Ancient Spirit

I feel a bit like a caveman with this tea — my second session with it. I get the bread, camphor, prunes, berry, tobacco… most of the notes that folks have mentioned. Less tree and forest, I suppose. The overall impression is just a light Yunnan that doesn’t much thrill me, and the notes so subtle… I feel like I don’t know why I’m hunting around in here except that I was told to. I might focus on this one for a few days, until I’m out of it, and see what I learn.

It’s always nice to get tea from Whispering Pines, since shipping costs from the U.S. to Canada are so high. Thanks to Daylon for the generous sample! I steeped 6 g of leaf in 120 ml of water at 195F for 7, 10, 12, 15, 18, 20, 25, 30, 40, 50, 60, 90, 120, and 240 seconds, plus some uncounted steeps.

The dry aroma is hard to pin down, with elements that remind me of cranberry, grape, hay, malt, tobacco, tomato vine, and wood. It smells like a wild Yunnan tea, if that’s helpful. The first steep has notes of earth, forest floor, minerals, grapes, squash, honey, hay, malt, and wood. The next steep is sweeter, with molasses, tobacco, bread, red grapes, cranberries, pine, and maybe some spices. In the third and fourth steeps, I get bread, honey, sweet potato, raisins, hay, malt, cream, pine, earth, smoke, wood, and minerals, and the tea is a bit drying. The aftertaste is particularly sweet, though this is a savoury tea overall. I get berry and cherry notes in the next couple steeps, and the tea is a bit sweeter. As the session goes on, the tea becomes more like a standard Yunnan tea, with notes of bread, honey, pine, tannins, malt, and wood. The final steeps feature malt, wood, tannins, minerals, honey, and raisins, with some red grape sneaking in on the longer steeps.

This is a rustic, wild Yunnan tea that is nonetheless nuanced and complex. Its sweet, earthy flavours really do evoke a forest, particularly in the first few steeps, and I had fun trying to detect everything that was going on. I don’t usually gravitate toward these types of teas, but would highly recommend this one.

Sipdown 5 – 2024

Not sure if it’s because of the age, but this tastes way different than I remember. Super fruity. Lots of stone fruits. Really tasty, I drank through the remainder of the bag pretty quickly.

Overall, this is a good tea with nice woody flavors, roasted nuts, and only hints of sweetness; this is mostly a savory tea. It starts off very mild in flavor with the 1st infusion and gets better from there. There’s a medium robustness in the tea with a good viscosity. I also got a lot of steeps out of this.

It’s a decent enough black tea, which is not quite in my preferred flavor profile, but won’t say No, if offered. The cha qi in this tea is pretty darn good.

I tried this GF style. (I’ll try this via WP’s recommended Western brew style later then update this review.)
Tea: 5.04g
Wash: No
Water: 150 ml
temps: ~195

1) 15 seconds @ 194F – Liquid is medium gold amber and gives off a faint woody smell. The wet leaves give off high notes of fruit and low notes of roasted / herbal scents. The flavor starts off with roasted nuts & camphor — there’s the mild sweetness of nuts; then a mild creamy aftertaste with hints of tobacco. It has a mild viscosity that coats the roof of my mouth but not my tongue with a very long finish

2) 30 seconds @ 196 — This is a much better infusion. The liquid is reddish amber with smells of wood, camphor/eucalyptus. The wet leaf has nigh notes of cocoa and low notes of roasted nuts, bittersweet chocolate.
On drinking it, I taste nuts on the tip of my tongue followed by cocoa, mild camphor/eucalyptus and wood. My tongue dried instantly; there’s a mild cha qi hitting my head.

3) 45 sec @ 193 deg. The tea is definitely getting a much darker red and I smell more camphor from the liquid, but the scent of the wet leaves hasn’t.
It still tastes of nuts, wood, and cocoa nibs. The flavors are becoming more robust and I can taste malty flavors. Viscosity has increased and the astringency has hit my tongue! Cha qi in the head has increased too.

4) 60 seconds @ 195 — The color is slightly less than the #3 steep. The liquid definitely has a camphor/eucalyptus scent, but the leaf now has high notes of brown sugar.
The flavor profile is changing slightly too — nuts, wood, and now resin.

5) 75 seconds – @ 200F — This is interesting. The liquid has gotten darker by increasing the temperature of the water, but the flavors haven’t really changed….they’re starting to actually got less intense

6) 1min30sec @ 200F — The liquid is still an amber red, and the flavors are still there, although lessening to a degree. There’s a hint of things starting to wash out at this point, but I might be able to get a few more steeps out of it.

Luxuriously complex…rich & velvety. Just smelling this brewed tea makes me happy.
If you haven’t indulged in this lovely tea yet I highly recommend you do! Sip & savor.

I tend to compare every wild arbor black tea from Yunnan to W2T’s Arbor Red nowadays, it has become the staple tea of this category for me. As for Ancient Spirit, this one seems to have a really good reputation on here so I was excited to try it. All in all, it doesn’t reach the heights of Arbor Red in my opinion. It is less well balanced and is not as complex. On the other hand, the longetivity and texture is just as good if not better.

The dry leaf aroma is slightly metallic with notes of sawdust, tomato vine, leather, and cranberry. From the wet leaves I get scents of forest floor, smoke and later in the session also roast lamb. The taste is very smooth and elegant. There are flavours of straw, citrus zest, leather, wood, and brown sugar. They turn into a mineral, woody, and fragrant aftertaste. I quite like the mouthfeel, which is buttery, smooth, soft, and somewhat fleeting.

It’s quite hard to describe this tea overall, but it is very mineral, a bit smoky, somewhat savoury, and lightly sweet. Late steeps then turn out to be distinctively woody.

Finally I had time for a more complex tea than some tea bags.
I sample from Derk and I really like it.

Preheated gaiwan, 3 grams of tea.
Oh, right after first notes started to appear! Mineral as well spicy, grapes, other stone fruits. Hmm, very, very interesting.

No rinse; too lazy to do it. I did not even had some precious time managment, just brewing as I like it. Once it was 30 seconds, then 90 seconds. I don´t care :D I was just preparing it somehow.

Tastes? Oh, so many. Red grapes probably most, but there are mineral notes, pine, forest floor, kinda woody, come on? It is so complex as well very velvety, smooth, cooling down a bit I guess. It is so good! Really! Maybe I feel bit nostalgic, as I also noticed antique shop aromas and as well a old books. Really fancy tea!

Derk, why you have not send me more? I would love to try it in different ways too! But of course it is bit ironic; it is lovely tea and really thank you for this sample.

Happy Valentines Day all ❤️

Thank you Derk :D for this sample. This has been on my wishlist for a very long time. Like many of my wishlist items, it was a tea that is long gone (at least for now) and the likelihood of being able to try it is also long gone. I was so delighted to get this that I just wanted to keep the sample of it for as long as I can… Maybe just frame it. lol

There are a few really great and thorough reviews on this tea. It is such a complex tea. I enjoyed reading them all. First thought after taking my first sip or two… This is Yunnan black tea? Did I grab the wrong one? Started out woodsy, citrusy, fruity, stonefruits, slightly floral, orchid. For an infusion or two, early on, it reminded me of a sheng I like. It was unique in its taste because it just didn’t taste like any of the Yunnan black teas I’ve tried (note: I don’t have a lot of experience with black tea. Thankfully someone else far more experienced said that too.) But this “Sheng” taste went away, it’s so complex that when I thought I somewhat understood the taste profile, it morphed into something else. Just as tasty, but different. There were berries, fruits, honey, clove, spices, and later some minerals, sweetness versus perfect tart notes here and there. In the long infusions, in the end, I got the malt, the sweet potatoes, the brown toast, the caramel along with the citrus and berries notes that were still there. Ah! I didn’t grab the wrong sample after all :).

So yeah, this was quite a journey. It lasted throughout the whole day. I look forward to trying it again if it ever becomes available. So, for now, my first impression is that it is a wonderfully complex and tasty wildcrafted black tea. I’d like to try it all the different ways as well.

3g, 110ml, 205F, rinse, 10 steeps, 25s, 35s, 45s, 55s, 65s, 75s, 85s, 2m, 3m, 5m.

A name has never been so appropriate for a tea, one that transports me through environments and time. Ancient Spirit hits all the right notes and feels. Complex (see the other reviews!), substantial yet light, stimulating yet grounding. Performs well gongfu, western and grandpa and oversteeping is not disastrous. Good for breakfast, lunch or dinner if you don’t mind staying up past your bedtime.

I’ve had two harvests of this so far. The one I’m currently sipping on is 2017. I so, so hope Brenden continues to carry Ancient Spirit!

I am going to break a long-standing rule of mine with this review. I have previously made it known on at least a couple of occasions that I will not assign a perfect score to any tea. Honestly, I’m pretty free and easy with grades of 80+ because I tend to buy, drink, and review things I know and like from vendors in which I have some degree of confidence. You may notice, however, that it is very difficult to get me to assign numerical scores higher than the 90-94 range, and for those who are interested, that is because I have established different degrees of excellence in my head. A score in the 95-99 range is reserved for teas that I believe to be a step or two above those I feel to already be more or less exceptional. A score of 100 would then refer to a perfect, world-beating tea which could not be topped by any other tea of its type. While I have come close to assigning perfect scores in the past, I could never motivate myself to do so, but here I am doing it now because I really do believe this tea to be that special. It was excellent to start with, but if anything, it managed to improve considerably in storage.

I prepared this tea gongfu style. After a very brief rinse, I steeped 6 grams of loose tea leaves in 4 ounces of 194 F water for 5 seconds. This infusion was chased by 16 additional infusions. Steep times for these infusions were as follows: 7 seconds, 9 seconds, 12 seconds, 16 seconds, 20 seconds, 25 seconds, 30 seconds, 40 seconds, 50 seconds, 1 minute, 1 minute 15 seconds, 1 minute 30 seconds, 2 minutes, 3 minutes, 5 minutes, and 7 minutes.

Prior to the rinse, the dry tea leaves emitted aromas of tobacco, clove, camphor, eucalyptus, black pepper, caramel, honey, brown toast, and malt. After the rinse, I noted new aromas of butter, cream, and raisin accompanied by stronger malt and honey scents. The first infusion then introduced roasted almond, roasted cashew, and pine aromas. In the mouth, the tea liquor presented notes of tobacco, clove, caramel, black pepper, cream, malt, raisin, butter, brown toast, honey, and pine that were chased by hints of roasted cashew, cinnamon, camphor, eucalyptus, and menthol on the swallow. Subsequent infusions introduced cinnamon, nutmeg, and sweet potato on the nose. Roasted almond appeared in the mouth along with new flavors of black cherry, nutmeg, ginger, juniper, minerals, peat, orange zest, heather, anise, and sweet potato. The final couple of infusions offered subtler notes of cream, pine, caramel, malt, and brown toast that were balanced by somewhat less defined orange zest, raisin, ginger, tobacco, and camphor impressions.

If anything was missing from this hong cha, it was the familiar molasses presence I often find in teas of this type. There was, however, so much else going on in this tea that was so unique and special that it was not missed at all. This was a truly fantastic tea, and in terms of feel and the way it expressed itself, it was unlike any other Yunnan black tea I recall trying over the years. I would have no issue recommending it to anyone with an interest in such teas.