Fruitier green teas? *and floral

In my experience, YS green teas tend to be on the pungent side. If you like sencha, check out the Laoshan teas. They have a similar sweet grassy flavor. Verdant and YS both carry it.

For a fruiter green, try bi luo chun. Though I wouldn’t recommend YS’s. Their imperial grade bi luo chun had a briney taste that I didn’t really care for.

Teavivre’s huang shan mao feng is another good one that’s more floral than umami.

Taiwanese longjing and biluochun are much fruitier than their Chinese counterparts—Taiwanese greens all are, on the whole. Why, I don’t know, but they definitely are on the sweeter and fruitier side of things.

I’ve also found green tea from Hainan and Vietnam to be on the sweeter and fruitier side of things, as long as you’re getting the good stuff! I just threw in some Vietnamese Thai Nguyen green with someone’s order as a surprise. I have over a kilo of assorted high grade Thai Nguyen green teas. They are excellent, but there’s no way I can drink all of that tea in the next year!

I don’t have anything constructive to add to this conversation except that all I can think of is Ross Gellar screaming “UNAGI!”

You may return to your actual tea discussion now.

Oh can I add floral to the title as well. Really floral greens are doing it as well

I can recommend this: https://www.taiwanteacrafts.com/product/taiwan-style-organic-green-tea/?v=7516fd43adaa. I haven’t tried the current batch, but a previous year’s batch was an absolute floral bomb. I can’t recall the taste, but I don’t remember it being grassy or umami, so maybe it was fruity? I’m actually tempted to pick some up.

Most of the YS greens are assamica variety from Yunnan and not really “typical” Chinese green tea, which again is so different from Japanese green tea as to be almost a different thing altogether.

Biluochun seems to have become a name for the style of leaf, and not a thing to shop for to find a specific taste. The style originated in Jiangsu in the Lake Tai area, so looking for Suzhou biluochun would be a good quest. Similarly, “maofeng” has ceased to be anything but a description of the leaf style, so to see why it became famous you want to look for Huangshan maofeng or a reasonably close imitation. Another example is “maojian” which originally was a Henan tea.

“Longjing” was apparently well on its way to a similar fate, but the Zhejiang government got an appellation control law to make it mean, at a minimum, Longjing cultivar grown in Zhejiang.

If your notion of green tea is based on Japanese tea, you should be prepared to think of China green tea as a different thing, and to pay for the good stuff prices north of $0.30/g. Alas, I have no recommendation for vendors. Though I thought that TeaVivre had some pretty good “Huangshan maofeng” this past spring.

Taiwan Tea Crafts Fragrant Teas are definitely really good – especially the Fragrant Jade Jin Xuan White.

As for fruity greens I’ve found Tai Ping Hou Kui to be a fruity green. It runs a bit pricey most places and right now I don’t know a seller that has a really amazing version of this tea. I’ve gotten it from Ebay seller Royal Tea Bay at a good price.

Also want to add that Nan Jing Yu Hua Cha from Grand Tea is an AMAZING green tea. They do describe it as floral. I didn’t pick up floral notes (as they describe the tea having on their website) when I reviewed it but I still loved it.

Coincidentally I decided to drink Hojo’s Jasmine Pearl green tea buds today, and saw your post. I think you’ll enjoy this tea if I read your original post correctly. Hands down the best jasmine pearl tea I’ve tried, and the only one I enjoy. If you place an order, pick up some of his Taiping Houkui, as someone mentioned Taiping Houkui has an orchid flavor/aroma to it, and Hojo’s is top notch, I also highly recommend.