Yellow Kukicha

Tea: Yellow Kukicha(霍山棒棒茶) 
Type: Yellow Tea, Huangdacha Processing
Harvest: July 2024
Region: Shangtutushi Town, Huoshan City, Anhui.
Producer: Jiahong Factory
Tasting Notes:  Sunflower Seeds, Pine Nuts, Toasted Sesame.

This is, without exaggeration, the best thing to ever happen to stem tea. Processed as green tea, stems can sometimes give off rough astringency; as a red tea, they can come out weak, albeit sweet.  Yet, as a yellow tea, stems offer up a uniquely rich, nutty, sweet, and roasty taste. The closest analog in the tea world is Japan's Hoji-kukicha, but the balance between sweetness and roastiness is unrivaled. There are no sour or sharp notes lurking below the surface. 

The Jiahong "factory" is really just a father-son duo that has converted their two story village home and backyard into a mini reprocessing plant for the twigs. Hu Jiahong heard about the market for heavily roasted, yellowed twig tea in the early 2000's. He learned how to make it after some experimentation, and began visiting Shandong and Shanxi in 2008. His son now permanently lives in Shanxi's Hongtong County, and has been storing and shipping out tea after an industrial accident left him disabled.

In China, stem tea like this is consumed in a relatively limited geographic area, mainly Shandong and Southern Shanxi. It is an affordable, hardy tea that is perfectly suited for the conventional mug-brewing of these areas. This a dessert tea if there ever was one, and a treat that every tea lover should try at least once.