2006 Quanjihao Youle Gushu

2026-02

Give it time to arrive

I tried just a few days after the EoT shipment arrived from China, which - unsurprisingly wasn’t a great idea. So I waited another two weeks and came back to it. Interestingly, the tea felt quite different. In those first days it came across more sour and a bit out of alignment. Today everything just tastes a lot more balanced and just ‘sits’. I don’t know the reason why the tea ‘needs to rest’ but I have experienced that again and again.

More structure than taste

The taste of this tea is, at least the way I brew it, more a quiet one. What speaks is the body and that slightly deeper, herbal backbone - Youle has this particular ‘robust’ character to my palate. It speaks through things that sits just beyond the “flavor notes.” Not so much through big energy either, but through its structure: a quiet depth that develops in a steady way.

I’m sure it can be enjoyed in different ways. If you push it, more of its robust side comes through - more herbal bitterness, more of the bone of the tea. If you keep it lighter, it stays silky and soft, which is usually where my ratio lands.

What I enjoy most is that there’s an underlying sweet thread holding the different aspects together, which makes the whole session feel coherent. I think that’s the strength of this tea: balance and cohesion - and solid quality - just like the Quanjihao Yiwu Gushu.

For me, it seems like a tea, that you have to listen to a bit. Drinking it the second time only, I might add or adjust my impressions later.