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Viet Sun T Ty black on the left, in all photos |
Continuing on with Vietnamese and Thai themes I've been covering, this time it's about Viet Sun and Wawee Tea black teas. These two versions were really exceptional. I mean so good. Enough with the spoilers; I'll cite some product details from their sites (or for Wawee, I'll try to turn up a Facebook page post info), and get to the review.
Y Tý Air Dried Black Spring 2026 ($21 for 100 grams, $47.50 for 250)
A really nice black tea made in the hot air dried style from one of our favorite tea areas, Y Tý.
Made from medium, old and ancient trees in the Dao village, this tea brews up into a rich copper red soup. Floral, sweet, with a malty chocolate, honey character and a low-medium roast. Rich mouthfeel and long finish.
Season: April 2026
Picking Standard: 1 bud, 2-3 leaves
Region: Y Tý, Lào Cai
Elevation: 1300-1800mn
Would that really have a low-medium roast input, versus just a moderate amount of oxidation? It doesn't matter. I probably should have read between the lines and ordered that instead of the sun-dried version that I just reviewed. It is really nice. The other might change for the better, given that style, but this one might still gain some depth, and it's really nice now.
Related to value around 21 cents a gram is pretty fair as pricing goes now. Awhile back you could buy pretty decent Dian Hong for 15 cents a gram or less, but I would imagine that has shifted, as all tea pricing has. You would be lucky to buy tea this good at whatever price it is.
There is no information post on the Wawee Tea Facebook page, as there had been for the sheng version. It's Thai material black tea; that's all that you need to know. I'm describing it as being made in a style similar to Yunnan Dian Hong, but that kind of judgement doesn't add much. That generaliztion comes across differently in relation to this other Vietnamese version being a dead ringer for Dian Hong character, and flavor aspect range.
I can share their FB page cake wrapper, since it seems I forgot to take a picture of that:
That pricing relates to about $30 for 200 grams, so $15 for 100 grams instead of 21 for the Viet Sun version. But that's Thai pricing; Viet Sun is a Western facing vendor instead. As with the Viet Sun whether you buy the tea for 15 or 21 cents a gram you are still lucky if the tea is this good. There are plenty of vendors out there selling teas nowhere near this good for 50 to 70 cents a gram, either making up stories to back that, or maybe some interesting stories are real, but the tea still isn't this nice.
Review:
Viet Sun Y Ty: this is really more what I have in mind related to Dian Hong style teas, than the sun dried version I just had. But then those pick up intensity with age, and tend to be oxidized a little less initially, so it's not fair comparing two brand new versions. This is still really nice.
A pleasant roasted sweet potato note stands out, and it wouldn't be unreasonable to interpret the rest as tasting like cacao, but that's a judgement call. Sweetness is good, and feel is fine, even though it's barely getting started. It's going to be hard for the Thai version to compare well to this.
Wawee Tea black: this is holding its own, so far. It's completely different. Tones are much warmer, and flavor complexity is harder to unpack; it's not just a couple of very pleasant main notes. Dark cherry is part of it, and something like a cured wood or incense spice tone. Often when I'm mentioning that it's about a limitation in the flavor set, but it works well in this. It has a lot of depth, especially for just getting started. Maybe some of the other range is spice oriented, even towards root spice or medicinal spice. A warm mineral base is pleasant.
If judging at this stage which I like better, which is still too early to call, I'd have to go with the first version. That standard, pleasant, well-balanced Dian Hong style is a personal favorite. But the Thai version expresses more depth and complexity, so far, and everything it expresses is pleasant. This should be a great comparison tasting.
I've got the proportion wrong, including less of the loose Vietnamese version, because it's hard to judge when one is loose and the other compressed. I'll add a touch more, which will throw off how the transition cycle plays out over the next round or two. I usually work around that by adding what looks normal to me, and it always veers back to 8 grams or so, but I tried to back off the proportion of the first, and didn't do so in the same way for the second.
VS Y Ty #2: roasted sweet potato and cacao stand out again. Or maybe that's yam instead, or maybe it's transitioning from sweet potato to yam. You get the idea. Mineral depth is pleasant; that really gives it balance. A somewhat high sweetness level also works well with the rest. Feel is nice, with decent fullness. It's not dry but it also doesn't lack some feel structure. A warmer and heavier flavor edge tastes like a touch of coffee, which mixes with the mineral range, and supports the rest. It's really good.
Wawee: it changed quite a bit; I would've expected that. It's picking up a brandy-like flavor input, which is more or less the dominant flavor already. Another part tastes like a bark spice, just not cinnamon. Warmer mineral gives those pronounced flavors balance. There is still fruit, more or less still in the range of dried black cherry, but it's secondary to the other range now. Just a touch of tartness integrates well with that particular fruit range. Ordinarily pronounced tartness makes black tea unpleasant, to me, but in a very limited amount it can be good, especially when it integrates well with the rest.
This tea is more intense than the other; the taste is stronger, and it carries over to aftertaste more. It spans more range; it's more complex as well. The other expresses a little more depth; there's something about it that seems to convey a deeper, more grounded taste experience. Maybe that relates to the mineral input, or maybe it's an emergent effect that's mainly in my own interpretation, instead of the aspects themselves.
It occurs to me to keep mentioning how I like both in comparison to each other round to round; usually reviews never include that. The Thai tea might be better in a couple of senses but the Vietnamese version really matches a style I love, so I'd go with that. I would guess that this Thai tea is far from finished though, that it will keep evolving and changing, and will brew a long cycle, so it may seem better in one or two more senses before it's over.
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back in this Bangkok home tasting space |
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Ina, that Siamese cat, has a cool look, but all of our cats do |
VS Y Ty #3: the warmer tones shift a little; what had been mineral and a vague earthy input changed to be closer to leather. In a good sense; the warm and sweet tone of a new bomber jacket material, not the musty and harsher scent of older horse saddle. Cacao stands out more than ever. Flavor intensity is kind of in a normal range, but depth adds to the experience, in a way that's hard to describe. For people who drink Dian Hong (Yunnan black tea) that description would already be quite familiar.
Wawee: fruit picks up. It's still black cherry, but it has expanded quite a bit in range, so it's that plus something else, or more than one other thing (a little citrus enters in, and something like butternut squash flavor joins the rest). The tartness has almost entirely dropped out. The form of that fruit is intense, sweet, and complex, taking on a fruit roll-up sort of character.
Incense / bark spice and mineral tone have moved into a supporting flavors role. At this point the Wawee tea is better, per my subjective judgment, and I suppose if one tried to claim some sort of objective assessment form probably better in that sense too. Compression level was too high in a version of this I bought 2 or 3 years ago, which really did impact the experience of it, but they've got it just right for this cake, loose enough that it comes apart easily using a pu'er knife (or pick, or whatever, maybe even just your fingers).
I've been brewing these relatively quickly, because the intensity was fine for that for both. I might go a little longer to see what changes, from 10 seconds or so up to more than 15, or close to 20.
These are both really exceptional black teas. I've tried some pretty good black tea versions over the past few years and both hold their own with any of it. I've tried a lot more range over the decade prior to that, or even 15 years, but it's harder to use older experiences as a reference.
VS Y Ty #4: it really didn't change much, for being brewed just a little longer. Heavier mineral flavor input occurs; that's normal. Feel comes across as thicker and richer, but it was already ok anyway. The feel hasn't been exceptional, but the range was positive, and it supported the overall experience. It contributes some aftertaste experience, broadening the overall effect, but not so much.
The main positive is that the flavor range is a personal favorite, and there is nothing like a flaw in this. Flavor intensity could be higher, but a black tea version expressing limited complexity and intensity but good depth seems to also work, for me. The flavors a tea does express need to be what one likes, and to match well, in such a case, but that's true for me for this. I could probably drink a kilogram of this tea, and not tire of it.
I'm probably making this sound like a basic, simple, limited intensity tea version more than really applies to it. It is expressing some roasted sweet potato or yam flavor, something along the line of cinnamon, and depth that reminds me of root spice, along with pleasant mineral range. It only seems to lack complexity and intensity in comparison with the other version, which is an unusually strong and complex tea.
Wawee: the fruit effect changed again. Now it's closer to elderberry, an interesting range. It is a stronger tea, across most dimensions. Flavor range is stronger, flavor complexity is broader, feel is more pronounced, and aftertaste expression is much stronger. In part that could be because it's from better tea plant material, but it's also more completely oxidized (it seems; the leaves are a little darker, and it brews darker). I'm not saying that to move on to claiming that the other Vietnamese tea has more aging potential, but it probably does. It could also just be a different style.
For people into free-associating a mix of different flavor aspects there's a lot for starting points in this Thai tea version. I do enough of that in these text reviews, but when I drink tea for my own experience only I just go quiet, and accept the experience without analysis.
This is probably a good point to leave off with notes. These will shift a little more over two more infusions, probably with the Thai version changing more, and maintaining more intensity. Both teas will be similar though.
Trying the next round confirmed this. The Thai tea is finally losing just a little intensity, and it took a round off transitioning in flavor character, with the Vietnamese tea holding up to the same earlier level of intensity and depth. It might be that the Vietnamese tea can keep going longer for brewing out slower, that the trade-off for the Thai version was that the first 4 or 5 infusions might be better (in a limited sense; preference determines that), and stronger, but that it can't keep that up for as long.
Both are great. Anyone would be lucky to cross paths with one of these teas.
I'm reminded of holding a tea tasting a decade or so ago, letting the guests try a black tea like one of these. One commented that they didn't know that they liked black tea until they had that experience. I looked back through posts to see when that was; it was here, in 2017 (and it was a Farmerleaf sun-dried Dian Hong). I had covered a lot of ground by then, in four years of writing this blog.
In case it seems that I'm exaggerating these experiences, that every tea is just fantastic all of the time, I can point out that the last two sheng that I tried were quite good, high in quality level, distinctive, and positive, but more limited in relation to a match to my own preference. Now with these black teas we're back to everything being just great, including that part.
I have more ordinary versions of tea on the way; that will shift again. In an online discussion someone mentioned that a standard, budget oriented, blended version was pretty good, from a producer I had tried teas from before, so I'll be covering a little of that range soon. Not really low cost factory tea, but towards that theme.
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one of the two other cats |
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Timmie with her sister |
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