Bingdao Laozhai Huangpian Sheng Ancient Tea Tree Pu-erh 2014

I recently ordered a bunch of puerh wrappers from Wymm tea, and wound up spending more on add-ons than I did the wrappers. This sample was one of the add-on teas.

The dominant feature, at least for me today, is the strong cha qi. It makes it hard to focus on the tea, so my comments will be general rather than detailed. The tea is well-balanced with no obvious flaws. Taste is a straw/wood blend, with no off-flavors or bitterness. I have a fuzzy feeling at the tip of my tongue that suggests acidity, but otherwise not a significant amount of astringency or bitterness. If I had any complaint it would be that there isn’t much aroma. It’s more of a daily drinker than a special occasion tea, but it impressed me since most bricks aren’t this nice.

I had a second session about 3 weeks later in which I noticed an odd vegetable flavor in the second steep. Reminded me of a turnip. This only lasted one steep and otherwise I liked the tea pretty much as well, but I revised my rating downward slightly to account for this flavor. Also, the cha qi seemed a bit less strong that I said in my first review.

This huangpian began with a buttery steamed artichoke flavor and a both drying and cooling mouthfeel. Peppery notes started to develop and soon I had a mouth watering soup with the flavor dichotomy of a raw almond -peppery like the skin, bread flavors as in the meat of the nut. The big leaves kept giving cooling and complex flavors until I had to stop at 14 steeps. I’m very eager to get a hold of more!

reposting this under the correct tea sorry about that Wymm!

sooo thank you Wymm tea for this sample! Sadly my other half thought he was being nice when he cleaned up the kitchen along with two of my samples from wymm tea. Luckily i had at least had a couple steepings of them. So without having run through the full round of this one – i found it to be a really pleasant puerh. It had a really nice sweet smell to it and the overall feeling while drinking this was that it was light, refreshing, not vegetal…slightly sweet with a slight edge to it that i was really enjoying. thanks so much wymm!

Thanks to Wymm Tea for sending me a sample of this!

I used the whole sample (6 grams) in my gaiwan with 90°C water. After a quick rinse, I managed to get 10 steeps, with steep times starting at 5 seconds and gradually increasing to 30 seconds. The dry leaf had that typical sheng smell: smoky, a little tart and funky, kinda fruity. However, after the rinse, the smell changed a lot.

Believe it or not, the wet leaf before the first steep smelled like cooked spinach and feta cheese. Spanakopita tea!

The first steep tasted and smelled strongly of cooked spinach — green, vegetal, and slightly metallic. It also smelled slightly fishy, but not fishy enough to put me off drinking. It was fairly mild-tasting, though, with a lovely medium-amber colour that was like honey or brandy.

The second steep was slightly stronger, with a deeper colour and more intense flavour. As the steeps progressed, the intensity of the cooked spinach flavour gave way to a huge variety of flavours, all centering on savoury and slightly astringent. I remember tasting freshly ground pepper, tobacco, stonefruit, iron, copper, camphor, and menthol in various stages of my tea session.

Steeps 3-6 were the strongest with the most intense metallic flavour, while the flavour and colour dropped off considerably around steeps 8-9. After the fourth steep or so I started to notice a tingling at the back of my throat and down my esophagus, which is what made me think of camphor/menthol: it reminded me of having a cold, a bit. The spent leaves were huge and smelled faintly of fruit and ferment; they were a lovely olive green.

Full review at:

This tea is a sample for review. Thank you so much WymmTea!

Im really impressed with presentation. each sample is wrapped with handmade paper with sticker attached .
Upon opening ive noticed very big leaves. Huang Pian are older leaves that rejected because they dont look pretty. taste wise they are sweeter and less astringent than perfect young ones. farmers usually keep them to themselves.
i enjoyed this tea. it is bitter sweet, clean and full of flavor. With longer steeps it develops astringency but i always try to stick to very short steeps especially with young sheng.

6.5g 70ml gaiwan 200F rinse/ short steeps

Thank you so much for the sample Wymmtea. it was a nice experience

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Thank you for the sample WymmTea

I had a lot of trouble with this one. The first few steeps were dominated by a sour note that just didn’t agree with me. I noticed others noted a sour cherry note so I guess that must be it? I finally found a later steep when it had sweetened up I could actually enjoy, but all in all I would say that this is not a sheng for me!

I didn’t rinse, because this tea tastes great without it. The initial infusion is really light and has a subtle fruit note, maybe like apricot or peach. There’s a long lingering sweetness in the mouth and the taste is very clean and light. The scent of the tea leaves and brewed tea are lightly floral and a little vegetal.

The second infusion of this one is a blend of spiced, vegetal, and apricot. It tingles on the tongue with an almost fizzy sensation and finishes with a bit of a tartness that lingers in the mouth. It’s a nice sensation, not a bad tartness. The flavor is also a bit reminiscent of orange as the tea cools.

The third infusion is really sweet and fruity with a wood note in the finish and a very light bitterness at the end. Really juicy and full flavored.The fourth infusion is a bit more bitter and reminds me of orange blossoms. The fifth infusion brings more tart fruit flavor. It reminds me of tart bitter fruits like cranberries or grapefruit, but only mildly bitter compared to the fruit. After another infusion, there was no bitterness or tanginess at all and it had a distinct butterscotch note in the mix.

Overall this tea is really smooth and has a nice fruity flavor to it, balanced by the usual green notes of sheng Puer. Like WYMM Tea’s other sheng Puer teas, this one has a really clean taste. I haven’t had one yet that didn’t taste really high quality. Really happy they shared this with me!

Bouncing back and forth between painting, researching tea, redoing my tea area, and general reorganizing the bedroom. I have that restless feeling of wanting to do a lot, but my typical butterfly like habit of fluttering from thing to thing keeps me from staying focused. Sadly this bouncing around means I have not actually accomplished anything, well except stew, but it is still cooking so it does not count! At least the storms that have been promised have arrived, if I am lucky they will not fall apart and we will get a nice show this evening. Hooray for storms!

Wymm Tea recently stocked their shop with some new teas, and they were awesome and sent me samples of said new teas, yes, yours truly has four new Sheng Puerhs to spend time with, I seem to be developing an addiction to the stuff! After much debate I decided to dig into the Bingdao Laozhai Huangpian Sheng Ancient Tea Tree Pu-erh 2014 first, because I find myself enamored by the story of Huangpian Shengs, see, this tea is made from the not quite so pretty large, yellow (Huangpian means Yellow Leaf), scraggly leaves left over once the super fancy Puerhs are made. These are the leaves that the creators of the Puerh usually keep for themselves, because the tea that is exported needs to be pretty to fetch the best price, as a chef friend once told me, ‘we eat with our eyes’ the same is true with tea, but sometimes overlooking the standards of beauty will give us some treasures. The particular Huangpian comes from the same trees that the very sought after Bingdao Laozhai Puerh cakes that you sometimes see going for quite a bit of money. Way out of this blogger’s financial means! The aroma of the rather rough and green leaves is very sharp, like wet hay and, well, fermented tea leaves, it has that distinct fermentation smell that you get off of things that have started to become great friends with the microbes that are now hanging out with them. Mix in faint notes of honey, green beans, spinach, and a soft note of wet barn. Like the wood in a barn after a rain, you can smell the hay and the barn at the same time, luckily this is only the barn that stores hay and not animals or that would be a whole different smell.

Unlike the last Huangpian I had from Wymm Tea, this tea is fluffy instead of super compressed, so I did not need to poke at it in a vain attempt at breaking it up. The aroma is more potent this time, though less sharp, sweet notes of wet and freshly broken hay and honey along side lima beans and spinach. The liquid is fairly mild, mixing honey and hay with a hint of lima beans.

The first steep is pleasantly sweet and mild, blending notes of wet hay and honey at the first with sour cherries and a gentle note of smoke, spinach, and the distinct mustiness of old leaves at the finish. Not like falling in leaf loam, more the smell of it than taste. The aftertaste is lima beans, which is fun, because those things are delicious. The mouthfeel is smooth, not very thick, just smooth and a bit silky.

The aroma of the second steep is honey and hay with a touch of spinach, it is still incredibly mild, one of those I accidentally dipped my nose in the tea moments trying to get the aroma. The taste is definitely not as sweet as it was in the previous steep, it starts out with sharp wet hay and sour cherries and then quickly moves into green notes. The main notes of green-ness are lima beans, spinach, and a bit of grass and smoke. The finish is a surprising note of cranberry, that lingers into the aftertaste.

Next steep! The aroma is still faint, but the notes I am picking up are spinach and a touch of hay. This time the sweetness is gone, I am left with all savory spinach and lima beans. It is fairly smooth, though not overwhelmingly complex, but I don’t mind. I continued steeping this for a bit, once it hit the savory vegetal notes it did not really evolve much, which is fine, sometimes having a tea that is solid while being tasty is good for drinking tea while being able to focus on other things…like art or reading, without insulting the tea by ignoring it.

For blog and photos: http://ramblingbutterflythoughts.blogspot.com/2015/05/wymm-tea-bingdao-laozhai-huangpian.html