How can it be so Luminous Yellow? Ridiculous Tea from Wenzhou

Hey teaheads. This is Don from Mei Leaf. When you hear about yellow tea you hear about the rarefied nature of yellow tea. The fact that this was the imperial tribute tea, because yellow was the color of the emperor in ancient China. The fact that the recipes, or styles, or methods to make yellow tea were lost in time, and only rediscovered. The fact that it is still one of the most rare teas out there, because it's not produced in high quantities. However, times are changing, and more yellow tea is being produced, thankfully. But is it worth the price point? Are the stories hyping up the tea too much? These are questions that we always ask ourselves in tea culture. You know, it's all very well to have these amazing stories, which are mostly true, but you don't want to dress up the tea in order to increase the price, or justify the price. There's lots of yellow teas out there produced in higher quantities. The four famous ones are Meng Ding Huang Ya. We call it Sovereign Bud. Hua Shan Huang Ya. We call that one Amber Mountain. Jun Shan Yin Jian. We call that Diamond Peak. Those are the famous three, but coming up as a contender for really sort of bringing more yellow tea to the market, although it's still a traditional tea, is this tea here. This is Wen Zhou Huang, so Wen Zhou Yellow. We're calling it Wen Zhou Gold. You can also call it Pin Yang Huang Tang. There are various different names. It apparently was a very popular tea about 100 years ago. It went out of favor, but is coming back with more and more people moving into the yellow tea market. I really, really loved this batch when I sampled it, and so I thought, Hey, why not have all of the yellow teas? Although I don't know if we found Jun Shan Yin Jian this year. But in stock we generally have four now, so all of the four famous yellow teas. This is our new arrival. We're calling it Wen Zhou Gold, and look at it. It is really yellow. I mean, out of all the yellow teas out there that is a very yellow tea. So I've not visited production on this, but from what I'm told it's the classic yellow tea making process, although they vary wildly. But it's basically produced like a green tea, baked over wax to make it into a green tea, but then after baking it's wrapped up, either covered in cloth or wrapped up, usually in rice paper, and left for a couple of hours to yellow. Then it will be rebaked and wrapped again, and that will be done over a couple of days, probably about five or six times. That draws out the greenness in the color, and brings more of that nutty warmth to the brew, smoothens it out, thickens it, and turns the leaf more yellow. So let's quickly scope this tea. This is season. This is the 4th of April, 2024. The cultivar is the Chun Ti Zhong variety, basically means the Er Lin variety in this area of Zhejiang. The origin is Zhejiang province. This is from Ping Yang, Zhejiang province in China. The picking and processing I just told you. There are different styles, so you'll see different styles of picking. You'll see ones that are more bud-heavy, ones that are a little bit more leaf. I really liked this batch, which is sort of this combination of small, fine-leaf picking with a few slightly medium leaves in there. It just, I think, brings about more body and flavor. Elevation on this is around 650 meters. Right. Let's dive in to this Wen Zhou Gold. I've got my pink Gai Wan. I'm brewing at 80 degrees Celsius here. I always forget the conversion. I need 175 Fahrenheit, but I'll mark up here if I'm wrong. We're going to dive into this very, very... Yeah, I mean, look at it again. Very, very yellow looking tea. Pretty amazing, actually, how yellow it is. As I said, there are going to be different ways of making this tea. The Meng Huang process, that yellowing process, varies, and it's sort of a bit... You know, people keep it under wraps. It's wrapped up, so that's why I did the little pun. But they tend to keep it quite... In fact, I saw a patent online of how to make this tea. So people are trying to protect the methods to make this tea. Something I don't particularly like, but you know, hey, people have got to do what they've got to do, right? Trying to develop styles for bringing out the most amount of character in the leaf. But of course, it has to start with the terroir, start with the plant, and then you can add the character through production. It can't just be only through production, which is always a question mark, when you have very production-heavy teas. But anyway, that's the subject of another video. Let's have a smell of this tea. So, amazing warmth. Incredible warmth. Warmer than any other green tea. Warmer than a lot of the other yellow teas that we have out there. Oh my God! Loads of hazelnuts. Milk chocolate. In fact, it reminds me of just a hot chocolate. You know, like a milky, hot chocolate. Coconut. A touch of dill. So a slight, light brightness, but the predominance is hazelnut milk chocolate drink with coconut cream on top. I mean, it's just dessert in a waft. Up my nose. Okay. Dill. A little bit of the sort of slightly alcoholic, what's it called? Genepi. So mountain herb, sweet liqueur. There's a funk to it as well. Like a very cutting smell, but I'm not going to be able to get that one. All right, let's quickly give this a rinse. When I tasted the sample of this tea I was amazed at how yellow and luminous they become. Pretty remarkable. Right. Here we go. Let's have a smell. Wow! Okay. So it's gone more savory. I'm getting like hazelnut soup, if that exists. It's from Rapunzel, isn't it? Anyway, I've been watching too much Disney, as you can see. Let's call it like a combination of... There's a bit of sorrel in there. So sorrel soup, but not too sour. Just very sort of like savory and herbaceous. And then pralines, like sweet hazelnuts. Oh, it's a very unique smell. That Genepi is there. Milk chocolate is still there. Pralines. And already you can see the color of that. Look at that. That's ridiculous. Ridiculous yellowing. Yeah, a touch of like almond butter in there from the jar. So very warm, very nutty. I'm going to brew this for about 30 seconds. 80 degree water. I've got quite a lot in here. Maybe if you were brewing according to my recommendations I'd probably maybe have a little bit less leaf, and a bit longer. But these are the kinds of things. With yellow teas I find there's a lot of variation. Less leaf, longer, produces a certain character. More sort of classic Gong Fu. Heavy weight on the leaves, shorter brewing, has a different character. Sort of going for a little bit of a hybrid in between here. We'll see how it turns out. I reckon that's enough. Color of the liquor is very, very yellow again. Golden. Like straight-up gold. Loads and loads of trichomes in there as well. Active, active, active, active. Right. Cheers everybody. Wow, look how yellow that is. Can you see that? That is some yellow tea. Right. And that is nuts. Cheers everybody. Texture, medium. Yeah, medium thick, I would say. Soft, but then moves to some structure. Taste, milky. Hazelnut gelato. Like milk, very light milk ice cream. Yeah, hazelnuts. Sweet as well, but we'll talk about that later. Malted barley. Oh, it's so rounded in the mouth, actually. Very, very rounded. It's exactly that yellowing that you want. The thing that I equate with yellow teas is it has a very round, soft nature to it. Yes, there's structure in the middle of my tongue, but around the sides of my tongue it's very rounded, and slightly oily as well. Loads of those roasted hazelnuts. So the charcoal, the multiple baking that it goes through to heat it back up, and then cover it, and then heat it back up and cover it, which is usually that yellowing process. Although sometimes they just cover it with cloth, I think this has been multiple baked, because it has that very nutty taste to it. The sweetness in my mouth is next level. A little bit of star fruit, a little bit of cannabis. So that's the twang. But then like praline, hazelnut praline sweetness. Mmm! So rounded, so smooth, so incredibly yellow. Pretty amazing. It's got a slightly meadow-y nature as well. Right. We're going to brew this for about the same amount of time. 80 degree water. Could easily handle hotter water, I think, but you feel your way through if you get this tea. Very warm, rounded, soft, slightly oily, easy-sipping quality to it. That yellowing process removes those sort of green... I don't want to say rawness, because no green should be raw. It should always be developed. But the greenness from some green teas, maybe that sort of inner-leaf material edge that comes from green teas, it removes it. It strips it out, and it replaces it with just warmth, and a rounded quality. Again, that's the most yellow of yellow teas that I can recall. Madness. We'll take a look at these leaves as well. Buttery. It's like a butter yellow. Crazy. Yeah. So take those notes that you like from a Longjing, I assume you like from a Longjing Dragonwell, those roasted bean notes, but remove all of that sort of funk that comes from the inner-leaf material, and just round out, make it a bit more nutty. It's so Pralines. In fact, I might change the name of it to something related to candied nuts. It's got such a candied nut quality to it. It's like eating candied nuts while sitting on a mountain meadow in the summer. Early summer. Oh, so Pralines. Wow. It is literally nuts. Aftertaste, sweet. Pralines, touch of candy floss. I mean, have you ever seen a more fluorescent colored tea than that? It's mad. That's totally insane. And the look of those leaves. You can see they're very fine, and they've slightly broken, probably during that yellowing process where they're baked, multiple baked, but they've still got a lot of wholeness about them. But very, very fine leaves. Oh, and the warming sensation in my stomach is great. It feels digestive. It feels warming. Yeah, it definitely has a sort of digestive quality to it. But let's smell the empty Gong Dao Bei. If you are searching for a yellow tea that lives up to that expectation when you hear the word yellow, like buttery, warm, nutty, this is the most yellowy of yellow teas. Right? A lot of other yellow teas have a softness, and a warmth, and delicacy, and elegance, but they're sort of nudging up against the more nutty end of a green tea. This is just in a whole other area. All right. Oh, a little brightness. Surprisingly, just when I was saying that. Oh, okay. Yeah, I mean, candy floss, but it reminds me of ripe raspberries. Raspberry? No. Imagine raspberry ripple with pralines ice cream. Raspberry praline ice cream. Candy floss as well. Whoa! Amazing. One more brew of this, and I'm going to experiment with brews, and try to give you my best guess on how you should start with brewing this. But I would say, play around. Experiment. Try cold brewing. I heard that traditionally there's a tradition of combining milk with this tea, which I find quite amazing, but I might test that out one day. I'm going to let this brew long, just to really see, not because these are weak brews, because they are not, but just to test out the tea. This is something that you often do, I often do, and tea tasters will often do, is just like really test it out. You're going to intentionally overbrew it. Wow. Just chillaxing tea, this one. Proper chillaxing tea. Warming. You just want to like... This is a lounge tea, you know? Man, I feel like I'm on a meadow, on a mountain, just looking at the Vista. Popping pralines in my mouth. All right. Let's see. Let's see how it handles a longer brew at 80 degrees. No sweat. This is just... You can't overbrew this tea. I think you could probably bump up the temperature to 85, maybe even 90. It is just being produced to be super-smooth, super-soft, super-sweet, super-nutty, super-yellowed. Like I say, this is the sort of tea that is the exemplary of what a yellowing process does, and you can see that by that crazy, crazy color in the leaf. Wen Zhou Gold. That was the original name that I was thinking of calling it, but maybe it would be something else. Who knows? I'll put a link in the description below, and you can go find it online. That's it teaheads. Taste our teas wherever you are in the world by browsing meleaf.com. This has got me a little bit drunk, this tea. Yeah. Check out the body sensation. I feel a bit woozy as well. What was I saying? Taste our teas wherever you are in the world by browsing meleaf.com. Come visit us if you're ever in London. Other than that, I'm tea drunk. Don from Meleaf. Thank you for being part of the revelation of true tea. Stay away from those teabags, keep drinking the surprising stuff, and spread the word because nobody deserves bad tea. Bye.