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, interesting. I brewed it more on the light side, but it has a elegantly faceted robustness to it.

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 faceted depth that shows itself only through the steeps.

What I enjoy most is that there’s an underlying sweet thread holding the different aspects together giving the herbal leathery savoryness a good complexity with a bright fruity tang in the cavity after swallowing, leaving a bright livelyness.

I think that’s the strength of this tea: balance and cohesion - and solid quality - just like the 2005 Quanjihao Yiwu Gushu.

Both (incl the 2005Mahei Gushu) have this tangy brightness (not so much my preference). David from EoT said he did not really experience that, so maybe I‘m just a bit to sensitive with acidity.

Overall: fruity/sweet complexity (brightness) and good quality and clear taste.