Gorgeous Yunnan White Tea from Ancient Trees - FLOATING LOTUS

Hey teaheads, this is Don from Mei Leaf. It started with Flower Crane, then it was followed up by Peony Chirps, and then it was followed up by Feather Maiden. Here is our fourth in our series of white teas made from old tea trees growing in Yunnan that are normally reserved for making raw Puerh tea. I'm sure we can shorten that description a little bit, but I hope that at least it gives you some clarity. This is Floating Lotus. Here we go. Floating Lotus, as with our other white tea cakes from the same series, we have taken the classic Chinese paper-cut stylings, and made a surreal mash-up of nature and animal. Here is a lotus flower with butterfly wings that we are calling Floating Lotus. I was originally going to call it Flying Lotus, and I was thinking, where did I hear that before? Where did I hear that before? And then I realized, oh yeah, that musical artist I think was originally on Warp Records, back in the day, at least. So yeah, I couldn't call it Flying Lotus, so it's called Floating Lotus. So as I said, the sort of brief rundown on this is, imagine tea trees, Gu Shu. This is 150 to 200 years, so we can't quite call it Gu Shu, but it's very old tea trees. I think that I'm right in saying that these are the oldest tea trees that we have sourced from for this white tea series. So imagine these old tea trees that are normally used to make raw Puerh tea, and instead the producers are making white tea. Which is a bit of a risk, because, you know, raw Puerh tea sells at a very high price. It's one of the most renowned teas out there. Sorry, I just noticed that I dropped this on the way to the studio, and my teapot has lost its nose. It's like one of those Egyptian sculptures, with their nose chopped off. Sorry, duckling. Anyway, it'll still get some tea. So imagine taking these tea trees that are normally used to make raw Puerh tea, and you're making white tea out of them. So a risk, because raw Puerh commands a high price, and therefore it's better to stick with what you know. But these producers have been producing it, and we are sourcing from the same mountain, Nan Hua. Nan Hua seems to be the village area that is the most up for making white teas, and they make some stellar white teas that are very different from the white teas from other places like Guang Xi, and Fu Jian, etcetera. It just has that rich, Yunnanese character. So here we go. Floating Lotus, 150 to 200 year-old tea trees, 2023. Let's quickly... Oh, what am I doing? Put this back. Open it up. Focus. Done. So, let's quickly scope this tea. Season, April... Oh, the smell coming off these leaves. April, 2023. Cultivar Dai Ye Zhong variety, 150 to 200 year-old tea trees. Then you've got the origin is from Nan Hua, Yunnan, China, budding up to three to four leaves, as you can see. A big mix of buds, and smaller leaves, and larger leaves, and the elevation is around 1,400 meters. I love the color of these white teas. It's like full-spectrum, from your pale, silvery buds, sage, large green leaves, the more plummy, chestnutty, auburn colors, and some oranges as well in there. Lovely, like five-color tones, and lots of textures. Just a very pretty looking cake if you are so inclined to love your white teas. Right. What am I doing? I'm not quite with it today, I tell you. All right, here we go. Break into this. Get a nice, hefty chunk. With white teas I'm really not worried about breaking the leaves, especially those larger leaves. I reckon that's a good amount. Put that to the side. We've got our cake. Another cake here so we can look at that wrapper. I'm brewing in a Gai Wan, a new Gai Wan. I don't know if this is going to be in stock when this video comes out. It might be. I've not really planned it out. I don't know when this video is being released, but I love it. A new Gai Wan. Finally, we've got a new Gai Wan. We've been testing Gai Wans for ages. I was going to say years, and I think it is actually years, to try and find ones. I like to get some more porcelain Gai Wans with the white inside, and a glaze on the outside. I just didn't like a lot of the glazes. This is from Jing De Zhen, the capital of fine porcelain in China. If you haven't seen our video visiting Jing De Zhen then go check it out. Let's see how much we've got in here. Yeah. No. I was going to say that I would have a very generous session, but there are limits, even for me. Okay, here we go. Tidy this up a little bit. The smell of floating lotus, and I can already smell that these dry leaves are rich, sweet. Hmm! A lovely combination of the very sweet malted milks, honeys. Yeah, honey and milk. Sweet comfort, and then this beautiful bracing notes to it as well. So let's talk about the sweet and creamy. Malted milk, honey, white chocolate, white rabbit candies. Floral. Definitely got floral. Mmm! Hard. White flowers. A little bit refreshing, but still sweet. Frangipane Magnolia. That sort of quality. So a little bit, not lemony, but a little bit pomelo-y, and some dried mint. A waft up your nose that I would defy anybody to not enjoy. Sweet, and honeyed, and flowery, and fruity, and refreshing. Wow! Luscious! Right. The duckling with no nose. Here you go. Apologies for desecrating you in this way. Here we go. The smell of wet leaf. Oh, I want to live in this fog. Oh! Okay, I'm going to say something that I say oftentimes when I smell white teas that are sweet, that it just reminds me of very sweet black tea. White tea is moving more into the character of black tea, but for some reason it seems to smell more like a sweet black tea than black tea does, to me anyway. I'm getting the warm milk. I'm getting some marzipan, a touch of sort of biscuit-y note, vanilla-y note, coconut. I'm getting some coconut cream. I'm getting some very simple, like, vanilla wafers. Those wafer sandwiches. Wafer, a little bit of vanilla cream, wafer. Maybe throw a bit of coconut in there. Ooh! There's a slight, bright, fruity note that I associate with tomato vines. So not the actual tomato, just the smell of the green vine. I would even say it's moving slightly towards... I'll say blueberries. So in that fruity and sweet, but with a little piquancy. So blueberries, tomato vine, vanilla, coconut, wafers. Just very, very rich in aromatics. Right. I'm brewing this at 95°C. It's at 89°C, so let's pour this away. These covers may look quite simple, these one-color covers, but I tell you, it is one of those artworks that is very difficult to get right. We try so many different mash-ups, and we reject so many of them, but it's very hard to find that right balance where it looks not so bizarre that it feels like completely... it just doesn't work for the eye. It's got to have a balance to it. It needs to look sort of right, but at the same time be this sort of strange combination. Then, obviously, making it in a paper-cut style is a challenge as well. Okay. Look at these leaves. They're very sort of... I just want to pour water over them. They're just asking to be drenched. Okay. Sorry, I'm like that. Let's see how this brews up. I'm always unafraid with white teas. You can brew long with these white teas. But obviously, we want to taste it in a time-lapse fashion, so we don't want to like get everything out in the first infusion. You could, if you wanted, put this through a filter, because you saw I was breaking it up, so there's going to be broken leaves in it, but I'm not too bothered about that. Color? It's a dusky, sunset orange. Cheers, everybody. Floating Lotus. The texture is thick, soft, but then there is definitely, I would say, soft to a light, sort of mineral-dry quality. So soft to mineral-dry, but that dryness is like a very light coating on the to quite a big juiciness, actually. Oh, yeah. Thick, soft. Mmm. Taste is warm milk, honey, dried mint. I've said all that before, but it's there, really. So if you imagine you take a nice, warm milk, you drizzle in a really good heather honey, but you've maybe brewed that with a sprinkling of dried mint, that milk. You've heated it, and then you filter out, and you get this sort of minty, milky honey quality. Mmm. Melon milk. So moving a little bit more fruity. A touch of cassis, black currant. A touch. I think Celine likes that milk with a bit of cassis in. I can't remember if it's cassis or grenadine, but like, you know, they're a childish thing for her. Not for me, but for her. Oh, it's got that Gu Shu aftertaste. Long, tingly, physical. Very physical, especially on the backsides of my tongue. It's causing a lot of tingle, a lot of this tingly juiciness. Like the saliva glands are really just like flooding my mouth with juiciness. Very, very physical. Picking up that Gu Shu. Mmm. Those white rabbits, those wafers, vanilla wafers, they're all there. So the smell of the wet and dry leaf are translating beautifully into the mouth. Wow! The physicality of the finish is a real star quality of this tea. As I said, I do think that this is the oldest that we've sourced from. Mmm. Ooh! I'm going to look out for that. I think that can only build as the leaf brews out more. Mmm. It makes me want to, I don't know, this sort of chewy quality to it. It's so physical. Ooh! Making me burp as well. Physical in the stomach too. All right. Darker liquor. Cheers everybody. Ooh! Digestive. This is physical, this tea. Mmm! Oh! Second infusion. Bright, high notes coming through. Apricot jam, sherbet candy, love hearts. You know those candies that are sort of compressed powder. You know, cooling as well. We've got a very minty cooling quality in the mouth. I'm getting more herbs, dried thyme, mint, but still lots of that honey. So imagine lots of those herbal honeys, Mediterranean herbs, heather honey, mint, thyme, milky, those white rabbit candies, those sherbet candies, marzipans, a little bit of blueberry and cassis thrown in there, and this apricot jam coming through. Mmm! Oh! Full-spectrum white tea hit in my mouth. Second infusion is banging. Oh! I could sip this all day. The physicality on it is there. I don't know about the body feel, like, you know, in terms of a tea drunkenness, but just in my mouth it's got a rich, physical feeling. Just tingly, juicy, cooling. It's sweet, the juiciness, but it's more minty cooling than sweet. Wow! Wow! You know, this is the thing. You take good terroir, you take old trees from that good terroir, it has got a character to it. A character. You could make raw Puerh, you could make black tea, you could make white tea, you could make any tea out of these leaves. You are going to have a tea with character. This is just brimming with character. One of the things, actually, when you taste white teas, even from Yunnan, and even from older trees, they can all... they will all taste pretty good, in general. But what you're looking for is that Je Ne Sais Quoi. You're looking for that character in the trees, a character in the production that just sets it apart. I remember we received this sample relatively early in the season. Sort of, I don't know, late April, probably. And I tasted it, and I was blown away by it, but I was like, but I haven't tasted any other samples. And that always sort of makes me feel a bit edgy, like, but maybe there's a better one. You know? Maybe there's a better one. And then we waited, and waited, and I kept on calling this producer, saying, please, please, please, please, hold, hold, hold. And they were like, well, I'm not going to hold it forever for you. And I was like, I know, I know, I know, but just hold for a little bit. Don't sell it. Don't sell it, please. And we did taste others, and there were some great ones. Really great ones. Ones that we would have selected, but nothing that beat out this original one. And, thankfully, we managed to convince the producer not to let this one go, because I would have been devastated. I'll tell you that. Right. Third infusion. Ooh! This is rising. Ooh! I'm feeling it. Yep. Floating Lotus. Color just as strong. You'll probably get about 10 or 12 infusions out of this. You can do old boiling trick at the end, which basically means take these leaves after 7 or 8 infusions or maybe 10 infusions, chuck them in a pan, put in maybe a few hundred mil of water, bring it to the boil, turn it down, simmer it for about 15 minutes, you are going to get a medicinal, rich, smooth, but strong brew. Physicality is happening on this tea. Yeah, flavor profile stays consistent. Those candied, bright notes, sherbet candies, apricot jams, the warm milk and honey, the herbs, the mintiness, stays consistent. But you wouldn't want it to change. It is glorious. Physicality in the mouth is rich, sweet, tingly, and cooling. I'm going to roll through some infusions, because I have a sneaky suspicion that the next time you see me I'm going to be quite tea-lifted. All right. This is the sixth infusion that I'm brewing up, and I'm going to stop after this one, because this is a very strong tea. It's got a really, really physical feeling. So digestive-wise, I feel like my stomach is digesting, and moving, and it's like I'm belching a bit. It's got this really sort of rich, deep, cleansing sort of quality to it in the stomach, and it's got a very buzzy, light feeling. I feel that slight evaporation going on. A feeling which I love, but I know can get... Because I'm drinking infusions in quick succession, so I'm going to have to pause on this one, let it calm down, and then keep going throughout the day. One of the great things about Gong Fu brewing, of course, is you can just do that. Just let it, leave it alone, and just come back to it a few hours later. But it's definitely got... I wouldn't say a caffeinated quality. I would say it's got this buzzy lightness to it. It's like buzzy, and then light. Like you feel like you're sort of being lifted. I swear, that was not part of the reason why we called it a floating lotus, but it feels like I'm sort of lifting off the sofa here. Lovely body sensation. Great. But like, I need to get on with my day. I can't just be sort of floating around, so I'm going to have to stop after this one. Definitely giving a warm sensation. Strong, physical tea in the mouth. That aftertaste, that finish. Long, cooling, juiciness, and strong in the body as well. Taste remarkably consistent. In fact, more of the apricot jams, which is surprising, is coming through. Mmm! But all of those notes. The minerality starts to remind me of like fresh alpine meadows. Like springtime alpine meadows. Right. Let's have a sniff of this empty Gong Dao Bei. Sweet, slightly herbal. So I'm getting some cakey quality. So steamed sponge cakes, but drizzled with like a herbal syrup. Fig leaf syrup. So, yeah, fig leaf. Fig leaf syrup and cake, and some of that pear. Like a cooked-down pear compote. Big tea. If you want that physical feeling, for me, at least at this session, it's a real, real lifter. Gorgeous taste. Gu Shu material coming correct. The floating lotus a worthy successor to the Gu Shu, or Old Tree, white tea from Yunnan series. I hope that if you have picked up the previous ones that you're going to love this one just as much as the others. If you haven't then it's time to jump in to some Yunnan whites. That's it teaheads. Check out our other videos. See? I can't talk. Check out our other videos. Taste our teas wherever you are in the world by browsing Mei Leaf.com, and come visit us if you're ever in London. Other than that, I'm Don from Mei Leaf. Thank you for being a part of the revelation of true tea. Stay away from those tea bags, keep drinking the potent stuff, and spread the word, because nobody deserves bad tea. Bye.