Velvet Mountain and Amber Sunrise from Teasenz: Two Compressed Teas Worth Getting Excited About

Teasenz is a company I’ve been aware of in the tea world for some time. I even ordered a yixing clay teapot from them, but I’ve never had the opportunity to try their teas until now. In today’s post, I’m sharing a deep dive into two of their compressed teas from Yunnan Province, Velvet Mountain and Amber Sunrise.

Thank you to Teasenz for sponsoring this blog post! Sponsored posts like this one help me to cover hosting fees and other expenses for keeping Tea for Me Please running.

Velvet Mountain

Velvet Mountain immediately caught my attention because it is a purple tea cake made with material from the Bulang Mountain area. That is not something I come across often, but I have enjoyed other teas that were made with the Zi Juan cultivar before. The leaves were harvested in the spring of 2025 and then stored as mao cha for several months before being stone-pressed into 200g cakes. They might be a unique color, but the processing steps they have undergone make this a puerh tea.

The leaves of Velvet Mountain were very dark with a needle-like shape. I was easily able to pry off some using a puerh pick without breaking too many of them. The cake had a pleasant herbaceous aroma, especially once it had a few days to acclimate in my puerh storage. I appreciated the inner wrapper because it helped to contain any stray leaves while keeping the beautiful outer one intact.

I prepared this tea in a ceramic gaiwan using Teasenz’s recommended parameters of 212℉ water and an infusion time of 15 seconds. I would typically use a higher leaf ratio than what they suggested, but a little goes a long way with this tea. Since it is compressed, I did a very quick rinse to help the leaves open up first. It brewed up an interesting purplish-green liquor that my camera struggled to capture accurately. That was especially visible around the rim of my white porcelain teacup.

The taste was herbaceous and floral with a smooth and sweet finish. I can see why they named it Velvet Mountain because the mouthfeel was very soft. There was something about it that was hard to describe, but the character was a lot like ‘wild’ grown teas that I’ve had previously.

It really opened up in the second through fourth infusions, giving more body and an interesting anise note. After that point, it rounded out a bit, but with the addition of a mouthwatering umami. Later infusions lost some steam, but were still very pleasant and sweet.

Overall, I really enjoyed the drinking experience with Velvet Mountain. It wasn’t overly astringent or fussy, so I would be a good candidate for grandpa style or bowl brewing. It is also an excellent value. Each cake provides approximately 50 gongfu sessions, depending on how much leaf you use. They do have 7g mini cakes available if you didn’t want to commit to a full cake.

Amber Sunrise

Let’s change gears a bit and explore a black tea! Amber Sunrise is a sun-dried black tea from Banggai village of the Lincang tea region. The leaves were harvested in the spring of 2024 and allowed to rest for ten months before being compressed into 200g cakes. It’s not as common as puerh or white tea, but black tea can be aged under the right conditions. It is particularly important that the leaves were not roasted to stop oxidation in this case.

The leaves of Amber Sunrise were a beautiful mix of dark and slightly curled with golden tips scattered throughout. It was more tightly compressed than Velvet Mountain, but I didn’t have too hard a time breaking off leaves for brewing. They had a sweet, earthy, and slightly fruity aroma. It had that quintessential ‘tea’ smell that I enjoy in black teas from Yunnan. I loved how the nei fei, an inner ticket used to brand tea cakes, stood out on the backside of the cake.

I did a quick rinse before preparing this tea in a ceramic gaiwan using Teasenz’s recommended parameters of 203℉ water and an infusion time of 60 seconds for the first round. Subsequent infusions were 20-30 seconds long. It brewed up a reddish amber liquor. There were a lot of trichomes visible in my cha hai, especially when it was held up to the light.

The taste of Teasenz Amber Sunrise was malty with notes of cedar wood and dark red fruits. There was no bitterness, but an enjoyable briskness and a hint of smokiness in the finish. I felt a lingering sweetness clinging to my teeth after each sip. The second infusion was somewhat softer but just as complex.

This tea kept its strength well into a sixth infusion. Later infusions had an almost starchy taste of sweet potatoes. It also maintained its thick and viscous mouthfeel to the very end. Black teas do not typically yield as many rounds as puerh does, but it was by no means disappointing.

The name Amber Sunrise is truly a fitting one for this tea. Teasenz hit the nail on the head there. It was warming and comforting, like a ray of sunshine. That was especially true on the cold winter day that I tasted it for this review. It will be interesting to see how it changes as it matures over time. I would definitely recommend this tea to any fans of Dian Hong or other golden bud styles of black tea.

Q&A with Teasenz

Viola from Teasenz and their founder, Sam Lin, generously took the time to answer some questions I had about these two teas and their company in general.

Q: Could you tell me about Teasenz? What sets them apart from other tea companies?
A: Teasenz started back in 2012 as an online shop for artisan Chinese tea. We aren’t the only store shipping tea from China to the rest of the world, so I know we have plenty of company! But I’d love to share a few things that I think set us apart.

First of all, I think just the fact that we’ve been around for some time, sets us apart. As a blogger yourself, you’ve probably seen how the artisan tea industry flourished during the past decade. A lot of people and companies have become really passionate about good, authentic tea, and some of them have launched their own tea businesses or expanded into it. The tea business is a competitive one. As a result, business come and go, but we still are here after launching our company 14 years ago.

For pretty much most of our operating years, we considered ourselves a ‘supply chain’ company, because we always believed as long as we continuously improve our processes of sourcing tea and getting it to the customer at a good price and speed, we’ll succeed. As a testament to this, we launched an office and warehouse in Europe 2-3 years ago. It means we can get tea to EU customers in 1–10 days, which lets them skip the usual headaches like long waits, customs clearance, and those annoying surprise taxes upon receiving the parcel. We’ve also been working hard to speed up shipping from China to the rest of the world. For the US, we made the tough call to stop using standard China Post because it was just too slow. Now, we work with faster logistics partners to get orders to the US in about two weeks, handing them off to local carriers for final delivery.” I think having a local presence is, at least for European customers, quite a difference compared to other Chinese tea vendors in China.

What makes us perhaps also somewhat unique is that we hardly have a marketing budget. In fact, I think we’ve spend less than 200$ dollars per month on average on ads in 2025. For Teasenz.eu, the online ads spend was 0$ in 2025. And actually, we haven’t done any paid collaborations (except for providing free tea) for a very long time until this collaboration with you. As a result, I think this allows us to offer very reasonable prices to our customers. We also don’t consider ourselves amongst the companies that make the most noise online and on social media. We aren’t great at this. Still teasenz.com and teasenz.eu combined received over 500.000 unique visitors in 2025. This is because we have a very loyal customer base. Our tea isn’t for everyone, but we’re very grateful that there’s a segment out there that is very satisfied with our teas. To proof this, our EU store’s review system is powered by judge.me:

– If you go to the ‘store medals’ section on our page, you can see we have a gold medal for ‘authenticity’ and ‘transparency’. This means that more than 95% of the reviews on our site are verified reviews (based on real orders in Shopify), and more than 95% of the reviews we receive are published on our site.

– Our average review score is 4.75

So I guess ‘reasonable prices’ and ‘happy customers’ also sets us apart. At last, what’s really important for us internally, is to just have a really good time curating tea, nurturing Teasenz as a brand, working with suppliers, artists and customers. For example, a few years ago, we started producing tea cakes under our own label. Such projects allow us to work with passionate suppliers, challenge ourselves to go the extra mile to curate really good tea, and express ourselves creatively by working with graphic designers for our packaging. This all feels just feels super rewarding. That’s why we’ve been slowly transitioning our focus from a ‘supply chain’ driven company to becoming a trustworthy tea brand. Going forward, I believe there’s really no need to grow Teasenz by taking actions that make ‘strategic sense’, instead, we just want to do what feels ‘natural’ for us.

Q: What is purple tea, and what makes it different than other teas?
A: Purple tea is made from cultivated tea plant varieties with leaves that have a distinct reddish or purple color. It is not a category like green or Oolong tea, but a tea produced from purple tea plants, usually processed as raw pu erh, like our Velvet Mountain, or as black tea.

Purple tea stands out for its high anthocyanin content. Anthocyanins are water-soluble pigments with antioxidant effects, found in foods like blueberries and purple cabbage, and give tea leaves their purple hue. Raw pu erh made with purple tea has a distinct aromatic taste, usually less aggressive than common pu erh and without bitterness.

Q:. Velvet Mountain is from Bulang Mountain, and Amber Sunrise is from Banggai, Lincang. What can you tell about these two regions?
A: Bulang Mountain is a mountainous area with elevations exceeding 1,600 meters, located in the famous tea-growing area of Xishuangbanna Prefecture, Yunnan Province, China. Along with other nearby mountain areas (Nannuo, Jingmai, Menghai, Hekai, Pasha, and Mengsong), it’s renowned for producing bold, flavourful teas, often with a robust cha qi (tea energy). The Bulang people living in the area, descendants of the ancient “Pu” tribe, are credited with being among the first to cultivate and consume tea.

Banggai village is in another important Yunnan tea region, the Lincang Prefecture, renowned for pu erh and black teas. Banggai sits at 1400m on the west bank of the Nanmeng River. With a high average annual temperature of 26ºC and abundant rainfall, the tea leaves receive ample nutrition, leading to high-quality material. The ideal environment enhances Banggai tea’s aroma profile, making it rich and pleasant, with a lingering aftertaste.

Q: How does compressing the leaves into cakes affect the final taste?
A: Yes it does! And this part was particularly challenging in the beginning, which is why we decided not to compress fresh tea leaves. In particular for freshly processed maocha I felt the difference is particularly big after compression. This is why at Teasenz, we only compress maocha that is at least 1 year old.

– When you compress older teas, the difference is in fact surprisingly little. Compressed tea is slightly thicker in texture and the tea soup has a slightly more intense tea colour, but the difference is very little, and you won’t notice it unless you drink it side by side. This is often time the result when you compress the tea leaves very loosely though. I find when the compression is very tight, the difference can be bigger (also because when you pry, you have more dust). At last, in the high season if you work with the wrong factory, who doesn’t let your tea cake dry properly before wrapping, the taste will also be off. If you’re interested in exploring this, we are soon launching a new raw pu erh for which we also still have some of the loose leaf sample left. We could send you a sample of the compressed and the loose tea.

– 1 other important reason for compressing somewhat aged material, because we want to see for ourselves the aging ability of the tea. Sometimes, fresh pu erh tastes amazing, but when stored away, you may find out years later they don’t age well. Compressing material that’s at least 1 years old takes away those risks. Teas that show good signs of aging in the first year, then to be promising for years to come.

Q: What is the process of sourcing teas like Velvet Mountain and Amber Sunrise like?
A: For tea cakes we rely first on our colleague Yan Mei, who’s a Yunnan local from Manzhuan, Yunnan. She does the initial selection of tea samples from different tea gardens. Then the samples (usually around 15 samples from several suppliers) are tasted by Xiaomai, our certified tea taster in China, as well as Viola and me in EU. From those samples we select 1 tea based on taste, aroma, and price. We’ll then write the taste profile, and Ying, our art director will work with graphic designers to come up with a beautiful wrapper. At last, the chosen tea will be compressed, packed, and made available in our 2 online stores. Note: for a very recent ripe pu erh, we did the tasting together with some of our EU store customers. From this process, we launched our first ripe pu erh tea cake, Whispering Earth.

Shipping into the US from Asia can be painfully slow. Teasenz has stopped using slow standard shipping carriers. This is more expensive for them, but it also means that orders can usually get to the states within 2 weeks. They also have an office and warehouse in Europe, so those of you in the EU can typically receive orders within 1-10 days. That also saves paperwork and surprise taxes.

I hope you enjoyed my reviews of Velvet Mountain and Amber Sunrise, and learning more about Teasenz as much as I did. Have you tried either of these teas? What’s your favorite offering from their site? I’d love to hear from you in the comments below!