Imperial Mojiang Golden Bud Yunnan Black Tea

I don’t think I will ever get tired of this tea. Such freshness!

2 heaping tsp for 12 oz

The best Dian Hong I’ve ever had. Thanks to Doug F for turning me on to this. It has all the classic Dian Hong flavor that I’ve come to expect with zero astringency and a very smooth, rich mouthfeel. Love love love…

I might brew it a little stronger next time to see how that goes. It is so smooth, that I bet I could get even more flavor out of it without risking too much astringency or bitterness.

The finest Yunnan gold bud tea you are likely to taste. The heady combination of caramel, chocolate, and pu-erh-like earthiness floors me every time. Stockpile this tea; Yunnan Sourcing’s prices are shockingly low for this tea.

This is Spring 2024.
TTB: I realized, like a dufas, that I have some tea that I forgot to add back into the TTB. There isn’t much left to this sample, though.

Dry Appearance. Glorious. Mainly golden and fuzzy (they call it golden, but honestly, it’s more like a shiny, creamy, golden-brown). Mixed with dark brown. Curling.
Wet Leaf: Less curly, but you can still see the fuzz. Golden chocolate brown.
Flavor: Creamy, woody, yum.
Wet leaf Aroma: Sweet cream, sweet wood, chocolate milk

This one is incredibly smooth. When your friends ask you why you drink loose tea instead of tea bags, this is why.

Golden spot for the Golden Bud yesterday was 1 tablespoon of leaves in 225 mL water, 95 degrees for 3 minutes. I wanted something rich and I received it.

Adjusting rating from 81 to 85 as I realized brewing the tea stronger was what was missing from my original review.

I brewed this tea grandpa style, starting with 3 grams and adding a pinch with each infusion.

This tea is a prime example of “all looks over taste” when it comes to tea. I got the Spring 2022 harvest of this tea from my YS order, and while this tea has beautiful golden leaves/buds, a beautiful, potent and rich aroma, and a decent liquor, everything else was the epitome of a downhill fall. Flavour was almost non-existent, least flavourful dianhong I’ve ever had. The texture was smooth but uninteresting, the character of this tea is just gone, the discussion about finish & aftertaste is out the window, and the steep longevity relatively is quite bad too. There was a slight buzzy and warming cha-qi, but that’s about it. Not a good tea.

Sipdown 7/22-2022

Logging the sipdown- truly can’t remember anything about this.

[Spring 2019 harvest] This is one of those Yunnan teas that started the golden bud craze of the recent decades. It seems that I, as many other tea drinkers, while liking this tea quite a bit struggle for the words to describe its aroma and taste. It is subtle, fleeting and ever changing.

This dianhong is really strong in any way a tea can impress you: it has an absolutely lovely and striking appearance, a distinct, hard-to-describe but charming aroma, nice murky golden liquor….

The taste is multi-layered and subtle, reminiscent of good greens but with a malty backbone and welcoming chocolate bitterness. Plenty of interesting sweetness, baked bread, fruit. In the subsequent infusions nuttiness becomes prominent. The aftertaste is long, satisfying, and also rather complex.

This is one of the teas that richly rewards experimenting with different steeping times, leaf amounts and temperature by displaying new flavors. I thoroughly enjoyed this red and will order again.

[Spring 2018 harvest]

For my morning brew I chose this black tea sample from derk. It was a good choice, it turns out that this tea ranks among my favourite black teas from YS. I will be looking to add it to my next order.

It has a nicely balanced and delicate taste, while being more bitter and less sweet than similar teas. That’s definitely a plus for me. The taste profile is somewhat tart and bitter with spicy and nutty undertones. One of the highlights is the protracted and evolving aftertaste.

Also, I am not sure if it’s related to my state of mind this morning, but I don’t think black tea has ever had such a strong defocusing effect on me, and this was only 3g. Admittedly, I drank it quite fast. The tea is very infusable too, I could get 12 infusions from it overall.

Song pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zWbsnAHXyBU