Yellow Buds - Huo Shan Huang Ya

The first steep of this tea is amazingly clear – it didn’t look like there was any color at all! I went to taste it and you could smell the vegetal notes, which come through quite strong even for such a light tea. I really liked this tea, though didn’t find it that much different from a green tea.

This tea is a real tongue, mouth and throat experience that goes on and on after a sip. The soup is a bit light compared to the thicker greens I normally drink, but the mouth experience is rather powerful. I am glad I didn’t judge it by the light color, and brewing the entire 7 gr sample in a small amount of water would have been a waste, there is so much to get from this in the 3 gr in 180 ml I brewed. First my sour/bitter taste buds wet awakened, not by sour bitter taste, but just light astringency, it is an impact rather than a taste. My sweet taste buds woke up afterward like that latent sweetness I get from anise. I get the pepper reference in the website description, on the back of the throat, but to me it is more like the after effect of chewing on green wood, like a sumac stick after peeling off the bark.

I read about the local cuisine in the Anhui province where this tea is from, seafoods in salty/spicy brown sauces. While this tea is good by itself, it would really be a good follow up to a brown seafood sauce, to clean the mouth and continue the meal experience.

Update: I ordered some more of this tea after putting the steeped leaves into a glass jar of water in the fridge, and 3 days later I got a really fine cold tea. Lots of yummy steeps and then an excellent cold brew spells good value to me.

This is the first Yellow tea I have ever tried. To really appreciate this tea you have to realize how much work is put into this tea! Anyway it has a similar profile to a dragonwell but has a mellowness to the tea. Unlike Dragonwells, I can brew this over a minute and it won’t become bitter or grassy. Whenever I drink this tea it makes me imagine I have climbed up a step Chinese temple and given tea from the emperor to hydrate me. Anyways I enjoy this rare tea.

I have a raging addiction to green tea and normally, I like it thick as pond water, sweet, dark, heavy on the tongue with powerful grassy notes (gyokuro is my baby). But this tea was a nice variation on that theme, lighter, but still distinctly vegetal. The first time I worked with this tea I did they way it was recommended and the flavor was too much of a tease. The second time I did it my way… steeped low and slow to bring out its darker side. It was a wise choice for my palate.

The first term that comes to mind when tasting this tea is comforting. There’s a sweet, almost creamy quality to it on the front end…I think they’d say it was the chestnut referenced in their description but I’m not tied to any particular nut :) Now we’re not talking cream like the milk oolong (be still my heart), but nevertheless, the characteristic is present. It recedes against a vegetal background and you’re left with a satisfying, mild astringency and the faintest reminder of fresh mown hay that lets you know you’ve done something with your time. When work sucks, this is like a hug.

As for the shop itself, I couldn’t be more impressed with their model. Jamie says they visit the sites themselves and have actually abandoned sites due to a lack of quality in soil, air pollution or lack of sustainability. I asked Jamie about the notes he and Garrett leave in the shipping and he said they’re love notes to their customers. I’ve loved every tea I’ve ever tasted from this shop (milk oolong WHAT?!?!!), I appreciate their philosophy on business and life, and then I receive regular love letters from them? Is it possible to fall in love with a tea shop?