Da Hu Sai Village Wild Arbor Black Tea of Yunnan * Spring 2018

I’m finally back on Steepster. The last week has killed me. My entire family has been sick, thankfully not with COVID-19, and I did not get any rest this weekend due to running errands for them and assisting with the installation of the new computer and security systems at the home office and at one of our commercial rental properties. There were all kinds of little issues that required troubleshooting from the get-go, so of course we are still not done with everything, and I will be working on this stuff more this week and over the coming weekend. Anyway, I wanted to take a few minutes to pop off a couple more reviews and figured I’d start with one of my more recent sipdowns. I finished my 50g pouch of this tea a couple weeks ago. Yunnan Sourcing’s Da Hu Sai Village Wild Arbor Black Tea of Yunnan is one of their offerings I buy almost every year. I can always count on it to be solid, and that’s exactly what this spring 2018 tea was.

I prepared this tea gongfu style. After a quick rinse, I steeped 6 grams of loose tea leaves in 4 ounces of 194 F water for 5 seconds. This infusion was chased by 15 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 malt, cream, cedar, tobacco, pine, and black raspberry. After the rinse, I detected aromas of roasted almond, roasted peanut, honey, and butter. The first infusion introduced aromas of earth and baked bread as well as a subtle cinnamon scent. In the mouth, the tea liquor presented notes of malt, pine, cream, cedar, baked bread, and roasted almond that were backed by hints of honey, earth, butter, brown sugar, tobacco, black raspberry, oats, and sweet potato. The bulk of the subsequent infusions coaxed out aromas of red apple, camphor, vanilla, orange zest, roasted hazelnut, sweet potato, and brown sugar as well as subtler scents of chocolate and black pepper. Stronger and more immediately notable impressions of earth, butter, oats, sweet potato, and brown sugar appeared in the mouth alongside notes of minerals, red apple, roasted peanut, camphor, black pepper, orange zest, pear, black walnut, and roasted hazelnut. I also detected hints of chocolate, grapefruit pith, vanilla, and cinnamon. As the tea faded, the liquor emphasized notes of minerals, malt, baked bread, cream, earth, and orange zest that were balanced by lingering hints of pear, roasted almond, butter, chocolate, tobacco, and black walnut.

As mentioned earlier, this was a solid Yunnan black tea. Compared to the two previous productions, I found it to be a little less appealing, but it was still a more or less very satisfying offering that had held up very well in storage. Yunnan Sourcing is three for three with their Da Hu Sai Village black teas as far as I am concerned.

The tea is pleasant enough but left me uncertain if I’d re-order. I have other inexpensive teas that I do repeat so it’s not that.

There was an interesting aroma of grapefruit which grew on me.

“This year’s pick is a 2 leaf to 1 bud ratio, whereas the Spring 2017 pick was 1 leaf to 1 bud. They are going to look and taste a bit different, but they are from the same garden and processed by the same person (Mr. Duan).”

So no luck comparing to previous reviews. I’d like to try an Autumn production.

It is a typical Yunnan. Pleasant, sweet, no astringency. It smells of malt, baked bread, sweet potato and dark berries. The taste is consistently pleasant but there is no wow factor or anything unique. In addition to malt, baked bread, sweet potato, and blackberry it also has notes of baked apple, caramel and raspberry.

All of these components blend together well creating a unified taste without any differences in the second taste, aftertaste etc. The problem is it loses its complexity fast when you have it Western style as I did: there was still some baked bread and pleasant caramel sweetness but a lot of the previous undertones disappeared and some gooseberry-like sourness surfaced. That made for a very muted and way less interesting second cup. So if you are to brew it Western style you better add a lot of water and wait a bit longer to produce e a lot of tea from the first steeping.

You cant go wrong with this one but I did not find anything remarkable that would make me want to reorder.