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.
Once I find a vendor that I trust, I like to try the teas before reading the descriptions and labels. When I tried this one, there was a feeling that there were two voices singing, one up front, one right behind. The harmony between the two was delightful and I am happy to have been shared in on the pleasantness of the results. Will keep doing it without any promises of aging any of it. Congrats and gracias to the artists on my behalf!
I got the package and some orbs of this tea. I will say that I tried it the day it got here, fresh out of the package and it was some of the best sheng puerh teas I have had. Will let it sit for a bit and try it later in the year, but for now it sits comfortably up there with my other favorite teas ever. A detail that was such a bright jest for me is that this Fool came with a true fool's phrase on its label. I'll post the picture so that you can see what I mean, mayeb.
I've already reordered this tea once and brewed many times. Through those it quickly became one of my favorite Dancong to brew. It's on the lighter side of roast and dark notes for me, instead, bright fruity-citrusy and floral aromas truly shine through without being overly vegetable-like. It's also very affordable, which is a nice bonus.
