What do you look for in a Wuyi?

I like more roasted generally, but I think balance is important (and maybe the type / method of roasting). Even after resting, some types of roasted teas just don't taste good - the burned rubber taste is too strong. It is hard (for me, at least) to tell the difference between a good roast and a bad one when the tea has been roasted fairly recently.

Oxidation is important too... that's where a lot of those sweet and / or fruit flavors come from.

I have a shui xian that I think is really phenomenal, but it's not a really aggressive roast. At the same time, it's enough of a roast. I haven't found too many teas that are like that, though.

Maybe it's time to organize some sort of Teadrunk yancha tasting... thoughts? I will be happy to contribute some samples of a few teas I think are interesting. I don't know what's the easiest way (logistically) to organize something like that. I was thinking about something like a box pass, only more centralized - people send in a certain # of grams of a particular tea, along with a prepaid label for the box's return, and get back samples of everyone's teas.

I swear this isn't a scam to steal everyone's good tea. :>

Unless you're being sarcastic, I'm not sure I follow all of that. Yancha in general is famous for growing in the rocky soil in that area (and yes, the soil does, to some extent, affect the taste of the final tea), but if you're talking about the "original" Da Hong Pao bushes, since none of us can even hope to get access to tea from those bushes, it's kind of irrelevant to this discussion.  And even those bushes aren't growing literally in the rock, but rather in rocky soil. The other famous bushes also grow in the same area in the same types of soil, so I'm not quite understanding what you mean about DHP specifically.

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Of course plenty of yancha that's available (and sold as authentic) is plantation grown and isn't from the protected area. I do think that the processing of the tea affects the final taste as much or maybe more than whether or not it's grown in rocky soil, so if that's what you mean, then we are sort of in agreement.

As far as the cost, of course some of that is due to marketing and what not, but the fact of the matter is that there's only so much land and quite a bit of demand. Yes, a lot of what's for sale at high prices may not be worth it, but that doesn't mean you are likely to get good tasting, hand-produced tea that is from the scenic area at a low price. I have had good tasting yancha that's cheap, but I'm usually pretty sure it doesn't meet those other two criteria.

Yeah - I definitely don't claim to be able to answer exactly how it changes the taste of the tea, but I do believe the soil has an effect. Think of it this way - let's say the rocky soil has fewer nutrients than normal dirt. It's possible that the tea will develop at a different pace than that grown in more fertile soil, and that may actually make the tea taste better rather than worse. I don't know that that's exactly what's happening with these teas -- it's just an example. I think you'd have to ask a farmer to find someone who really knows the effects different soils will have on the final tea - the tea merchants who claim to know are probably all just trying to sell tea.

This reminds me of the discussion on teachat about terroir recently - I am not saying that you can literally taste the minerals from the soil in the tea, but the type of soil does have an effect on how the plant grows, and it's not always true that more fertile soil is better. In France, there are quite famous grapes that grow in rocky soil that's mostly limestone. Whether or not you believe that you can actually taste the minerals from the limestone (and signs point to that being impossible), the rocky soil does change the way the grapes grow.

That's a good idea! Maybe a bit complicate to operate, but worth trying :D

I am using a extremely slow computer with dial up internet now. Teadrunk is one of the few webpages that still run almost normally on my computer. It's time to appreciate the simple style of this forum :D

How the difference the rocky soil always was explained to me is there are many more minerals leaching into the soil from the Rocks in the soil.  So these leaves have an extraordinarily high amount of minerals soaked up into their leaves, which we then get some out in the brewing process.

And as for Yan Yun,  I'm not entirely sure I've ever heard a good description or what that is, I have heard it translates into "Rock Feel"  in other places too, perhaps it is the effect of the minerals on the palate?

I only say this cause I've had water with very high Mineral contents, this one mostly calcium, with a bit of fluoride and it actually tasted like toothpaste.  So it definitely is possible to taste minerals.

This is just speculation here, but as I was reading the article, it occurred to me that possibly rocky soil could change other things in how the tea develops.  The obvious possible more of a fight to live, but yet perhaps the rocks have a cooling effect on the area keeping the bushes at a lower temperature, or maybe the rocks reflect more light meaning the leaves absorb light from more angles.

Though that is purely speculation, surely those might have more of an effect on the taste than just some extra minerals in the leaves.