Highlights:
- Old trees Nannuo, strong and rich taste
- Great aroma, bitterness and huigan (returning sweetness)
- Intense uplifting Qi (comfortable)
- Taiwan dry/natural storage
Ban Po Lao Zhai is the best village in Nannuo, and this cake has that uplifting/intense gushu feeling of the best Menghai-area tea, with the strong aroma and pleasant bitterness typical of Nannuo.
The tea already has very good body, it currently drinks like a (well balanced) “younger” gushu but is also an excellent ager when all the bitterness will transform in more body and sweetness. You may want a cake to drink now and one to keep for 5-10 years.
“Perfection” is the highest sub-brand of Yuan Yuan Tang. Overall, even though this tea is younger, it has slightly higher quality leaves than previously sold out 2012 BHYJ Nannuo “Butterly spring dance breeze”.
375g big cakes.
Nick M. –
YYT 2015 Ban Po Lao Zhai
Intensely floral aromas, white jasmin and some deeper perfumed notes. Straight away there’s a vibrant pop of sweet flavour up front, followed by a mineral water palate rinse, before a grassy character takes over. The soup is subtle, mildly cooling, hints at more to come yet in the early going yet is rather subdued after the initial ‘wow’ moment. Interesting juxtaposition of the upfront showiness and subsequent subtlety. ‘Seek and hide!’ Switching to a harder brew makes it easier to understand, when the structure becomes much more evident (unsurprisingly), umami hay notes are revealed and the underlying power, persistence and future potential of the tea becomes rather more obvious. The aroma solidifies in later steeps, as does the body of the tea.