Wymm Tea is a fairly new vendor in the tea game — as far as I’m aware, the company only started up in the last year or so. However, I’ve been hearing a lot of good buzz about them, and it’s great to find an online vendor of quality pu’erh based in Canada rather than the US or China. (My poor wallet, beaten by the current exchange rate, welcomes any chance to purchase from a domestic vendor.)
Wymm Tea sells a small, thoughtfully curated selection of teas, and they provide sample sets so you can try them out without committing to whole cakes. Awesome!
They sent me sample set D for free in exchange for a review. So let’s dive in!
Bingdao Laozhai Huangpian, 2014
Handmade with tea leaves picked from Bingdao Laozhai in 2014, this sheng pu-erh brews a bright golden liquor. It has notes of cut hay and earth in its aroma, complimented with almond and buttery flavours.
These huangpian are picked from the same ancient trees as the standard pu-erh from Bingdao Laozhai, the only difference being that it is less aesthetically pleasing; the bigger leaves (huangpian) are filtered out so that the remaining leaves are neat and symmetrical when pressed into cakes. These bigger leaves are often kept by the tea farmers for personal consumption and are rarely found in the market. Even though huangpian does not have the tidy appearance of its counterparts, it possesses similar taste characteristics and is sometimes considered more flavourful as the leaves spent longer period of time growing on the trees.
This tea was the first one I tried out of the sample set, and it really took me by surprise. Some of the leaves were large and feathery, but there were also a lot of smaller, broken up ones, with quite a bit of dust as well. I’m going to blame that on it being handled in the mail.
I used the whole sample (6 grams) in my gaiwan with 90°C water. After a quick rinse, I managed to get 10 steeps, with steep times starting at 5 seconds and gradually increasing to 30 seconds. The dry leaf had that typical sheng smell: smoky, a little tart and funky, kinda fruity. However, after the rinse, the smell changed a lot.
Believe it or not, the wet leaf before the first steep smelled like cooked spinach and feta cheese. Spanakopita tea!
The first steep tasted and smelled strongly of cooked spinach — green, vegetal, and slightly metallic. It also smelled slightly fishy, but not fishy enough to put me off drinking. It was fairly mild-tasting, though, with a lovely medium-amber colour that was like honey or brandy.
The second steep was slightly stronger, with a deeper colour and more intense flavour. As the steeps progressed, the intensity of the cooked spinach flavour gave way to a huge variety of flavours, all centering on savoury and slightly astringent. I remember tasting freshly ground pepper, tobacco, stonefruit, iron, copper, camphor, and menthol in various stages of my tea session.
Steeps 3-6 were the strongest with the most intense metallic flavour, while the flavour and colour dropped off considerably around steeps 8-9. After the fourth steep or so I started to notice a tingling at the back of my throat and down my esophagus, which is what made me think of camphor/menthol: it reminded me of having a cold, a bit. The spent leaves were huge and smelled faintly of fruit and ferment; they were a lovely olive green.
This tea was unusual because of the strong metallic flavour and also because I didn’t detect any bitterness.
Plus, after I drank it, I felt kind of sleepy and loopy, rather than feeling all hopped up on caffeine. As I sipped and slurped, I found myself making jokes while recording my notes, riffing off of the Beatles, Anchorman, whatever. Heh. Is this what being “tea drunk” is like?
Mangnuo Tengtiao “Cane Tea”, 2014 First Spring
This is WYMM’s signature tea. Handmade with premium first flush of 2014 spring from Mangnuo village, this sheng pu-erh brews bright golden with a vegetal, minty and honey flavour, and with the aroma of fresh mown grass in the morning. The tea is filled with powerful and masculine chaqi. There is a pronounced bitter taste that lingers in back of the tongue with hints of astringency in the initial steeps, which are slowly replaced with a bold honey aftertaste. The liquor is heady because of the ultra concentrated nutrients in this tea. Each serving of this tea can last up to 20 steeps.
I was really looking forward to this since it promised to be an intense experience. 20 steeps? Incredible! Unfortunately, I didn’t make it quite to 20, but I did manage to get at least 14-15 or so in there. I took a break a few hours in the middle of it all so that I could give my poor stomach and kidneys a rest, but by god, I did it!
The dry leaf of this was tightly packed, thin, and spindly, and the colour was dark green with white flecks. I put the entire sample (6 grams) in a gaiwan and gave the leaves a quick rinse before settling down into the first set of steeps. I kept the first 7 steeps fairly short, ranging from 5 to 12 seconds in 90°C water.
The first steep didn’t taste like much, but the flavour really opened up in the second and third steeps. I tasted grass and apricots, and the brewed tea was a pale amber colour. The aftertaste was long, lingering, clean and grassy — this tasted an awful lot like a green tea that had been suddenly transformed into a sheng. A few steeps in I started to notice some bitterness and astringency, but despite this, the tea was incredibly light and fruity, with a thick and nearly syrupy mouthfeel.
The first seven steeps done, I did some housework — laundry, cooking, you know, the sort of stuff that you need to do to be a functioning adult. It was way too hot the day I drank this to go outside for a walk, though.
When I got back to this tea afterwards, I brewed up a fresh pot of water, gave it a quick rinse to get the leaves warm again, and went to town. However, this second session was much bitterer to start with. Had the tea originally tasted this bitter? I didn’t think so. After a few steeps the bitterness toned down and the fruitiness returned, but I don’t know whether it was the tea that changed, or whether I did.
It got lighter over time, turning a pale yellow instead of golden, but there was still a subtle fruity flavour into the final steep. The leaves themselves smelled lovely – tart, tangy, and floral. By the end, they had greatly expanded in size and were a lovely mix of russet and olive.
Note: It took me a few days to write this post, and considering I spent a good portion of that time mentally revisiting this tea and thinking man, that tasted good, I’m confident in saying that this was a winner. The combination of bitterness and fruitiness in this was really memorable.
Menghai Wangshuji Shou in Seventh Grade, 2008
Full tea leaves from high mountains in Menghai county, located in west of Xishuangbanna Dai autonomous prefecture in Yunnan province, are picked to make the tea in 2008. Pu-erh tea has the potential to ferment over time, and this tea has been post-fermented for 6 years since production. Post-fermentation gives the tea vibrant flavours and richer aroma as well as deep wine colour. This shou pu-erh brews with a rich and honey flavor and long-lasting jasmine rice aroma.
When it comes to pu’erh tea, I’m a novice, and when it comes to shou, or ripened pu’erh, that’s even more so. I think I’ve only had shou once or twice before this, but this tea was an experience. For one, the leaves were thick, twisted black nuggets, with a slight gloss to them like tar. Because I’m not very familiar with the correct way to steep shou, I used freshly boiled water, and stuck to steeping times similar to a sheng — a quick rinse, then steeps of roughly 5 seconds.
The dry tea was somewhat glossy and dark, and the smell was fairly neutral — leather and earth, which is something I think is pretty common to shou teas. Once I rinsed it, it smelled like shoes, leather, dirt, and loam, with perhaps a bit of camphor. It reminded me of a root cellar, actually.
The brewed tea was dark. Like really rich, homemade beef broth. It had a slightly fishy, earthy, mushroom-y smell, and I was worried I should have rinsed it twice, but oh well — down the hatch it goes! The first steep tasted uninspiring and muddy, but the second steep developed a menthol/camphor note. That note developed and reminded me also wood, branches, autumn leaves, and cedar. And, oh yeah, this shit was dark. Almost like Guinness beer!
As I drank the third steep I noticed a cottony, gauzy feeling on my tongue. The fourth steep introduced mineral notes, but the initial fishiness was still there. Steeps 5 and 6 were fairly similar, though at the 6th steep I bumped the steep time up to 10 seconds. I noticed that as the steeps progressed, it tasted less of loam/earth and more of wood/cedar. By steep 7, my body became really heavy. I think I stopped after the 7th steep because I was so sleepy!
But yeah, based on what I’ve read of shou pu’erh, this was a pretty representative sample: rich, dark, earthy, an acquired taste. And I’m pretty sure it knocked me out!
Dong Banshan, 2014 Spring
Handmade with tea leaves picked from Dong Banshan in the fall of 2014, this sheng pu-erh has a high floral fragrance similar to that of jasmine flowers, with fairly subtle intricacies in its taste. It is most represented by its initial vegetal taste, which soon transfers to a honey flavour. It is a sheng pu-erh that can be easily enjoyed on a daily basis.
The dry and wet leaves for this tea smelled really sweet and fruity, like fresh apricots. By this point, I had settled on parameters of 90C water with a quick rinse and a first steep of 5 seconds. The first steep was almost completely clear and without scent, but the flavour was slightly sweet, with no bitterness or astringency.
The flavour of the first few steeps was mild — I can see this being a really good tea for a beginning drinker, someone who’s never tried pu’erh before. The first few steeps smelled peachy, apricot-y, and grassy, like a summer morning! This tea had a great mouthfeel, too; it was thin but full in my mouth like wine.
By the fourth steep, the leaves must have really opened up because the colour of the tea darkened to amber. The flavour was still really fruity though, with grape added to the peach/apricot from before. This was also the first steep that tasted bitter. The bitterness was a smothering sensation rather than a sharp one, though.
By the fifth steep, astringency showed up along with the bitterness, and I also started to feel a tickle at the back of my throat. My mouth felt like I had bitten into a really underripe fruit. The next few steeps were more bitter than fruity, though, with fruitiness on the front of the sip and bitterness in the back — quite similar to the Mangnuo Tengtiao above, actually. (Though honestly I like the Mangnuo one better because overall, it felt juicier and less astringent.)
As I continued to drink, the puckery astringency continued, and the apricot/peach flavour receded. The dryness in my throat stayed, though. However, at the 11th steep, the flavour became very mineral. By this point, my belly was full of tea but I wanted to finish off the pot, so I stopped sipping and started chugging. Luckily, the leaf was starting to wear out (and so did the bitterness) so it was easy to drink.
Unbelievably, I got a monster FIFTEEN steeps out of this tea. I’m sure that that number would have been consistent across all four samples if I had been willing to push things so far. On the final steeps, there was a nice juicy, fresh aftertaste like watermelon rinds. Interesting!
Verdict
All four of these teas were lovely — Wymm Tea, thank you so much for the samples! I would seriously consider adding the first two teas I sampled to my permanent collection (once I make room, of course). I am so happy with the chance to try all of these teas, and I love that there’s a Canadian vendor out there selling high-quality pu’erhs.
