The last review of an Oriental Leaf tea (sent by them for review; many thanks!) was of a relatively unusual type, a Shou Mei white tea used for secondary Fu hei cha style processing. It was good, and of course unique. This could be just about anything, based on that.
I wrote the review notes without knowing what it was, which I looked up later.
Chang’an Golden Flower Fu Brick Tea Mini Cake 2022 – Yunnan Leaf, Shaanxi Fermentation
In ancient China, tea merchants carried Raw Mao Cha (黑毛茶) tea from the misty Southern China mountains to the imperial capital of Chang’an, where it became beloved for its warming, restorative character during long Silk Road journeys. Our Chang’an Golden Flower Fu Brick Tea Mini Cake pays homage to that tradition, marrying first-grade Yunnan Lincang 临沧 dark tea leaves with the historic Jingyang 泾阳 fermentation that nurtures the signature “Golden Flower” probiotic bloom.
Beneath its smooth black-brown surface lies an amber-red liquor reminiscent of aged whisky or polished carnelian—bright, clear, and resilient across many infusions. The aroma evokes toasted wood, aged barn oak, and a gentle hint of honeyed dates, while the palate unfolds with velvety malt sweetness, subtle nutty tones, and a whisper of warm earth. Its finish is clean, slightly sticky-sweet like glutinous rice candy, leaving a long-lasting, soothing warmth.
Unlike dense traditional bricks, this 60g thin mini cake breaks apart easily by hand—ideal for gifting, travel, or brewing a single session without waste. Its Chinese name, “Bashui Run Chang’an” (“八水绕长安 Eight Waters Nourish Chang’an”), celebrates the life-giving rivers that cradle the ancient capital of the Tang Dynasty, infusing each cup with the poetic soul of Shaanxi.
So it's something different, again. Really it would help to unpack more about that general tea type, and distinctive type-typical local variations from that area (Shaanxi province), but I may never get around to that.
I should clarify that Oriental Leaf may specialize in hei cha, and Fu brick style teas, but they sell a broad range. I think they're sending me these more interesting versions just now because they think I'd find them interesting, and I do.
Review:
#1: it's tempting to guess the tea type even before listing out aspects. It's in between black and hei cha styles, it seems. The color is reddish; that's typically oxidation. Flavors, the primary range, are mostly black tea oriented, towards fruit and floral, with pleasant mineral grounding that, maybe into dark wood a bit. But there's something else, a type of spice range that's unique. And malt; that's back to standard black tea character.
Maybe there's even a little distinctive sourness, which can come up in some types of black tea, but which stand out in different ways in hei cha. I'll try a second round to get a different perspective on the tea, brewing it a little lighter, since I let this go a little long, to get the compressed tea to open up.
#2: woodiness picks up a bit. Intensity is considerable, especially considering this was a flash infusion. Proportion is higher than it needed to be, even though it's just in the normal range that I use. That distinctive spice note stands out. It's almost closer to what I've experienced in different tisane ranges before, than in standard tea. It's hard to put a name or type to that though. It's not dis-similar to some heavier flavor floral herbs, like roselle. A different part relates a lot more to a bark spice herb, or the like. To use tasting shorthand people often reference something tasting medicinal, when it's hard to place; I guess that works. I take that to mean "vaguely like ginseng," but of course it would mean different things.
It's less similar to a standard black tea form, this round. Those other flavors pick up, even a range I'm describing as sourness, which people might place in different ways. Do you know how when you sharpen a pencil in an old-style sharpener, how that graphite mineral smell and the well-cured wood smell mix, in a much more sweet and aromatic form than a bit of wood and graphite shavings should produce? It's like that. But a bit more earthiness enters in, like a touch of dried mushroom. Floral and fruit tones are also present, but they're hard to describe in a distinct way.
#3: it all ties together all the better. It may just be how I interpret it, versus an objectively clear transition pattern, but the fruit seems to pick up a bit now. It's at the overlap between heavy floral range and dried fruit, towards Chinese date, jujube.
It would be funny if this was a tisane blend. It's too complex, and expresses too much of what stands out in "real tea." But a tisane like willow herb (fireweed / Ivan chay) can be quite complex, and it's typically not so different than this. I think this still has too much complexity and depth for it to be that. There's a limited range and depth to all tisanes, for the most part, which can be hard to work around even when blending inputs. Real tea gives you that complexity, structure, full feel, and aftertaste input.
Again I'm stumped, for the second time in a row. I'll try a couple more infusions to discuss transitions, then check what this is.
#4: it's evolving, just not changing too much. That distinctive sourness is fading, and richer fruit and floral tones stand out all the more. If someone used half this proportion that could've potentially happened a little faster, and the final infusion count wouldn't go as far.
Feel is nice in this, full and rich. Sweetness is good; without that this particular flavor set wouldn't tie together as well. It might be that only someone open to novel experiences would like this. It's really not so far off black tea character, as some flavor aspects go, and it could just be that, but it would have to be a very distinctive version of that, something really different. But it's not like hei cha forms I'm familiar with either.
#5: I read what this is: it's Lincang Assamica material processed using Fu hei cha methods, including exposure to the Golden Flowers fungus. Cool! Their description (cited above) is as close as I'm probably getting. It's interesting that it turns out like this, from those starting points.
Conclusions:
Another fascinating and novel tea, something completely different. The character was clearly positive, beyond the novelty, including complexity, depth, and balance. Not everyone would appreciate this experience, but then that's common ground for both pu'er and hei cha experience (or if someone sees them as parts of the same set then that's redundant, unless you add an "other" back in modifying hei cha).
Our descriptions weren't identical but they overlapped quite a bit, and the spirit was the same, just different ways of describing the same tea. Often vendors hold back from being that descriptive, for a few good reasons. Teas can change over time, so then a few years later a description might seem off. And people tend to interpret experiences differently, so conveying the general spirit might still seem to miss getting details right. It's possible that a vendor might describe a tea in the best possible light, for example leaving "sourness" out as a description, which could seem like adding a biased spin, even though again the aspects list conclusion is fairly subjective.
This tea costs $18 for 60 grams, but it's hard to interpret that value part since this tea probably doesn't exist in any similar form from any other source. That's costly as hei cha goes, but hei cha comes in a broad range of forms and quality levels. This quality level of hei cha is unusual, and the style is a lot more novel than that. It's made from pu'er material, it would seem, one main input to that cost. I don't think that a per-gram price means much, since that kind of comparison just can't be done. It works out to 30 cents a gram, for what that's worth.
Intensity of this tea stands out; that could be easy to miss, in a comment about it being a bit too strong for my typical proportion, which I'm using for young sheng pu'er. It's fine if you flash brew it, not too strong, but using less would make more sense. That intensity makes sense given that it's Lincang material, which one would expect to be bitter (in the sheng form, maybe not prepared as a hei cha), sweet, clean and complex (in good quality versions), and intense.
In the end this is pretty far from the character of typical inexpensive, lower quality material based Fu zhuan or Fu brick versions (which can be nice; a rough edge here or there doesn't always take much away from pleasant character and interesting flavors). Let's check Google AI's input about that:
Fu zhuan is a type of Chinese dark tea (hei cha) from Hunan Province that is pressed into bricks and fermented to develop a beneficial fungus called "golden flower" (\(jinhua\)). This unique process gives it a distinctive taste, often described as sweet and herbal with woody notes, and it is historically linked to helping nomads with their high-meat diets. It is known for its potential health benefits, including supporting digestion and has a smooth mouthfeel that is very flexible for brewing.
Just to clarify this is the production origin site: Fermentation Site: Jingyang, Shaanxi, China
That description isn't too far off (sweet, herbal, woody). What I was describing as medicinal bark spice can be interpreted more simply as wood character. Or as aged barn oak, per the vendor's take. It's complex enough that a broad range of interpretations would be possible. And at the same time clean enough in effect that beyond a touch of distinctive sourness (which does seem related to the Golden Flowers typical input, now that I think it through) that there aren't many off or negative aspects to describe in any way.
It's main strength and weakness is that it's unusual, which people could take in different ways. The aspects character part is nice.
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