I had a nice Huo Shan Huang Ya from Teavivre last year, and thought it would be fun to try the same tea from another vendor for comparison. Both teas were around $18 for 50 g, meaning that the quality should be similar. Since Yunnan Craft didn’t provide brewing instructions, I used the ones from Teavivre, steeping 6 g of leaf in a 120 ml porcelain pot at 185F for 50, 60, 70, 90, 120, 150, 180, and 240 seconds, plus some long, uncounted rounds.
The dry aroma is of hazelnuts, green beans, snow peas, and butter. The first steep has notes of candied hazelnuts, green beans, snow peas, grass, butter, and something fruity that’s close to melon. Asparagus appears in steep two and the tea has a starchy quality. I get corn and cornhusk in the next couple steeps, with apricot sneaking through in the aftertaste. Subsequent steeps have notes of spinach, beans, grass, apricots, and minerals.
This is a lovely yellow tea that’s perfect for spring. I think the one from Teavivre had more nutty, buttery flavours while this one is greener, though it’s hard to remember much about a tea I drank a year ago. Both are less aggressively vegetal than most green teas—a definite plus in my books!
Flavors: Apricot, Asparagus, Butter, Corn Husk, Grass, Green Beans, Hazelnut, Melon, Mineral, Snow Peas, Spinach, Sweet Corn, Vegetal
