Gao Shan High Mountain Black Tea

Working from home today to give myself a bit of a break. Still far too many things to finish up this week to warrant an actual day off, but at least this way i get to hang out in my pj’s drinking tea and working. Plus the time i save from not having to travel, i can use to watch a bit of TV haha

I picked this one for my first tea this morning because i had it a couple days ago but hadn’t had a chance to actually get some thoughts down about it.

This is a chocolately, malty brew. It’s neither bitter, nor smokey. My only “complaint” is that it feels thin? still delicious and tasty but i keep wanting it to be more full in my mouth. I’ll likely pick this one up once i’m done with the amount that Tastybrew sent to me :)

Edit: 3000 tasting notes!

When I first started drinking this one it was a bit underwhelming. I mean, it was tasty enough, but not overwhelmingly awesome. But then it became overwhelmingly awesome as it cooled. Sooooo naturally sweet, like honey and caramel. And despite Yezi’s description of this tea, not a hint of bitterness. A super smooth and delicious chocolatey tea. I am definitely pleased with my selection of this one! I honestly drank up the cup so quickly (and while working) that I didn’t really pay super close attention to it. But I will with my next cup and try to write a more detailed review. This one may have to go on my to-reorder list!

I picked this tea from my Yezi samples simply because of this line: “A brew of Gao Shan is ideal for firing you up on a dreary day when you could do with a burst of acceleration.” Okay, Yezi Tea, let’s see what you got…

Wow, these Yezi Teas are a kind of blowing my mind. I’m starting to think that any tea company that gives away free samples without even requiring you to purchase something, must have a lot faith in their product, and Yezi Teas is definitely evidence of that.

This tea isn’t super aromatic when dry, but once I steeped it and took the lid off of my glass steeper, my house was instantly filled with roasty honey and cocoa. It has similar notes as Laoshan Roasted Oolong. Once again, the Yezi website references smoky flavor, but I wouldn’t consider this smoky at all, but maybe I need to change my definition of smoke flavor to smoked meat flavor. This isn’t meat smokey at all, a slight hint of burnt toast maybe. It also describes the tea as a bittersweet. I get the sweet for sure, but the bitter is less of a bitter flavor and more of the tea just saying, “the end”. Nothing astringent about it, kind of like the flavor of a door closing, no lingering around. All around awesome.

I am in love with this company. Are they new? Or just new to me?

This is one of Tasty Brew’s offerings to the BBBBox!
I’ve been excited about trying Yezi teas, & would like to request some of their samples, but I haven’t yet.

This one is tasty, with a dark chocolate flavor that reminds me somewhat of Laoshan Black.

A sample from a while back – also a sipdown! According to Yezi’s instructions you are supposed to use 5-6 grams and my sample package says 5 grams. It also says one teaspoon for 3 ounces of water, so I basically had 3 teaspoons for my 9 ounce mug. I had to guess on steep time… since I really don’t get the 15 seconds they mention.

Steep #1 // just boiled // 2 min
The fragrance of the dry leaves are amazing. I just know I will love it. The taste is very nice – smooth, a little smoky, malty, a little sweet, much like Laoshan Black. It’s VERY nice. The three teaspoons used probably make it tastier than the Laoshan that asks for one teaspoon… but should I really have to use three teaspoons? It definitely isn’t astringent or bitter or overdone. Just a nice cup all around.

Steep #2// just boiled // 3 min
Another lovely cup of tea… just like the first cup. I am starting to love and appreciate these types of black teas more, but they still aren’t my favorites. Honestly, it might be my palate or that I’ve sipped my Yezi samples months apart, but all three of the black teas have really tasted the same to me. The only difference might be with this one, since I used three teaspoons rather than two teaspoons with the others. I wonder if anyone else can taste a difference. Also, these Yezi teas do not have as deep a flavor as many of the Teavivre teas… those are more like dark chocolate even if I only use two teaspoons of leaves. I won’t start comparing to every black tea here!

Steep #3 // just boiled // 4 min
Another lovely cup but not as good as the other two. Nothing else new to add!

I looked up steeping directions before doing this one and tried to follow them for a change – at least more closely than I normally do. :) At 15 seconds, this smells nice but doesn’t have much flavor at all. After another 15 seconds a light hay flavor develops. At 45 seconds, the hay is deeper and becomes mildly malty. It smells sweet. This is also moderately dusty. After the 45 second steep, it became slightly sour and dry. So I guess I get the bittersweet. :)

They say in the description that it is comparable to a Kung Fu black. I don’t know if Shang’s Bai Lin Kung Fu is the same thing as a Kung Fu, but I will say that I prefer Shang’s if that is the case – it is smoother. This is a good tea but it wouldn’t be my personal preference to turn to.

I was in the kitchen at 8am cooking and kept at it for nearly 10 hours today all the while sipping on this tea. I didn’t get a chance to take detailed notes on each steep, but I can tell you it did resteep very well. I believe I stopped after 7 steeps just so I could end my day with something herbal.

Each steep rewarded me with something just a little bit different, this was surprisingly complex for a black tea. There were notes of dark chocolate which of course appealed to my sweet tooth, followed up by just a subtle hint of bitterness. Not enough to make the cup unenjoyable, but just enough to make it interesting. Early steeps of this tea resulted in a more malty flavor with a sweetness at the end, whereas the later steeps gave the exact opposite in flavor and yielded a more chocolatey sweetness with hints of malt. Every once in a while I would pick up a somewhat salty note that contrasted with the sweetness. This is a tea that will appeal to all of your cravings and it isn’t often I’ve come across one that is both sweet and salty.

You can read the full review on my blog:
http://www.notstarvingyet.com/index/2013/11/26/tuesday-tea-gao-shan-high-mountain-black-tea-yezi-tea.html

Another “wow!” from Yezi. Deep cocoa flavors with a touch of caramel, sea salt, and musk. Slightly red-winey, like Verdant’s Laoshan black. The brew is full bodied and bold but smooth and gentle at the same time. Really really nice black tea for special occasions.

I’m not getting the cocoa notes from this that the rest of you are getting. Just honey. That same honey flavor that I used to describe as mushroom and that I’ve recently discovered morphs into “muscatel” in a darjeeling. Clearly, I have no idea what I am talking about when it comes to describing black teas. But According to my own personal tea descriptors, I dub this mushroom tea and it shall not be my tea.

It tastes similar to Jin Jun Mei also from Yezi, which I compared to Zhen Qu from Butiki. Should I be finding such overlapping characteristics between these teas or am I on my own little tea planet?

(I keep wanting to type random German in the middle of my English. . .this is a good sign. .. well, not for all you reading my notes, probably. haha)

ok, back to the tea: The one thing ‘mushroom’ black teas have going for them is that they do not upset my stomach the way a ‘mushroom’ oolong or a darjeeling does.

Here’s to hoping that the real tea gurus out there don’t make a fuss at me for trying to compare such individual categories of tea, likely deserving of their own unique taste descriptions. :)

I received a sample of this from Yezi, and it is a very unique tea. As a lover of black teas, I have never experienced any quite like this before. Now, before I go into my review, I must point out that I did not follow the steeping directions Yezi suggests: making brews every 15 seconds or whatever. I usually can never taste much of anything that early on in the steeping process, so I just made the tea the way I normally make all my black teas: boiling water (which actually I found out cools to around 190-195 in most of my tea ware—which includes ceramic and glass teapots, and in this case, a ceramic mug)—and I steeped the leaves for 5 minutes. So perhaps that is why I experienced VERY different flavors than what others report in their reviews.

Anyway, the aroma of the dry leaves consisted of a lovely chocolate scent. The aroma of the liquor was very different: I know it sounds strange but it totally smelled like dry bread. And the tea tasted like slightly burnt bread crusts. Very strange to me. The bready taste was immediately followed by a twinge of bitterness. Other flavors I picked up on was a very strong roasted flavor with hints of coffee. Actually, this tea reminds me of a stout, with roasted malt or roasted barley flavors. Overall, it had a dark, malty, roasted taste, with no sweetness.

I honestly really didn’t enjoy it as much as I thought I would. I think this is the first black tea I didn’t care for! (But then again, I probably ruined it due to my lack of adherence to the brewing recommendations for this tea. Shame on me! haha.) Anyway, I’m also surprised I didn’t enjoy it because it does have the dark coffee and beer flavor aspects I tend to like. I seem to gravitate toward a good dark stout, or a cup of black, strong coffee, or a nice piece of bitter dark chocolate…so this tea should be right up my alley! Perhaps it was the thick bready and roasted part that sort of made it too strange for my liking. I will have to try this tea again sometime and actually follow the proper directions to see if that changes my opinion!