Six famous tea mountains tea

The past week has been restless in a sorta good way. I was over excited about and by all the new cakes, drinking all day long, 4 to 5 different tea each day, 1.5 hours on average times 5, that's almost 8 hours of constant caffeine intake, I was drunk every day and up till the wee hours. So I am taking a break, only 1 ooglong so far today while sniffing on other cakes. Addiction is not only limited to illegal drugs! :P

Tea from each of the six famous tea mountains in Yunna.

It's difficult to identify the distinctive aroma, flavor and other characteristics of tea from different regions if tasted on separate occasions. I feel like experimenting, finding out the subtle differences between each mountains. On this posting, I am on the very first step, the dry leaves contest!



From left to right:

1. Yi Wu - light fragrance, mellow, 30% tobacco, 70% hibiscus (sweet floral)

2. Bang Wei - more intense aroma, sweet tobacco

3. You Le - balanced aroma, not too strong, not too light, caramel sweetness with some smoky not tobacco smell

4. Ban Zhang - very light aroma, I don't know how to describe it, perhaps floral herbal but faintly noticeable

5. Yi Bang - similar to You Le, slightly stronger in aroma, caramel, smoky closer to tobacco but not intense

6. Nan Nuo - fresh tobacco, little roasty with a touch of sweetness, gives you that pleasant "weed" like heighten state when you take a long deep sniff all the way to your lung


I can't see any significant difference by their appearance. Color, composition, size, shape, mixture are all very similar if not the same.

I should taste them all at the same time to find the difference in flavor as soon as I recover from lack of sleep. It's easy to taste something and conclude whether you like it or not, but when something similar yet different in subtle ways, tasting side by side is the only way to tell the difference, and it's an excellent way to train your tasting palate.