This reviews a pretty good Yunnan Sourcing shu pu'er version. I almost never read vendor reviews before writing review notes, and didn't in this case, but while adding a second comparison review of a more modest local Chinatown version (the Honolulu Chinatown, this time, since I'm not in Bangkok right now) I looked up what it was:
Golden Needle "Year of the Tiger" Ripe Pu-erh Tea Cake ($12 per 100 gram cake, not bad)
This cake is pressed entirely from 2021 Spring harvested Yi Wu area tea that was wet piled in Menghai! This is a tippy "Golden Needle" grade ripe. It's very smooth and sweet, with some bittersweet character that reminds us of dark chocolate. Bitterness is barely noticeable but acts as a counterpoint to the sweet velvety taste of this thick viscous tea. This tea also carries some dried cherry and vanilla notes as well.
Pressed in late 2021 to commemorate the Year of the Tiger this lovely tea cake would be perfect for gifting during 2022 or stockpiling for aging.
Clean, smooth, complex, and aromatic ripe pu-erh tea that performs well beyond it's price tag!
Pressed by the Cha Nong Hao Brand
Region: Yi Wu Mountains of Xishuangbanna
So that would be $42 for a 350 gram cake's worth, kind of a lower range than one typically runs across these days, but not far off what "factory tea" sells for. It's interesting this is sold as "golden needle" grade; that's not familiar. Finer material shu is usually referenced as "gong ting;" it's not clear to me how this varies from that. It turned up through a search on Steepster, instead of on their site. It would have been nice if vendors listing interesting products there had prevented the decline of that site.
That product summary is essentially how these notes describe it, just missing noticing any vanilla, or bitterness, with that not pointing out that it could use a year or two to age to settle out the wu doi / fermentation effect funkiness. I would agree that it's significantly better than a $43 standard size cake version would ordinarily be. Then it's also interesting comparing how much overlap there is with that cheap Chinatown version, which more or less represents a best case for what a $14 standard sized cake. I wouldn't drink that range too often; there is probably as much pesticide exposure risk in drinking that kind of tea as in anything else you might find.
Editing note: that cake includes the description "Pressed by the Cha Nong Hao Brand." I would assume that all Yunnan Sourcing in-house cakes are actually pressed by a secondary vendor, that it's not Scott fermenting and pressing the material himself, or other employees of Yunnan Sourcing doing it, but this may relate to this being positioned as a vendor product instead of as an in-house production, which again would surely involve purchasing material and pressing by external suppliers. Next one might wonder if that implies that this is better or not as good as other Yunnan Sourcing products, but it's probably as well to not overthink that, to just try the teas and see what you think.
Review:
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this is upside down, in relation to typical framing here |
First infusion: heavy on black bread range, like a dark rye. A somewhat familiar musty or slightly sour range adjoins that, including dark mineral, like slate, but even warmer, and a sort of wet cardboard sourness. I suspect that some of that would fade over the course of a year or two, that this would improve, but it's ok as it is. The depth and complexity are nice, even though it's a fairly straightforward and approachable tea. This is how shu often goes for me.
It's interesting comparing this with a Moychay version, a decent one I brought to Hawaii, which is much older, so cleaner but faded a little in intensity. And also to a dirt cheap shu I bought here in Chinatown, which I hadn't really planned to review, but might. That would make a good addition here, adding a comparison review of both of those, with the three laying out a lot of shu range [I just skipped the Moychay version part; it was too much].
To some extent that really cheap ($14 cake) Chinatown tea matches the sour and slightly musty aspect in this, but it's stronger in that, in a less positive form. This leans a little towards cocoa and fruit too, and that one kind of doesn't, leaving off mostly at warm earth tones, and range that also copies the dark bread theme.
Second infusion: cleaned up a little; that musty sourness backed way off. It's hard to express just how light it was to begin with as well, pronounced but a minor input. Flavor depth is nice in this, even though it comes across as simple. Again it covers dark bread, towards seed spice input, warm mineral, toward cacao / cocoa, and leaning towards fruit. The range all mixes together; that causes inputs to seem less clear and distinct. That warm earthiness is a bit like a coffee flavor; this kind of tea might not be bad for helping coffee drinkers to bridge over.
Mouthfeel is nice and full, and aftertaste lends the experience length, but both aren't as pronounced or as interesting in form as can occur in some other tea versions. It's a bit creamy. Probably with another year to transition out that touch of sourness this would be really positive, although limited in refinement. It's a somewhat basic form of shu, as I take shu to generally be in general, but I don't mean that as saying it's only average, instead that it's straightforward and drinkable in a typical way. It's hard for me to place it in relation to the top end of standard factory teas, since I don't go out of my way to drink a lot of shu. But it's pretty good.
Third infusion: the spice range is picking up; that really resembles a dark rye now, even more, both the dark yeasty bread input and the caraway seed edge. There is fruit range, but it's hard to identify. To me it's close to a dried cherry, but surely others would interpret it differently, given how it's a minor input that mixes with the rest. That's true of the coffee or cacao range too; this has so much depth because of minor additional range joining in, but it's hard to identify as distinct. Then in the end it still comes across as a really simple experience, because it all integrates as a set.
As an aside, it's odd that Scott's tasting notes and mine ended up this similar. The cherry isn't that pronounced that one would have to peg it as that, it's just most like that to me, and apparently to him as well. Cool it worked out that way.
It has been interesting just drinking a half dozen tea types that I've brought for the last six weeks, not something I completely thought through before coming here. I'd planned to add some teas at the end of packing but ran into a long list of other details to cover, and space issues to consider, and dropped it out, mostly due to focusing on the rest. One of those teas is an inexpensive aged sheng, a version I bought in Shenzhen something like 4 years ago, and only one a shu, that Moychay version. I'm drinking mostly sheng, as I tend to do, maybe 5 versions of it.
William of Farmerleaf mentioned that he felt he learned from mostly drinking one sheng version for a month back at the start of the pandemic in a video, and to me sticking to a half dozen, or just over, has felt a little like that. In one sense it's limiting, but it's also cool to keep returning to the same teas, to see what comes of experiencing them over and over. Some people always drink tea like that, from online comments about such things, but I routinely alternate drinking a few dozen versions.
Fourth infusion: Even for the more novel flavor inputs fading into a narrower set in one sense this is improved; it seems cleaner, and a bit more refined. Most traces of the early sourness are gone, and a less intense dark bread effect is still nice. Warm mineral might play an even stronger role. Level of cacao / cocoa input seems open to interpretation, as if one might see that as a dominant flavor, or else as non-existent, depending on how aspects are interpreted.
Fifth infusion: this seems to just be fading a bit now, ok for stretching out a few more weaker infusions, since it still has some intensity to offer, but it's diminishing. The fine leaves and bud form, and fermented character, seemed to cause it to brew fast, accounting for that high intensity early on, but causing it to fade a bit faster than larger and more whole leaves would. I'm still drinking this round at a normal tea infusion strength, based on brewing it for 30 seconds instead of much faster, but it was quite powerful earlier on. Not everyone would like drinking shu a bit stronger than typical teas are brewed, as I tried and reviewed this, but that's a normal preference for me.
Let's see how that inexpensive Chinatown tea compares.
Generic Chinatown shu pu'er review
Second infusion (as well to start here; the first was light): not so bad. A bit of cardboard sort of flavor joins in, but it's not really more sour than the YS version had been, or varied from that form, or probably much stronger. Earthiness is similar, the warm mineral and dark wood kind of range. It gives up a little in terms of a cacao / cocoa edge, and limited dried fruit, but the overlap in character is as significant as the differences. It's similar range shu, just not quite as good.
From there not having much of a flavor list to unpack is the main difference. It includes similar dark wood, leaning towards coffee, with a warm mineral base, and a touch of funky sourness, and that's pretty much it. For being made of chopped leaves this is brewing slower, and some stem material, instead of finer leaves and buds, so to make it more equivalent I should stretch out the time to 20 seconds or so, while the YS version brewed quite intense for high proportion 10 second infusion times. I'll try that.
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sticks and varying fermentation showing, not a great sign |
Third infusion: a little stronger it's easier to pick up a faint touch of geosmin, of actual dirt. Or is that petrichor, a related but difference flavor similar to the smell that occurs after it rains? Maybe both. I must admit, I appreciate the YS version being mostly the same but with more edge of cacao and dried fruit than this tasting like dirt. The feel of this is a bit thinner too; it lacks a lot of that thick creaminess that decent shu has, never mind how that comes across in the best of all versions.
On the positive side this seems to include a touch of root spice that kind of works, which the YS version more or less didn't, unless it was lost in the rest of the complexity, beyond dark bread seeming to include a little seed spice. To be clear I think this is pretty good shu for $14 a cake; I think running across much more significant flaws would probably be more typical, gambling on buying cheap tea versions like this. And it's as well not to overthink the likelihood that this was grown using as many chemicals as any other plant material. It's just a guess, but I think for drinking one cake of this the risk is moderate, but for including this range of tea in what one normally drinks, even only part of the time, could really be a negative health input. Then one wonders about what chemicals are used to grow food, but it's as well to not overthink that either. Probably a lot of them.
Fourth infusion: the sour funkiness is essentially gone; as with the YS version that aspect dropped out. Then it's on to whether the extra earthiness and reduced positive range works nearly as well, with the base character pretty much the same. To drink either mindlessly, as a beverage to adjoin food for breakfast, the experience is similar, but this tea doesn't work as well to focus on positive aspects.
Conclusions:
The Yunnan Sourcing version was definitely better, but to me it was also interesting how much the two overlapped. In a sense it's not a fair comparison, because in another year and a half both would've dropped out a lot of that early fermentation flavor, the sourness or cardboard box range. I think the YS version has potential to be much better then, and this Chinatown tea can only develop so far. All the same in 2 or 3 years it would be quite drinkable, a rare case of a $14 cake working out.
The "shu is shu" theme, that it's all essentially similar, is both supported and rejected by these two examples, by the comparison. The basic character of both is essentially the same, the flavor set, even to a limited extent the level of complexity. But then if someone values shu being better, as would be normal for someone on that preference page, they could see a world of difference between the two.
For value the YS version costs roughly 3 times as much, but then it is better. Still, 12 cents a gram is value oriented range for tea of that general quality level. It's crazy thinking that the other one costs 4 cents per gram; that's like CTC Assam price range, a $40 kg. It could've easily been undrinkable; gambling on buying something you might throw out comes up in that price range.
That's not unfamiliar, the practice of seeing how spending very little works out. When we visited Shenzhen, about 4 years ago now, I offset the risk and demand of needing to identify tea quality (and authenticity, depending on version range) by not spending much, which comes with the same risk of failure cases, even if you can try teas. It's possible to make bad judgement if you try a lot of teas quickly, and there's always the chance that what you try won't be what you are really going to get.
Cheap teas tend to include significant flaws, often a very thin feel character, and lack of depth or complexity is also a routine limitation. Some of that applied to this Chinatown shu, but not in the same sense the worst of what I bought on that trip--all sheng--also did. A grocery store sheng version there, which sold in the $10 range, if I remember right, was better than most of what I bought in a local tea market there, all of it costing more than that.
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just under $10, but conversion rates must keep changing |
People recommend "using trusted vendors" for a good reason; even a less impressive Yunnan Sourcing version is going to reduce risk of experiencing really bad tea. Since preference is relative people with developed, higher quality expectations might see half the YS catalog as a good example of poor quality tea, and as bad value regardless of the pricing, but I think that would be a minority opinion. I've tried a couple teas from them I didn't like but many more were pretty solid, positive to experience and good value. To me--not necessarily a universal perspective--that sort of judgment about "misses" doesn't apply as directly to shu, which is all that much closer to the same thing. There's no reason why the extra flavor complexity, depth, feel, and refinement of the YS version wouldn't make it much more pleasant to drink than the cheaper tea I've compared it to here, and fundamentally quite different, even though I see them being as similar as they are different, in one sense.
I suppose anyone might judge teas types that they like, but don't prefer most, in this kind of way, seeing large differences in character and quality as kind of minor, and all relative. Or it would be possible to "not get" the higher quality focus, or to see that as quite critical. I remember trying versions of grades of Longjing for the first time in a Bangkok Chinatown shop, before I started this blog. I could tell there was some difference between them, but couldn't place that difference in relation to preference, not even to tell why some minor variation should be more positive. Now I'd probably get it, although it's hard to say if I would always like the higher quality versions more. Probably.
I do appreciate the difference in these shu versions, and that the Moychay version I've brought is probably in between the two for quality level, but perhaps better than either at this time for being older, and properly settled. For me differences in sheng quality and character map over to preference grading better; better versions I tend to like more, versus as much just noticing differences.
This is all a subject that James of TeaDB keeps returning to, how he drinks factory shu as everyday drinkers, optimizing value and experience by drinking a lot of basic range but pleasant teas. He probably wouldn't buy this cheaper version, and might set this YS tea aside for a year or two if he did try it. Not all shu versions include this much sour / funky character a year after being produced, but it's also not really unusual. Drinking 2 or 3 year old shu resolves that issue, even if in some cases teas don't really need that much rest.
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a recent outing to Waimanalo beach (east Oahu; we live in Honolulu now, more or less) |
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view from the bus; it's a long, clean, and empty beach |
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the main theme was visiting, not the postcard setting, but of course we swam too |
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the other view from that yard, just amazing |
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ridgeline hiking earlier. I should do a travel blog post about their mid-semester break. |
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