Yunnan Sourcing's 2015 "Ying Shan Hong" Purple Black Tea with Snow Chrysanthemums

Yunnan Sourcing's Description
Our "Ying Shan Hong" cake is a blend of Wild Purple Black tea and Snow Chrysanthemums from Spring 2015. The taste is floral and sweet with a thick burgundy red tea soup that soothes the mouth and throat with a layer of tea and flower oils and tannins.

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I WILL DESTROY YOU!

My thoughts
I received a 100g cake of this tea a couple months back in one of YS's monthly tea plans. I'm still a bit wary around tea blends with herbal/fruity additions (probably from all the crap blends I drank back in my Teavana days), so I didn't know what to expect from this one. I love purple varietal black teas, but I had never even heard of Snow Chrysanthemums before.

So I did some digging. Googling "snow chrysanthemum" turns up a hundred places where you can buy the dried flowers, but none gave a Latin name to go with them. The tea's page in YS says they're a Rhododendron, but the flower structure is definitely something from the Asteraceae family, which doesn't include Rhododendrons. I was finally able to find a Chinese site that labeled them as  Coreopsis tinctoria, and this looks to be correct to me. So the mysteriously labeled Snow Chrysanthemum is not actually a Chrysanthemum or a Rhododendron, but a Tickseed that is actually native to North and Central America, but is well established and naturalized throughout much of China as well.

Dry leaves - The leaves are packed into a round cake, but break apart fairly easily. The aroma is quite floral, but not anything like a green oolong. The flowers give off a very pungent autumnal scent, much like the common Chrysanthemums you see everywhere this time of year. Maybe that's where the common name comes from. The florality mingles quite well with the malty/plum aroma of the purple black tea.

Brewing parameters - 200F, 60s first, +30s after

Tasting notes - Sweet, floral spice, dried plums, autumn leaves

This is seriously like autumn in a cup. The tea liquor is a rich burgundy-orange color almost exactly the shade of the maple tree outside my window right now. The spicy florality blends perfectly with the dried plum taste unique to purple teas. It has an incredibly silky, almost oily, mouthfeel that coats the mouth and throat. I'm not sure if that's the result of the Coreopsis flowers, but it's certainly one of the smoothest teas I've ever had.

Subsequent steeps don't change much, but the leaves and flowers are certainly generous and keep on giving even after 8 steeps. The floral component becomes a bit weaker after about 5 steeps, but the tea leaves keep giving that wonderful dried plum and malt flavor. YS doesn't specify which variety of purple tea these leaves are made from (Ye Sheng is my guess), but they have one of the strongest fruity tastes I've found in a black tea.

This tea is beginning to open my eyes to good herbal blended teas again. I hope to find more as good as this one. You can buy this tea from Yunnan Sourcing here: http://yunnansourcing.com/en/2015/3545-2015-yunnan-sourcing-ying-shan-hong-purple-black-tea-and-snow-chrysanthemum.html

What-Cha's Yunnan Graceful Purple 'Zi Juan' Purple Varietal Green Tea

What-Cha's Description
A brilliant and rare tea produced from purple varietal tea plants, with a smoky aroma and taste combined with a wonderful smooth texture.

My thoughts
I love me some Chinese green tea. There are so many different parts of the world that grow good green tea, but I always come back to China when I want a really good green. This is one I've had my eye on for a while, and purple varietal teas always intrigue me. This one is made from the Zi Juan varietal (a.k.a. Purple Beauty), which is a man-made cultivar, as opposed to the other two purple varieties (Ye Sheng and Zi Cha) that are both naturally occurring mutations.

Dry leaves - The leaves are rolled lengthwise into long points and look like a dark silver needle white tea. The aroma is definitely unique, with a smoky, earthy, vegetal pungency being at the forefront. It almost reminds me of a very young sheng puerh, but without the bite. I've had young shengs that made me sneeze from the pungency, and this wasn't nearly that strong.

Brewing parameters - 175F, 60s first, +20s after. What-Cha recommends a longer steeping time of 2-3 minutes, but I can't bring myself to steep a green for that long. I've ruined too many greens by oversteeping.

Tasting notes - Pungent, vegetal, smoky, green wood, astringent

Is this a sheng? The ever-so-slightly-purple-tinted soup gives off a pungent bitey vegetal aroma that immediately brings me to a very young sheng. Not at all what I was expecting from a green tea. The taste is similar, starting off with a vegetal bite, drifting into a mild smokiness, and finishing with an earthy, green wood, and legume blend. It does have slight hints of the soybean/grassiness that I typically associate with green teas from Yunnan, but those hints are mostly overpowered by the tangy vegetal pungency.

The second steep has mellowed out somewhat, but it is still a very sheng-like brew. I can detect very slight notes of green grapes or something fruity in the finish as well. Steeps #3-6 are mostly the same, with the sheng qualities taking the lead. I have to keep reminding myself that I'm drinking a green tea, and not a puerh.

For a green tea, this is certainly one of the most distinctly flavored brews I've tried. If you handed me this tea without telling me what it was, I'd almost certainly say it was a young sheng, and I'd probably even argue that point. This tea is worth trying simply because of its uniqueness, though it may not appeal to everyone due to its odd piquant aroma and flavor profile.

You can buy this tea at What-Cha here: http://what-cha.com/sale/china-yunnan-graceful-purple-zi-juan-purple-varietal-green-tea/