95 Tasting Notes
I hate how since 2015, every description of this tea is copy-pasted, including ’Da Qing Gu Shu (Da Qing Old Tree) is my favorite tea from Spring 20XX. ’. That feels so unpersonal, Scott… I guess it shows how big Yunnan Sourcing has become.
I really like this tea. It feels very lively. There is a lot of freshness and sweetness to the taste, and the mouthfeel has an active, tingling, interesting quality that makes this tea engaging. There is very little astringency and no grassiness. Maybe I would have liked a little more thickness to this tea, but it is still very young and I guess it might acquire more substance with some short-term aging.
I love the size of the leaves, which gives this tea a rustic feel. This tea is very aromatic, with mostly dried fruits and some honey. It kinda feels like a shai hong to me. Sweet, thick and fruity, smooth and not very strong or tannin-heavy. Not really a breakfast black tea, but nice and characterful.
Hmm, so I bought 250g of this because I liked it so much. But the 2022 version seems a bit different. It is clearly the same tea, with similar spicy and fruity notes. But the leaves are remarkably less tippy this year, and somehow the tea seems more subdued, less fullfilling and not so edgy. Maybe it will improve because it’s still only a few months old? Still good tea, but I’m less excited about this batch.
[edit]: No, I like it. It is indeed not as strong, but that’s perfectly fine, it’s great and very refined.
I am really liking this. This white tea is strongly oxidized and the leaves are pretty red. There is a lot of sweetness and thickness, with bold foresty/swampy and fruity+vanillaish aromas that give this tea great depth and complexity. There is also a bit of that almost medicinal old book woody sweetness of aged white teas. Very comforting overall feel that makes this feel really nice in the body.
Nice, potent Yunnan black tea. It is sweet in a fruity way, with some nice cinnamon-like spicy aspects, which give it an uplifting and thirst-quenching quality much like a good second flush darjeeling. When it is brewed stronger it becomes grippy without feeling dry, the kind of astringency that feels good. I can see why this is more expensive than most other dianhongs.
