a note for and now I’m approaching the sipdown. I thiiiinkkk this was from JakeB? Thanks very much. This is MANY years old, so I won’t really talk about flavor here at this point. It is however a cake that likes to stay together in its brick-like shape, even with boiling water for many minutes. And then by that time, it certainly has a harshness to it. So the flavor today is: harsh.

I topped off my sample of this cake on Christmas Day, and was sore about doing so. I believe in drinking my teas (which is why I’m limiting myself to no more than 3 tea purchases in 2025, aside from the monthly tea clubs, to get through some samples that are one session away from completion), so that’s what I’m working on doing! Ha-ha. I felt that 2024 was a good year of my getting back onto the Steepster train, which greatly improved my push through the sipdown pile! I was able to explore new and revisit older teas that have sat in my collection for ages. With some upcoming changes to my life in the coming months, I’ve become quite self aware of spending more time with the teas I have. I can’t bare to avoid any tea hauls, so I’ll save them for birthday, anniversary, and Christmas. :)

I must admit that are many teas I’ve enjoyed, yet there are some, such as this You Le Shan, that bring forth a rush of surprise in finding yet another really good tea. This tea isn’t layered with tasting notes that are complex, but the tea hits in the thickness of the broth and the heavy hit in the qi. I felt jollier than normal on Christmas.

I like this even more than the Spring 2023 Heaven’s Door raw pu-erh I tried recently, and this tea is at a more affordable price point, too. A similar flavor profile between the two, but this autumn tea has more perfumy florals (violet) to go along with the cotton candy sweetness, which is also somewhat nectar-like. This tea is a bit more complex with more grainy flavors and apricots, too, and some deeper more leathery notes to it. A really wonderful tea!

I bought a tuo of this a few years ago, and liked it enough to buy a full sleeve. I swear I thought I posted a review of it here, but now it seems gone. My working tuo has been 3 yrs in a jelly-jar with a breathable filter paper cover in my dark tea cabinet at ambient, 55-60 %RH, while the sleeve is sealed with a 60 %RH humidity pack. The large leaves in the tuo were so tightly compressed that it crumbled off as I tried to pry some out. Today I brewed 5g of leaf in 100 ml boiling alpine spring water, starting for 1 min, for each of 8 sequential infusions, going 2.5 min for the 8th. I use a stainless steel strainer and a set of porcelain espresso cups for convenience. (My goal was to achieve the same tint in each liquor, which is difficult to observe in a ceramic teapot or decorative cups.)

The tea was potent, lightly astringent, moderately bitter, very smoky still (it’s now 20 yr old!). Good tea flavor on the tongue and mouth, with notes of hardwood smoke, camphor, cardamom, and an aroma of freshly-fallen autumn leaves. Although it’s been dry-aged both abroad and here in my midwestern cupboard, there was a tinge of “humidity”. All 8 infusions had the same flavors and aromas and strength, so I might as well have brewed it western-style. Perhaps I used too much leaf, so I’ll reduce it to 1 g next time and post a followup note in the comments.

Spring 2024: Beautiful green tea. Nutty and sweet with lingering taste. A touch of green apple tartness with nice elderflower florals in taste and aroma. Feels nice and buttery, too.

Pretty nice. Definitely still has a bitter edge to it, kind of like bitter grapefruit. The flipside of the bitterness is a nice grapefruit/citrusy sweetness. This also has the cannabis-like flavors I’ve noticed in the other purple tea varieties I have tried. I still prefer the Wild Tree Purple Moonlight White Tea from Jinggu, but this would be nice on occasion.

2023: Nice cotton candy sweetness. This is the sweetest of all the raw pu-erhs I have been sampling. It is indeed thick with a buttery mouthfeel, as described. The flavor is kind of “empty,” like how a good Keemun tea can be – deceptively simple. It feels like not much else is going on, but if you pay attention there are hints of florals, fruits, and maybe some oak at the edges of your sips. Definitely an easy drinker.

Spring 2024: Oops, I had intended to buy the Spring 2023 version, as I know the roast will take a while to mellow out a bit. I brewed a batch up and it was pretty bad because of the fresh roast. I then realized I accidentally purchased Spring 2024 version. Doh! This one needs to sit in the cabinet for at least 6 more months before I try it again, maybe longer. Well I will be excited to try it again many months from now!

“Dark” florals. Maybe like a violet that is somewhat past its prime? A little bit of mulch, and some grape-i-ness. All these qualities are very subtle, but the tea itself is strong with pretty thick body. It is smooth. Sometimes leathery and sometimes not, sometimes briny and sometimes not. Cotton candy sweetness at times. This tea is kind of a wizard, putting on different faces. It seems to me this is a pretty great example of a young raw pu-erh with complexity but also a sophisticated smoothness that can be enjoyed immensely in its younger stages. Not that I know all that much about raw pu-erh yet.

Far from a Shamrock Shake, but I think there is kind of a minty element that seems to be the main thing going on here. Some woodiness, but the flavor profile is very distinctly different from the other Xiaguan “Gold Ribbon” tuo cha that I recently tried – In particular, I am not getting any spice notes. The mouthfeel is noticeably kind of “creamy,” which is interesting. Not a bad tea! It is cool that you can pick these up for fairly low prices.

Similar to the 2021 Xiaguan “Gold Ribbon” tuo cha I’m currently drinking, but a lot smoother. Because I brew western style, these 8-gram dragon balls are a treat for me, brewing up a bit heavier and more syrup-like than I am used to. I typically use 5 grams if tea for my 16-ounce glass, and now I am using 8 grams instead with this tea. I couldn’t bring myself to break up the beautiful pearls of tea, which come individually wrapped with little twist-ties.

I guess with this particular blend, you are receiving the “luck of the draw,” as there are many high-quality mao cha samples potentially included here, but they will not be uniformly blended. So I suppose one dragon ball may taste somewhat different from another. In my experience, the three dragon balls I’ve sampled have tasted more or less the same.

This was mellow brew overall, with nice woody notes and some cinammon/fennel spice in the background and hints of florals and fruit. There is a touch of smoke, but I wouldn’t consider smoke to be a major contributor to the overall flavor profile here. An enjoyable and amazingly smooth blend of raw pu-erh. At $3.25 per pearl, I’m not sure I would continue buying these, as I can find teas I enjoy more for less. But I’m glad I sampled and it was a good experience to help me understand the world of raw pu-erhs better.

I do very much enjoy the dragon ball concept, and will probably keep exploring these. The convenience of the individual-serving dragon balls makes much more sense to me than having to break up awkward cakes of tea. It would be nice to find more dragon balls available in my preferred 5-gram dosage, though, but I guess you can’t have everything.

Spring 2023: Took me a while to review this one. It doesn’t hit you over the head with jasmine, but is rather subtle. Which is nice, because the base green tea shines through. I would swear it is from the same garden or maybe a similar garden from which YS sources its First Flush Mao Feng green tea, which I love. The base tea here seems to share the same softly floral/lavender characteristics as that one. Nice and sweet and a good complement to the jasmine fragrance. This is a nicely balanced tea, with a good medium body to it. And good for a few steeps western style.

Spring 2024: Wow! The small leaves smell wonderful and are very nice in appearance, mostly in obvious bud/leaf sets.

First steep is very light in color and fragrant. Nice and sweet and deceptively light. I like them like this! Lots of little “hairs” from the young buds in cup, and you get that nice “green chestnut” flavor. Some florals are present, perhaps along the lines of osmanthus.

Subsequent steep at three minutes is a bit more yellow and robust.

I’m not super experienced with dragonwell teas, and certainly I am not an expert on authentic ones from the Westlake area. But I imagine a tea of similar quality to this would cost much more if it came from the region. So in that sense, I guess this tea is a pretty good deal. But it is on the pricey side.

Woodsy, with hints of cinnamon and fennel, and with good body and a touch of sweetness. You get some of typically roasty/smoky aroma and flavor of raw puerh, but by no means is this anywhere near as smoky as a lapsang or even the typical “Russian caravan” type blend – much, much, less so. Just light touches of the smoke/roast, really. The bright herbal notes give it a nice “medicinal” quality. The tea coats the mouth and lingers with a pleasant aftertaste. Doesn’t seem to cause me the slight stomach discomfort that I’ve noticed from some raw puerh teas.

I know this tea may be quite a bit younger than what would be considered an ideal drinking age, but in my opinion there is no need to wait. Enjoyable right now. One of these days I’ll have to try a well-aged version of this same tea to see the difference.