A company called Oriental Leaf sent some teas for review; many thanks for that. Their flagship product range seems to be Fu brick tea hei cha, the kind that often includes golden flowers, a type of fungus. This is described as positive; I'm sure that it's safe. I've had tea with this fungus in it before and the experience was quite positive. This review describes a version (from Yunnan Sourcing), and what that type of fungus is.
The web page listing identifies price and what the tea is:
YXT Jingyang Fu Tea Classic Yellow Can 300g (listing for 1860 baht, $51)
This is a Fu brick tea, a type of post-fermented tea. The tea is covered with golden flowers, also known as Eurotium cristatum, a beneficial enzyme-producing fungus. It grows naturally during the Fu brick tea production process and is a crucial indicator of the quality of the tea. In other words, the more denser the golden flowers, the better. This tea has a unique tea aroma produced by the golden flowers. It has a very thick, rich taste and will give you sweetness in the mouth and throat...
It is part of the YXT classic Yellow Can series, renowned for its robust jujube aroma, abundant golden flowers, and a distinctly pure fragrance. The tea is crafted from Maocha harvested between 2019 and 2022 in the southern foothills of the Qinling Mountains in Shaanxi...
...The naturally occurring golden flowers are plump and abundant, contributing to the tea's visual and aromatic appeal. Employing traditional tea-making techniques dating back to 1368, acknowledged as an intangible cultural heritage, the tea is produced in a 5000-square-meter dust-free workshop at the factory, ensuring the highest quality standards are maintained.
This tea is exceptionally friendly to first-time Fu tea drinkers, offering a smooth and mellow taste. I personally brewed this tea more than 15 times in succession, and the flavor remained consistent. Moreover, as you progress through subsequent infusions, the taste becomes increasingly sweet. I highly recommend this tea for those venturing into Fu tea for the first time.
**This tea has a higher-quality product in RED can. Feel free to check it out. [YXT Jingyang Fu Tea Classic RED Can 300g]
Pretty good, for covering some basics. The quality of this seemed pretty good to me too, for this being a product they sell a slightly better version of. 17 cents per gram sounds quite reasonable. There is a different amount option and sample listing that runs higher in per-unit cost, and that's fine too, different options for trying teas or buying more once you know that you like them.
Fu brick and other hei cha tend to be sold in rather large pressed portions, as somewhat inexpensive tea versions. Quality and character can vary a good bit though, and the value is different related to how pleasant a tea seems.
Review:
Infusion #1: to rinse or not rinse; for once I don't really know the conventional answer. I'd guess that more people rinse this. It's hei cha, and that's standard for those, and this is literally covered with fungus. I'll try the first round anyway, and if it seems a little odd I'll let it go.
I'm sure this is safe anyway; even for heavily fermented sheng and for shou that risk from fermentation by-products is described as low in level, so that the rinse step relates to removing limited trace contact with toxins that could add up in effect over months and years, and lots of exposure. Since I'm almost never drinking this tea type that kind of factor doesn't matter.
It's different, but it matches what I remember of related experience. Warm bread-like tones stand out, with a particular yeasty aspect a main part of the experience. I think this will deepen and develop in complexity so doing a full breakdown now doesn't make much sense.
I did drink half of it, and threw some out, so half was rinse? That makes no sense. There's a good bit of fungus in this still so the idea can't be removing all of that or all of the secondary by-products from it.
#2: intensity picks way up, and some complexity along with it. Of course a deep, dark bread, yeasty aspect range is still present. Mentioning "dark bread" doesn't capture how complex and pleasant that experience is. Adding types like pumpernickel or dark rye isn't so descriptive either, but it's along those lines.
Sweetness is good, and lighter tone range balances the heavier range. A layer of light and warm mineral supports the rest, a little like the clay smell present in the type of soil back in Pennsylvania, which is quite different here (the smell of clay in the soil), and in Hawaii. An aftertaste component that's tied to the rest, but not identical, supports the effect of complexity.
For people who have tried Fu brick teas with golden flowers what I'm struggling to express is already clear, and for others it may not get there. Maybe secondary positive or off aspects would define what is most exceptional or not as desirable in this range. I'm at that level of familiarity for pu'er, but not Fu tea. I'll have to go with just describing it.
#3: one part picks up, but it's hard to describe this as any set of individual parts, or flavor aspects. So far I've been relying on dark bread, yeast, and clay as comparisons, but they're not a perfect parallel.
I suppose it's the yeastiness that increases. If you taste something like sticky buns while they're still rising, the dough, a pronounced warm yeast aspect stands out, a little different than from fresh homemade bread or pizza dough, and it's like that. Caramel or toffee sweetness might be reminding me of that; it might be the reason I refer to that distinction. Sweetness is still pleasant, pronounced, and the overall effect is very clean in relation to this tasting as earthy as this does. In between spice and earth, I guess dark bread falls.
Related to subjective preference, which varies by person, and isn't such a clear yardstick, I like this quite a bit more than shou pu'er. Some yeasty variations of shou, like what I've tried as smaller batch versions from Russia, are kind of similar, but to me this balances that yeast-like range better with the rest. It doesn't taste like wet cardboard, which can come up for some shou pu'er; it's a little closer to nutmeg. It might resemble an aromatic wood component too, or rather a supporting component does, that makes up the distinction between peat-intensive shou and this much lighter bread and spice Fu flavor profile.
Our cats are very drawn to try to reach and lay down in a "wardrobe," or large wooden cabinet for clothes, the one my wife uses, upstairs in our house, which is made of aromatic tropical wood. This scent resembles that. Of course the cats aren't supposed to do that, and we have no idea why her closet / cabinet, right beside mine, is so appealing. I don't know the name of that wood type. It might be teak, or maybe just something related. I doubt that you could buy such a thing today, related to restrictions on harvesting tropical lumber; it's a carry-over from her family being fairly prosperous in the first half and middle of the 20th century.
#4: intensity keeps up, but then I am brewing this pretty strong, using a high proportion and intermediate infusion timing, maybe 20 seconds. There is no negative range to brew around, no pronounced bitterness, astringency, or overly strong flavor range, so it could work at any intensity.
Flavors are pretty strong; brewed this way feel is quite full and aftertaste experience is pronounced. I think spice range seems to be picking up. It's not exactly nutmeg, as I've already mentioned, closer to incense spice, sandalwood or frankincense, which I don't remember the scents of, since my new age renewal days are long since over, back in the mid 90s.
Pleasantness stands out, a subjective reaction instead of set of aspect experiences. That warm, rich spice or wood tone is quite pleasant, and all the other complexity, sweetness, fullness, and mild character supports it well. It seems a bit refined, as hei cha goes, an elusive character that (to me) marks out a more ideal range. Lots of hei cha is nice, but they tend to be thin across part of the range, or have a bit of an off input, a little extra smoke, earthiness, harsher mineral, or off spice tone. If this tasted more like semi-cured hardwood instead of tropical wood and spice it would still be nice, but not this nice.
#5: I'm trying this round brewed light, closer to 10 seconds instead, to see how that changes things.
Lighter flavors stand out, with the trade-off of depth and intensity being limited. Aftertaste is less pronounced. This may still be transitioning to slightly warmer tones anyway, moving on from lighter dark bread range to even darker dark bread range. Usually extending brew times in later rounds causes that kind of shift to heavier tones, but this was the opposite context.
I think that I could drink a lot of this, a kg of it. Or then again I'd probably still crave sheng pu'er more, so I might not get to it so often if I owned that much. I like it better than shou and aged white teas, two other ranges that might be partly comparable in terms of aspects. Oolongs are just different. This is as approachable as mild but somewhat intense Wuyi Yancha, and completely different in specific flavor set, but not completely different in overall effect.
It would be fine as a breakfast tea. I think the quality of this particular version is good enough that it would make sense in the other use too, as a tea you focus on experiencing for 45 minutes or so, when free time is open. To me since it's a little simpler and less intense than sheng it would stand in as a pleasant part of that experience, but not necessarily as naturally as the main focus of it.
To me a lot of the aged factory sheng pu'er people are always into are a little like that, what 20 year old versions are like now, pretty much all the CNNP range. It would be interesting to just focus on that the first few times you try it, then from there it could be a main part of a special experience, but perhaps not the focus of it. For having friends over sure, but not for being the main focus of a Saturday morning long session over and over.
#6: brewed a little longer warmer tones come out all the more. It's not transitioning much; I guess that's not a part of the experience. You can get some of the same effect from varying infusion times, since it's good at different strengths, drinking it as slightly different forms of tea. I'll give it one more longish 20+ second soak and the next round will be final thoughts, even though this will keep going.
#7: quite pleasant still, still complex, layered, and interesting, while being clean and approachable at the same time. One part is still actually catchy, that yeasty warm bread tone, and the rest is still relatively complex in supporting that.
Conclusions:
This is one of the better hei cha versions I've ever tried. I may have only tried a two or three yellow-flower inoculated Fu brick teas before, so I'm not working from that much depth of experience for the specific type, but I have tried dozens of other hei cha versions (not counting pu'er--that count is crazy), and this is clearly quite good quality tea.
[later edit]: I made some minor revisions, and it seems appropriate to add a comment here about an apparent contradiction this caused. The description said that this is naturally occurring fungus (a passage added later), and I've just said that it's intentionally inoculated. It doesn't make that much difference. If the tea was produced and stored in a place with a lot of that fungus already present it would be around to contact and grow on the tea, and then a producer may or may not transfer it to the tea more directly. I don't see this as one of those critical points where the story needs to be pinned down one way or another. If it does seem so to readers then further review of other sources about the type might add more on it.
If you were to order a half dozen random versions online there is a good chance that none would be this good. It matches the typical type flavor range (per my understanding), includes great flavor depth and complexity, matches some standard markers for quality (thickness of feel and aftertaste), brews a good number of positive rounds, and lacks flaws. The price seems quite fair, given that quality level.
That's how the curator vendor theme is supposed to work, but you just never know. Of course every sales site describes teas positively. One might think that depth of background information correlates to tea quality, or that a sales site should seem a certain way, but in the end you really have to try the tea. Or to accept input from another reference, but it would work to be careful about that. Few people have tried an extensive range of teas, and even if they have a reviewer might spin certain products more positively for their own reasons.
Why would I not be doing that? For people with the patience to have read a large of number of reviews, and to have tried some of the same teas themselves, they would have a sense of how to take input here. If this is the first post content anyone has read from this blog then there would be no indicator or baseline.
To me more Chinese-side vendors turning up is a fantastic sign for the Western tea industry. For a long time we've been at the mercy of Western facing sites like Yunnan Sourcing, Chawang Shop, and King Tea Mall to access teas like this. Those sources are fine, and value is actually pretty decent from all of them, but quality level and value can vary for each (by product, more so than in general), and the range isn't even close to what Chinese teas are accessible in the Chinese market. Per my understanding, at least, based on hearsay input from lots of people, in China and just familiar with the industry there.
Chinese vendors reaching across the aisle to make teas available in "the West" could add real competition, and could gradually change things. In many cases this would relate to sales of low quality, over-hyped, still moderately priced versions, which is something, maybe better as a starting point for exploration than for experienced tea enthusiasts to try the most interesting versions.
It's my impression that this source is offering a slightly better quality range version, at least in this one case, which is all that I've tried so far. That alone could be very inconsistent; a vendor selling one great quality tea at good value doesn't mean much in relation to the rest of their product range. I'll try a couple more types they sent and check back in about how those work out.
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playing with a cousin, the sweetest little girl |
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both my kids |
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