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Roasty, rich and tannic, this 28 year old tea must have been properly stored, because there are no stale or musty notes at all. Tieguanyin is often offered in lighter, green roasts. As far as I’m concerned, those aren’t really Tieguanyin. This properly dark roasted offering gives you the Iron Goddess of Mercy as she was intended to be, with plum skin sweetness and red wine astringency. Forget the green stuff. Once you go black, you’ll never go back.

A tea for those who have forgotten the wonder of black tea. This bud-heavy pick is often seen in white and green styles, but surprises and delights in its fully oxidized state with intense expressions of malt and molasses. Care must be taken, as oversteeping blunts the sweet nuance. If you’re a jaded tea head who thinks black tea isn’t as interesting as other styles, this is one for your cupboard to change your mind.

If your tea ceremony is important to you, a time to share space with friends or marinate in your own device-free thoughts, this offering stands up as more than a drink – it’s a place to be inside yourself. It may not be as multidimensional as oolong, but the few notes it emits are played virtuosically. A simple but deep cup that radiates carmelized yam and unfermented rum.

There is some warranted smack talk about uninteresting black teas from Yunnan Sourcing, which is generally only recommended for puerh. Indeed, a lot of the smack talk is true. This particular black is just an exception.

Golden Key clearly hails from the same heavily roasted family as Red Robe but offers a more perfumed, playful edge than its austere older brother. Having never smelled an orchid I cannot verify its purported “orchid aroma,” except to say that Golden Key is ever-so-slightly “brighter” than the Robe; not in literal color, but in synesthesia. If Da Hong Pao is a cello, Jin Yaoshi is closer to violin, though it remains deep and masculine despite the flowery flourish. If David Bowie’s sex appeal was tea, it would be this one – a man with makeup, perhaps, but still a man.

There is some caramelized fruit interwoven with orchids – definitely stone fruit and not tropical. Do not be misled into thinking this tea is “woody” like a kukicha, although there might be some hints of hojicha from the roast. Most clearly, however, “woodiness” here expresses itself as a hard-to-pin-down character reminiscent of something aged in, perhaps, a bourbon barrel. Think darkened wood chips, heated almost to the point of burning but then cooled and tossed into a caramelized apple bochet. Red apple skins slightly toasted on dry cast iron, along with some ineffable accent like juniper berries.

Black teas can be one-note. At least, you have to look a lot harder to find the differences between cups. The unmistakable distance between oolongs or the space between a longjin and a gyokuro doesn’t usually come up between different black teas. It takes an exceptional black tea to stand out from the rest, and that’s what buyers hope for when they purchase Purple Voodoo which, unfortunately, fails to deliver.

Yunnan Sourcing’s now sold out “Drunk on Red” black tea cake, for example, offered a very similar cup at a tiny fraction of the price. It’s unlcear exactly what you’re paying for with Purple Voodoo, which is not tippy, organic or single estate. The prestige of the tea is in the “first flush” and, of course, the “purple” distinctions — but these translate to only SUBTLE differences/improvements. On offer from Yunnan Sourcing are far more dramatic step ups, including the Camellia Taliensis black tea and a variety of “pure gold” or gold-streaked offerings that deliver with big, malty tones. Think spring tips, golden needle, pure bud…if any of these were pressed into a cake, that would be a different story. The fact Purple Voodoo’s tea leaves were once purple doesn’t powerfully translate to the cup or even to the finished leaf. Some black tea processes, comparable to a dark roast for coffee, are very good at covering up imperfections, but they also bulldoze a lot of the nuance of delicate purple leaves that end up brewing the same as their green cousins.

It’s a far better tea than the stuff you’d buy in a bag, but the aroma notes are comparable. This tea ultimately fails by being good when, I think, the consumer is looking for something exceptional. No tasting notes to report, nothing that stands out. If you are looking for a tea that will change the way you think about black tea, skip the Purple Voodoo and opt for “Purple Wild Buds” which is probably the leaf material that SHOULD have been pressed to make Purple Voodoo, having the precise bitter quality that would soften after being stored as a cake.

Purple Voodoo benefits from longer steeps and does not become bitter.