I'm reviewing a black tea version from that last Viet Sun order. I love Vietnamese, Thai, and Laos black teas, that are often more or less made in the Yunnan / Dian Hong style. It's the type that I've bought the largest quantity of in single orders, buying more than a kg of a Thai and Vietnamese version over the last few years (each, per only one large order of each).
It's great as an everyday tea, something to have with breakfast. It probably doesn't work rolling together everything made in a few countries as all one thing, so that generality really requires a bit of interpretation, that I won't waste words on here. Some teas are like that. Not really better than above average Dian Hong versions, but along the same line.
It could sound like I'm exaggerating how much I love different teas in reviews, given how my impression is often consistently positive. I guess those Thai and Laos sheng from Rishi didn't work out like that; they were good, but with significant limitations. This black tea was favorable but also not completely exceptional. I think it might have aging potential, which tends to be expressed over a couple of years, so it wouldn't take the 20 to 25 year cycle that sheng pu'er does to change. It's all covered in the review notes. This is the vendor description:
Y Tý Sun Dried Black Spring 2026 ($21 for 100 grams; a good price, but still kind of standard)
A really nice black tea made in the sun dried style from one of our favorite tea areas, Y Tý.
Made from old and ancient trees in the Dao village, this tea brews up into a rich copper red soup. Floral, fruity, sweet and layered with a light bitterness, rich mouthfeel and long finish.
Season: April 2026
Picking Standard: 1 bud, 2-3 leaves
Region: Y Tý, Lào Cai
Elevation: 1300-1800m
It's interesting seeing 2025 versions still selling on their site. It goes without saying but you can't really compare a 2025 or 2024 version of the same tea (apparently from the same origin and producer), and expect aging input to be the only difference. Tea versions vary year to year, across pretty much all types and producers. Weather is just too much of an input, and other factors would come into play. But whatever differences you do experience could be interesting, and trying to see what you make of it could be pleasant.
Review:
First infusion: I brewed this a little long to get it going, something like 30 seconds. Taste is great. Sweetness is nice, and there is plenty of flavor complexity to unpack. Interpretations would vary, a lot, but to me it tastes like fruit (a little like dried dark cherry), with some earthier tree bark range, and a sun-dried tomato savory input. There's also just about as much cacao as all of that.
There's a standard black tea flavor range that isn't always a main input in Yunnan style black teas, a sort of "tastes like tea" flavor, which I guess is actually complex and hard to describe. This includes that. It's not so far from well-cured leather range, like a bomber jacket might smell, but of course it's not exactly that. Sweetness is good but this could be sweeter. Feel is fine, but nothing unusual.
Second infusion: a woody sort of input picks up. This isn't exactly a fruit heavy black tea version, which can come up with this style range. It's not unusual for versions like this, that are backed off in oxidation level, to pick up sweetness, depth, and even intensity over the course of a couple of years. This is relatively fully oxidized, or rather that input seems to be mixed, from leaf color, and some of it is. It should still have good aging potential. It's just a guess, just my own take, but I think there's no reason to ever hold onto teas like this for more than 3 or 4 years, that it doesn't keep changing and improving. It's fine now though.
I brewed this round on the light side, to see what that changed, and it changes things, which flavor aspects come across, and the feel. I'll try it brewed longer next round, for over 20 seconds.
I'm trying this on the morning after a heavy rain, the day after a kind of rough three day audit (my work). I didn't even do the audit, or serve as a main subject, I was in a management oversight sort of role. It was still a lot, still tiring. It has been rough getting back to commuting, working onsite, and that location added an extra distance beyond our offices. That site was pretty fantastic, but I don't want to add too much about work themes here, so I'll not say why.
Third infusion: limited sweetness would be a limitation for this tea, for many, expecting standard Dian Hong style. But it's good. It comes across a little closer to good orthodox Assam than SE Asian black tea versions usually do. Maybe there is a touch of malt in this, but I don't mean mostly because of that. That taste like a standard black tea range is part of it, and this limited sweetness level. Feel is standard, not overly rich, or dry, but a conventional, structured, slightly dry black tea feel matches really good Assam.
It's odd how this is one of the first versions of SE Asian black tea that malt works for. You feel that structure on your tongue as well, what you would expect to pair with the malt, leather, and leaning towards wood flavor aspects. Even sweetness can pick up sometimes when aging less oxidized black teas, so this might be a good bit different in even one year. Not much would probably still be around; I bought 100 grams of it, I think.
I'm still working with a limited tea budget, but as I'll be mentioning that still related to buying tea three times already this year (the Vietnamese Quang Tom versions, the Thai and Laos sheng cakes from Rishi, and now these). More Thai sheng is on the way, and Thai black tea, and a couple of inexpensive cakes from Chen Sheng Hao. Someone mentioned one of their lower cost cakes being good, and it was too tempting to pass up. They're better known for higher end, higher quality blends, and for Lao Ban Zhang. I tried a sampler set from them a couple of years ago, covering more of that; it was good.
Fourth infusion: richness picks up. The flavor range doesn't shift enough to add a new list. It's nice so much complexity is there, the cacao, touch of vague fruit, malt, wood, etc. A sweeter flavor input and more fruit or cacao would really make this stand out, or more depth in a sense that's hard to describe. For Dian Hong often that covers a range like roasted sweet potato or yam. If someone was looking for that this would seem more like yam. Interpretations would vary.
The dryness is interesting, since it comes across as a feel structure, not a flaw. This would be fantastic tea to have with breakfast. In a way that's an insult, like saying a version would be good with milk, or a Scotch whiskey would be good with coke, but of course that's how I'm drinking most of the tea I ever drink. Five days a week I wouldn't have time for extended morning or afternoon sessions, now that I work during the day again. It was really nice working from 4 to midnight back in Hawaii; it sort of stretched out the day. But any work schedule works better without two or more hours going towards commuting.
Fifth infusion: dried fruit might be picking up a little; that's nice. There is a nice depth to this tea, it's just not in exactly the form I expected. In Dian Hong deeper tones can tie to mineral, or fruit or cacao range, or to roasted yam or sweet potato aspects. Here that malt and mineral seems to connect with what comes across as an underlying taste context. With just a little more sweetness it would all connect together better. Someone really could add a little sugar, but I wouldn't.
For someone who loves good orthodox Assam this might really ring a bell. It's sort of in between that range and normal Dian Hong. Astringency is limited, of course, the dryness or edgy feel structure. Intensity is good but still moderate. Complexity is fine but the aspects could balance together differently. I suspect a year or two of aging will resolve a lot of that, and it will be much improved. For a lot of people it could seem off-putting or problematic to buy a tea to drink in a year or two, but for sheng drinkers maybe it's already familiar ground.
I wouldn't buy the Y Ty moacha I just reviewed to hold onto though; it's so good now that drinking straight through it would make a lot of sense. I have just a little of a version from two years ago, from one of these villages; maybe I'll do a comparison. I think this year's teas were a little better than then though, so maybe it's not a completely fair comparison.
Sixth infusion: this is a good tea for drinking a full cycle of rounds, apparently. It's the most positive it has been, as the last round also was, and I'm not stretching infusion times by that much to keep up intensity. A warm cacao oriented note picks up, and depth improves. In a lot of teas a certain mineral flavor range or astringency will come forward a lot more in late rounds, something that brews out more in longer steeps, when a lot of the other positive range has passed through, and has already been extracted. This doesn't pick up astringency, or strong mineral range, at all. But then I'm not stretching the time yet either, although next round will be when that applies, and it will need 45 seconds or so instead of around 30 to keep up intensity.
Aftertaste trails on a little more; that's one part of what I mean by the experience of depth. The other relates to how the warm mineral tones and the flavor come across, as spanning a lot of range.
All in all a pretty good tea. At this point it feels atypical not commenting that it's absolutely fantastic, as with the other Y Ty sheng versions I just reviewed. Maybe I expected that, for this to be amazing. It's pretty good, as Dian Hong style versions go, but only a bit above average, at least at this stage.
For Dian Hong drinkers that's already a pretty good range to fall in. For orthodox Assam drinkers this might be much better, a real revelation, since it falls between norms for those two types. It's missing the heavier malt expression, so depending on expectations maybe that could seem like a big gap instead. In a year or two this might be much better; it will be interesting to see.
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