Hua Xiang and Da Shu hong cha / floral and big tree black teas

 

I'm reviewing two more teas from a set of samples from Moychay, this time promising looking black teas.

These were shared by Moychay for review, as thanks for limited help with editing.  I've tried plenty of Moychay teas in the past, and find them to be sort of comparable to Yunnan Sourcing, as a market style vendor carrying a lot of different types.  An order of magnitude less range than Yunnan Sourcing though; maybe a little closer to a conventional, broad type sourcing vendor.

Back when the world was different, I think in 2017, my family and I visited Russia, and I went to two different Moychay shops there.  Beyond trying "regional" Georgian teas the quality of some of those really changed my view on some scope.

Their take on these teas follows, as usual added here after writing review notes:

Hua Xiang Hong Cha Black Tea (45 grams for 22 Euro, or $25.50; 57 cents a gram)

Floral Black Tea This wonderful "hong wulong" (red oolong tea) is made from the high-aroma cultivars Jin Guanyin, Jin Mudan, Huang Guanyin, and Zi Meigui, grown in sustainable agriculture certified tea gardens in the southern foothills of the Wuyi Mountains, Fujian Province. At an altitude of 550 meters, these gardens provide the ideal environment for producing premium black tea with a distinct floral profile. 

The tea is hand-picked in the spring season (March–April), selecting one bud with two or three leaves. The production process includes withering, oxidizing, rolling, fermentation, drying, and refining. This meticulous craftsmanship results in tightly rolled leaves with a vibrant appearance and a rich aroma. 

When brewed, Floral Oolong Black Tea produces a bright, clear infusion with a sweet, mellow, and full-bodied flavor. The enzymatic oxidation during production reduces tea polyphenols by over 90%, resulting in a tea with red liquor, red leaves, and a smooth, sweet aftertaste. It is highly durable, yielding consistent flavor over eight or more infusions.

It's interesting that this is described as being made from four different plant input types.  The flavor is quite complex, which could tie back to that varying input, but the character seems pretty limited in range and consistent, as narrower input versions tend to be.  It doesn't taste like some sort of blend.  One part of this tasting relates to mixing the last of these two for one round, going into how blends differ from narrower input versions.

I don't do much with the theme of a "red oolong" here.  Those are essentially a variation of black teas, oxidized to the same level, just drawing on different processing inputs to get there, resulting in a slightly different form.  I reviewed a Thai "red oolong" version recently here, with a second black tea for comparison.  There are some parallels with these two versions, but a comparison with them wasn't informative enough to go into here, and I didn't identify this as oolong related until after taking the notes, and adding this description.  

That tea was a little closer to what I expect of this type, very mild, but intense in flavor, typically centered on flavors like cherry, berry, cacao, and cinnamon.  This version started out quite floral and moved more into fruit range later on.

Black Tea DA SHU HONG CHA (Big Tree), Chinese tea from Jingmai Mountain, Yunnan Province (Red Tea), 60g  (8.26 Euro, $9.58, 16 cents a gram)

Da Shu Black Tea is produced from the ancient tea trees of Jingmai Mountain, located in Lancang County, Pu’er City, Yunnan Province. Jingmai Mountain, recently recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2023, is home to over 28,000 acres of ancient tea gardens. These gardens, where tea trees grow alongside native vegetation, provide a unique environment that contributes to the tea’s exceptional quality.

The tea is hand-picked between March 20 and May 30 each year, selecting one bud with three leaves from Yunnan Da Ye Zhong tea trees. Grown at an altitude of 1200 meters, the tea benefits from the region’s rich biodiversity and favorable climate. The production process involves traditional methods, including withering, fermentation, and sun-drying, which preserve the tea’s natural sweetness and aroma.

Da Shu Black Tea brews into a bright, amber-colored infusion. Its flavor is marked by an immediate and lasting sweetness, complemented by a distinctive orchid aroma and a pronounced mountain freshness. The tea’s smooth texture and long-lasting aftertaste make it ideal for multiple infusions.

The difference in cost is striking; the first is around four times the per gram cost of the second.  It seems like better quality tea, in a more distinctive, rare, and in-demand style, but I really like the character of the second tea type, so it's much more even than that for my own preference.  

There's an early round flavor inclusion in the second that's more or less a flaw, but beyond that it's quite solid.  The first includes a bit of tartness, a least favorite flavor aspect in teas for me.  Or taste; that could be coming from tongue based sensation, with some people using flavor to describe aroma based sensations, which really overlap experientially as we process the experience.  Common use of these terms is typically vague; you can call all of it flavor or taste, as you like, or break it down otherwise.

Review:

Hua Xiang Hong Cha:  a little light because it's just getting started, but this is exceptional.  It is sweet and floral, with good mineral complexity.  A bit of spice joins the floral range, which is rich and complex enough that it probably relates to more than one flower, maybe orchid on the lighter level and something richer like lavender beyond that.  The flavor is so complex that this will probably evolve to include other range as it transitions across rounds.

It's a style that anyone could appreciate, very complex, balanced, and refined.  All the same it's a higher end, forward flavor range style of black tea, along the line of how a recent Mi Lan Xiang version came across, a black tea made from a plant type usually used for Dan Cong oolong.  And I really love the other flavor range (cacao and roasted sweet potato or yam), depth, and warmth of Yunnan style black tea, even when you give up some flavor complexity and refinement to experience that.  

This isn't tart; I'm not saying that, although there is a trace of that as an input.  It does include a hint of cacao, so that's not a gap.  I'm just saying that I have a favorite black tea style, even if it's often more basic than this, so it could come across as lower in quality level.

Da Shu Hong Cha:  that was a decent lead-in for saying that this version is exactly like that, but it's not, even though it overlaps a lot with what I was discussing.  It does include more warmth and depth, so it's mostly that the flavor range isn't exactly what I was thinking of.

It's important to be able to appreciate what a tea offers, instead of comparing it to some abstract type or quality norm, and seeing gaps instead of what is there that's positive.  At least in terms of what I've written that's what I'm doing here.  These teas are really good though; they're much better than I need tea to be to like them.  So I'll need to be careful to describe the experience as I really interpret it, as gratefully appreciating what is positive, which is essentially all of this experience.

This tea does include a flavor aspect that's unusual, sort of woody, or perhaps along the line of spice.  It's taking a little longer to fully open up than the other, but there is also plenty of positive range.  It's probably as well to do a more complete list style description next round though.

Hua Xiang #2:  even better.  That hint of tartness is fading already, and flavor range picks up.  This will probably be better yet next round, really hitting its stride.  There's a lot going on in this.  It tastes like floral range, still in a complex form, as more than one flower type.  You don't notice cacao for that blending in with the rest, but it seems to be there.  Warm mineral grounds the experience.  There's not a lot of spice range, but there is more warm tone adding to complexity.  Interpreting one part as dried dark cherry works.

Feel is pleasant, sweetness level is good, intensity is good, and refinement is fine.  I suppose someone who is picky enough could find that the balance doesn't work for them related to tartness being a component, and for feel being a little dry along the back and edges of your mouth.  But to me that's splitting hairs, extending personal preference for style into not being able to appreciate a really good tea version.

Da Shu:  it's interesting how this expresses so much warmth and depth.  You don't really notice the other tea lacking those things, but the contrast makes them stand out.  I can relate to this tea better, as I've described personal preference here already.  There is a funky sort of note in this, which I think it could be reasonable to regard as a flaw, although I really see it as a distinctive flavor input that one may or may not like.  It's a balsa wood sort of flavor, not so far off cardboard, but not that.  It's as pronounced as the cacao and other range, making it hard to identify the rest.  I suppose it also includes flavor like roasted butternut squash, or it could be sweet potato.

The first tea sounds better, from my reading of the lists I'm writing out, but I can still relate better to the second.  Personal preference is a funny thing.  In a couple of different senses the first tea is better.

Hua Xiang #3:  not so different than last round, but it is evolving slightly.  The balance of what was there before shifts a little, in ways that would be hard to describe.  Tartness isn't pronounced, but it is still present.  To me a fruit note resembles dark cherry most, but it would be natural to interpret it as cranberry if one combined those flavor identifications together.  Floral range still stands out quite a bit.  The rest is subtle, but it passes on an impression of complexity, the cacao and mineral.

A hint of mint might be picking up.  That should sound familiar to many, from a Red Jade / Ruby Taiwanese black tea type, that includes a good bit of that.  If this didn't include tartness, and had a bit more depth, it would be one of my all time favorite black tea experiences.  As it is it's pleasant.

Da Shu:  the best this has been.  That unusual balsa wood note more or less dropped out, or faded to be hard to notice.  It picks up a creaminess, which works well with the rest of the character.  Cacao really stands out.  A fruit note could be more distinct; it's somewhere between dried longan and dried berry or dark cherry.  The difference between these, them covering completely separate ranges, and flavors (although those do overlap), makes me wonder how they would be combined.  I'll mix the last of this round to see.

It's better than both in a sense, but it gives up a lot in terms of the aspects being distinct.  That's the general trade-off between well balanced blends and more individual types, that can have strengths and weaknesses, a gap in some character, but that can be appreciated differently.  The feel, flavor profile, and overall effect balance really well, but the flavors come across as more muddled, less distinct.  

Somehow the aftertaste range ends up being very pleasant; what trails after really works.  The cacao and fruit inputs of both combine there.  Feel is probably better than either tea individually.  I was curious about that but it's not for me to routinely be mixing teas.  It prevents them from expressing their individual characters.

Hua Xiang #4:  I've been brewing these relatively quickly, at 15 seconds or so, and I'll give them more like 25 to see what that changes.  When I write in these posts that I don't measure proportions but have a pretty good idea of how much is there that relates to this kind of experience.  These are 7 gram samples, and I often use just a little more, even though these fill a 100 ml gaiwan fairly well.  7 grams is perfect, to me.

This again only changes a little, but the change is positive.  This much cacao, fruit, and creaminess cover part of the range of a chocolate covered cherry.  There's still plenty of floral range, but to me it has shifted more on to fruit.  The other version had been even creamier, with a good bit of cacao as well.  Of course someone else might not interpret it as that at all; that could seem like a spice input to someone else, or just a part of the fruit or floral range.  Or like a mild malt, or whatever else.  If you think of Ovaltine / Milo / malted milk ball while drinking these--probably both--the comparison would seem to work.

There is still a faint hint of tartness, but feel switches to an impact in the front half of your mouth instead.  That doesn't mean anything in particular to me.

Da Shu:  creamier, deeper, with more cacao, and richer overall feel and flavor.  But it lacks the up front / higher end punch of the other version.  Aftertaste is even more pleasant.  Cacao and a richer dried fruit note carry over, even though flavors are less intense while you drink it (than the other; still pretty intense in general).  

That warm mineral fullness and depth is a personal favorite part of black tea experience, for me.

These teas aren't finished, but that's enough to get the main story across, and at most they might transition some for a couple of more rounds.

Conclusions:

Both were good, both representing two very different styles.  You could tell that the first was higher in quality in some conventional ways, more intense, distinctive, and complex.  The second is essentially a Dian Hong version, meaning a Yunnan origin black tea; it's definitely from there.  Some style limitation within that implied, which seems to apply; the character falls within that expected type range.

Given I liked the second as much it seems a better value (it costs a fourth the per-unit price of the first).  But for people who prefer that style of the first tea the difference would stand out more.  It's definitely a lot harder to find teas like that.  Dian Hong is around, sometimes with a minor gap in flavor range, as this shows in the first couple of rounds, but it commonly has that pleasant flavor profile and great depth.

To me this second style of tea (the Da Shu) is great for owning a good bit of, to use as a daily drinker, a fall-back tea to have with breakfast over and over.  They had sold 150 grams of it as a third option, beyond 60 and a 7 gram sample, but no longer list that.  I've bought a kilogram of somewhat related style teas a few times; from the right kind of source that can be a really good value.  

Some might think that they could blend that with other types, or add some sort of tisane flavoring, but I wouldn't.  I might alternate between brewing it Gongfu and Western style, and that's about it.  Or it works well to brew in a tea bottle, "grandpa style," an especially favorable approach for drinking during travel.

The first tea, the Hua Xiang, is too pleasant and intense for that; I wouldn't even brew that Western style.

Lifespan and natural death of social media channels

 

Something recently reminded me of the lifespan social media channels seem to live out.  People are familiar with MySpace and Google+ coming and going, but it goes beyond that.  I think Facebook is dying, and text blog posting has been dead for awhile.  I'll cover my thoughts on this, which I've probably written in a similar form here before, or at least parts of this.

My Space and Google+:  what to say; these were replaced by options that worked better.  Facebook killed My Space, and Google+ never really stood much chance.  Google gambled on the social circles function changing everything, and that never worked at all.  Then they gave up.  The sad part is that they really made the communicator function work well; Messenger just is a rip-off of Google's Hangouts, which was an evolved form of their earlier Messenger app or function.  I suppose that was based on Skype, related to the video calling, but it worked well, especially for that time-frame.

It's funny how what seemed to be computer generated image forwarding groups went inactive last on Google+, as if programs had been set up to keep that going, and everyone leaving didn't shut that off.

that's modern AI, but it was pretty similar to that

Facebook:  they shifted from trying to create a new and best case user experience to making the most money possible, and now my feed is mostly ads and promoted content.  It's no wonder that most Reddit users deleted Facebook years ago.  I post to a blog page on Facebook, and that draws some views to here, but in general I'd have to pay them to get people to see it now.  They changed that so suddenly, how their algorithm works, that you could almost tell the exact week that it shifted.  So they deserve the decline that they now experience.

Facebook groups have died in the most dramatic form, as much as inactivity can be called that.  People only want to keep discussing the same themes for so long, and algorithms changes decrease exposure for those groups.  I'm in Hawaii oriented groups as well there, since I live part-time in Waikiki, and those go completely inactive a bit slower.

a group I founded along with a Chinese vendor, and still moderate; it's dormant now

old style forums:  I miss these.  Tea Chat was the main place to discuss tea online at one point, an old forum hosted by Adagio.  They were already dead by the time they replaced the old moderators and ramped up use of marketing promotion of themselves on there.

Their time has came and went.  Someone tried to re-create it all as a new Tea Forum, but it never gained traction.  Expat / foreigner forums also died quite awhile ago, nearly a decade back now.

an interesting topic in a relatively inactive Tea Forum

Quora:  other themed sites come and go, as Quora has.  The question and answer theme only had so much potential, and it took them a half dozen years or so to extract that, and now that has been dead for a half dozen years.  You can say that it was mismanagement that killed it, that whatever approaches and programs didn't work out, and monetization always was a real problem for them.  But those sites seem to have a natural lifespan when they work out, and that form seemed to have an expiration built in.

I started two "groups" on Quora, which they called Spaces.  The site was dying when they rolled that out, as a promising last ditch effort to renew interest.  It absolutely didn't work.  If they had done so about two years earlier it might have.  I still post to those, a little, but it's just to spread out external links, which someone could possibly read there, and to add to the potential of Quora.  But it won't change anything.

Lessons learned:  I'm not so sure about this part.  Every composite thing is subject to dissolution?  That's Buddhism, by the way.  Surely we could dig a little deeper.

The life spans seem to play out in familiar patterns.  Earlier on, when a site or platform is inclined to work, it goes through an expansion phase, and whatever is novel is really developed.  Participation increases quickly.  In a mature phase that stays stable, and functions change, often in ways that don't actually work better.  Maybe that cause and effect goes mostly in one way, and once changes start to be for the worse the writing is on the wall?  

Then there's a drop-off, when it all just falls apart.  This happens quietly.  It's just inactivity, nothing too dramatic or clearly defined.  Let's examine the case of an active site and guess where they might be.

Reddit:  user base is huge in Reddit; r/tea has over a million subscribers.  Oddly that number isn't prominently shown now; I couldn't find it, and used Google to get that vague count.  Why would they hide those follower counts now?  It says there are over 300k active members there (308k weekly visitors), which probably rotate some.

Reddit changed their algorithm in the last half a year or so.  In the past it was a stream of whatever subs you followed, and whatever user posts you follow, and now they show you whatever the algorithm decides you might like, half what you follow, and half whatever else.  Sound familiar?  That's the same change Facebook made many years ago.  You can't easily customize what you see.  If you like or comment on something you're going to see a lot more of that, and there may or may not be any way to manually adjust that process.

As I see it Reddit is in the levelled off phase; functions and form are not changing much, and the changes that do occur aren't positive.  Groups (subs) discussions tend to evolve to repeat in ways that aren't typically positive.  It's easy for sensational content to gain traction, and for other topic discussion to be crowded out by that.  If the pattern holds the owners of Reddit will decide to sell the site at some point, and the new "private equity" owners will make changes to squeeze all of the profit potential available out of it, and essentially kill the site experience and the site.

Somehow on r/tea the participants prior exposure level, where they are on the learning curve for the subject, never changes, and never moves forward.  I suppose people only discuss a subject until they tire of hearing of it, and don't go through a lot of learning curve and still keep participating.  Even in groups where the discussions were advanced, and perspectives were quite mature, there was some sort of natural end point to be experienced.  That Adagio / Tea Chat forum related to real experts joining in, and the Puerh Tea Club on Facebook was based around really developed perspective input, and both are dead now.  Expat--Western foreigners living abroad--forums came and went in a similar way.

Steepster was an interesting different kind of example, a tea discussion and review site.  It worked because people really wanted a place to retain short tea reviews, of their own, and to compare notes with others.  But now they don't?  Shared interest themes sort of play out.

No more Steepster for me.  I had no idea there was ever any issue with there, and haven't checked in on that site in a couple of years.

So it's interesting how Reddit shows how that builds up to an entire site's life and death, as Quora experienced.  People tire of the specific channel form too.  Abstract things "ruin it."  You might expect the pressure of the next catchier, better formatted thing to be a main cause, but it's almost not that, or seems not to be.  Facebook groups may have killed Tea Chat, but Reddit didn't kill them, and Discord tea groups (servers) also didn't, which are now active among younger people.

Discord is sort of something else, but it's not informative to go into that, related to explaining this topic.  It's message-stream discussion groups, like earlier topic forum threads, but set up differently.  It's fine; it works well for people into that format.  It works out to be more social than older style topic threads, maybe trading out the potential for retaining information for reference as a result of the form difference.

Back to the broader perspective, the transitions we all experience build up to these site lifespan transitions.  I don't think it's all about moderators ruining things, or form changes decreasing the site's function and appeal.  There is a general pattern of development where at one point a site or platform host decides to really monetize the activity, and that's always a turning point.  It's like when McDonald's doubles their pricing over several years, while their food quality declines a little; it just doesn't work.

MySpace still exists, and my old profile does.  I was never really active on there.  It's funny that I can pull up MySpace and use it but not Steepster.  I've heard that someone was discussing renewing MySpace, again, to try to bring it back to life.  They could probably copy a lot of the early 2010s Facebook design and it would work better than FB does now.

Moychay Yiwu sheng pu'er comparison

 

Cloud Aroma Yiwu left, in all photos

I'm reviewing two Moychay Yiwu sheng pu'er samples, sent along with a set of samples for review, that I've been mentioning other teas from.  It was sent for that purpose (many thanks!), also in relation to helping out with translation review.

In these posts I won't review any teas that I don't like; there has to be a story to be told.  These two versions are in a grey area related to that.  They're good tea, but a bit unremarkable, not as distinctive as they could be.  General quality level was fine, probably better than it sounds from this description, since this doesn't focus on what I consider to be quality level markers for sheng pu'er (feel, mineral base, refinement, distinctive flavor aspects, etc.).  It's the last that could seem like a gap.  These are mostly floral in nature, but flavor aspects tend to combine.

One is clean and sweet, and the other contains a bit of extra bitterness and astringency, along the line of a dry edge, but not exactly that.  They're fine, but I don't experience them as something one would find so interesting that they'd really feel a need to place an order.  Maybe when a bit newer / younger other distinctive flavors stood out more?  Maybe they're transitioning into a character range that I don't prefer, related to an aging transition cycle?  I'm not sure.  Let's start with the Moychay page descriptions though; there could be a clue there.

Yiwu Cloud Aroma Sheng Puer (10 Euro / $11.70 USD)

Yiwu Cloud Aroma is a raw Pu-erh tea originating from the gentle, mist-covered mountains of Yiwu. The old-tree material from these forests is known for its softer, more elegant character compared to other Menghai regions...

...The liquor is clear yellow-gold with a delicate floral-herbal fragrance and a light sweetness carried by Yiwu’s characteristic soft mouthfeel.

Bitterness is restrained, allowing the sweetness to rise quickly and linger through multiple infusions. This tea is refined, balanced, and ideal for those who enjoy the gentle depth of Yiwu terroir.

$11.70 for 50 grams works out to 23 cents a gram, or equivalent to $82 per 357 gram cake.

That doesn't mention a year, when it was produced.  It was packed on December 2025, that sample, so it could be from 2025, or it's possible it's from before then, a 2024 version.  It could be an autumn harvest version; that would explain why flavors aren't quite as distinct as they could be.  Intensity was ok though, just nothing too exceptional.

YIWU SHENG CHA, from 2023  (20 Euro for 60 grams, $23, but only a 7 gram sample is available now)

Yiwu Raw Pu-erh Tea originates from Yiwu Mountain in Mengla County, Xishuangbanna, Yunnan Province. At an altitude of 1200–1500 meters, this region’s warm, humid climate and fertile soil provide the perfect environment for the Yunnan Da Ye Zhong tea variety. Yiwu Mountain is home to ancient tea gardens, with some trees aged over a century, contributing to the tea’s distinctive character.

Harvested annually between March 20 and May 30 [2023], the tea is made using traditional methods, including hand-picking, pan-firing, rolling, and sun-drying. Only one bud and three leaves are selected to ensure quality. The meticulous processing emphasizes preserving the tea’s original flavor and unique characteristics.

This tea brews into a bright golden infusion with a clean, refreshing taste and lingering sweetness. Aromatic notes of citrus peel and hints of aged wood combine with a silky texture, offering a layered and balanced flavor experience. The dry leaves feature tight, uniform shapes and a pleasant fragrance, reflecting the high standard of selection.

This version was 38 cents a gram, $135 for a standard 357 gram cake (for comparison; it's also not sold that way).

If these were pretty good Yiwu material versions, that matched standard type expectations, or at least were equivalent in some way, then the first pricing would be low, and this would about right.  The review notes cover how that seemed to go.

Review:

Yiwu Cloud Aroma:  pretty good.  Some bitterness and astringency come across this early, even though it's light, but the sweetness and floral nature is promising.  It probably includes a good bit of fruit, along with that floral range, but it will be easier to unpack in later versions, since this is just getting started.

The way the sweetness and mild bitterness complement each other is especially nice, already.

Yiwu Sheng Cha:  that's different.  A strong and warm mineral tone dominates this.  It's not that unusual for young sheng (this is from 2023, not that young / new), but Yiwu--which is really a broad area, so you can't really overgeneralize, as I'm doing--is often light, sweet, and floral, and not typically challenging.  This may be even more challenging next round, and then might ease up as further rounds progress; that's a fairly normal pattern for young sheng.

At this stage it's not nearly as promising and pleasant as the other.

Yiwu Cloud Aroma 2:  sweet and pleasant, with bitterness again balancing nicely with the sweetness.  I still can't get far with unpacking floral and some light fruit range.  Pronounced mineral gives it complexity and good flavor range balance, but makes it hard to isolated distinct flavor inputs.  Blending causes that too, but that may not be the cause in this case.  It seems not to be, it seems to just relate to how it comes across.

One could speculate about a flavors list, but these flavors are overlapping, making that difficult.  There is light floral range, warmer and sweeter floral range, and some degree of fruit, maybe along the line of pear.  It's not as fruity as some young sheng tends to be, but that is still a pleasant input, that works well along with the rest.

Yiwu Sheng Cha:  that mineral edge really increased, even though it had already dominated the first infusion.  It's clean enough, but it could be cleaner.  By that I mean that strong mineral that resembles limestone, or whatever stone, is different than mineral that one might interpret as tasting like kerosene.  This is in the middle.  

It's not bad, it's not a poorly made, low quality tea, but it's not great either, at least in relation to my own preference.  If that flavor was just a little cleaner and lighter this would be really nice, because the intensity if fine, and plenty of mineral input can work well.

Yiwu Cloud Aroma #3:  mineral and astringency edge seem to actually pick up in this, but not to reach the other's level.  Strong floral tones offset it, and it's a sweeter tea (more sweetness comes across; it's not sweet in the sense that sugar is).  Fullness and intensity are pleasant, and the aftertaste is.  It's nice.

Yiwu Sheng Cha:  that astringency edge and sort of dry mineral is easing up already, softening and warming.  This might be even better in another two rounds.  The other balances vaguely similar aspects in a nicer way, per my preference; that comparison doesn't help this tea.  

It's hard to say if this would be better in a couple of years, or have long term aging potential.  It's not exactly what I would associate with those themes.  The little aged Yiwu I've tried--maybe approaching a dozen versions, not just a few--had seemed to fade quite a bit, leaving a lot of warm-toned but subtle depth behind, while the bright floral and sweetness mostly dropped out.  It would require an unusual preference in sheng experience to love this as it is, but I suppose that some would.  

That bitterness and astringency common to a lot of sheng range, that people come to value later on, is dialed up a bit much in this.  I suppose it's possible that could relate to aging potential.

I'm rushing a bit because Saturday errands are starting to be pressing.  It would be better to drink water between these rounds, to clear my palate of this bitterness, astringency, and mineral flavor effects; I might do better describing flavors if I had.

Yiwu Cloud Aroma #4:  I'm trying a light round to see if that isolates flavors better.  It doesn't, for this tea.  It's interesting how so much depth comes across, while the higher end / more forward flavor is very light in this.  It's still smooth, sweet, floral, and complex, but not intense, not in terms of flavor.  The mineral depth still gives it balance, in a much lighter and more approachable form than the other version.

Yiwu Sheng Cha:  perhaps the best this has been.  Mineral is still a bit intense, but it balances better.  Bitterness falls into a better balance, less intense, better matched with the rest.  It's still vaguely floral, with lots more mineral input, perhaps including some fruit.  It's warmer in tone than the other, so all of that would relate to warmer versions than for the other.  I'll go a little stronger next round and then quit the notes; some other function comes up.

Yiwu Cloud Aroma #5:  it's warmer, and mineral plays more role in the profile, as occurred in the past rounds (that transition pattern).  I can't pick up any distinct flavors rushing through this.  Character is fine; it works.  Quality level seems good, but not unusual at all.  It could be more distinctive.

Yiwu Sheng Cha:  the best it has been, but only slightly softer than last round, otherwise not different.  

Conclusions:

Interesting, but not in a way that probably sounds much like high praise.  These were pretty good, but I'm evaluating them based on pretty high expectations, related to trying a lot of quite good sheng (dozens of good versions, and dozens of bad versions, and plenty in between).  Let's break those aspect related notes down to a summary.

Yiwu Cloud Aroma:  this was pretty good, pleasant, well balanced, with good sweetness, good feel, and decent intensity.  The flavors were just a bit vague, and intensity could've been dialed up a bit.  If this was an autumn harvest version, or a blend of different inputs, some of that lack of stronger and more distinctive positive range would make sense.  Or the material could just be only so good.

I ran across an interesting theme in trying a Thai sheng recently, from Wawee Tea, in that limited rain exposure that year decreased the annual harvest volume, and turned up the flavor intensity, concentrating flavor in the reduced leaf volume that was grown.  This could relate to the exact opposite, that tea plants experiencing a lot of rain input could've produced lots of leaf material, but at the cost of intensity and flavor distinctiveness being dialed down.  

Back to the value issue, for this relating to the cost of an $80 standard cake this tea is good, and a good value.  It's in the right general range for Yiwu, but floral notes could pop just a bit more.  It's very drinkable and pleasant.  I wouldn't age this, at all; I think it won't improve with even a year or two of further transition, and all the less so for another decade or two.

Yiwu Sheng Cha:  this was quite different.  An unusual mineral aspect, more bitterness, and greater intensity could've balanced better, and it wasn't as pleasant as the other tea for the first four or so infusions.  It must have been pretty intense 3 years ago, when new, since in a sense it kind of still is now.  Usually teas just evolve to lose brightness and freshness over that limited time-frame, although wetter storage conditions can shift flavors to be much heavier, and bitterness and astringency can evolve out quite a bit.  This wasn't all that heavy in tone, so storage conditions should have been moderate.

But it could've been better.  It's hard to see this as relating to a case where different preferences would relate to liking this version better than the other.  That's definitely possible; higher intensity level, heavier mineral, and more bitterness and astringency structure would suit some people.  Maybe it's even a higher quality tea than the other, in some limited sense.  But it lacked the intense, sweet floral range one might seek out in Yiwu.

I've tried some really good sheng versions from Moychay in the past.  One Nannuo version, that I actually bought in St. Petersburg, on a vacation there, was a turning point in my pu'er experience (reviewed here in 2018).  A couple of Jing Mai versions worked well for that origin area's typical character (sweet, approachable, often including a touch of pine, kind of floral beyond that).  Tea versions in general have been solid from them.

Yiwu has been an in-demand origin area for a long time.  The Tea Addict's Journal blog talks about this related to the later 2000s (or was that earlier 2010s?).  It's probably a well developed sub-set of sheng pu'er production, sourcing, and sales by now.

It's possible that has made sourcing from there problematic, as has occurred for those few really in-demand narrower origin areas (Bing Dao, Lao Ban Zhang, and so on).  Per my understanding it's not exactly a narrow or small area, but that long term balloon in demand over a number of years probably made that even worse.  That demand, or at least a part of it related to speculation, which could relate to "factory tea" versions more, has fallen off over the last year or so, but that may not help better version tea drinkers right away, or maybe that much ever.

Another thought occurs to me, related to describing how an even higher degree of inconsistency is normal from Chinatown shop sources.  These market type online vendors (like Moychay, Yunnan Sourcing, and maybe to a lesser extent King Tea Mall) carry pretty good products at good value, but there are limits to that.  I wouldn't expect too much from Wuyi Yancha or Dan Cong from Yunnan Sourcing (which of course aren't from Yunnan).  Their versions would be fine, probably better than you could buy in a grocery store in China (based on limited travel input; I've only been to China three times).  But it would probably be like this Yiwu sheng pu'er:  pretty good, but definitely not great.

So both of these teas had something different to offer, but it wasn't something that spoke as directly to my preferences as it might have.  It's not one of the more interesting stories I've ever told, but this is a lot of what tea exploration and experience is like.

Keoni on the elevated train

it was the pink line, way out there

Kalani on a ferris wheel

from around 80 feet up

this one keeps growing up too