Every now and then, we have been received requests for yellow tea, especially after our lone variety of yellow tea Huoshan Huangya was sold out about 3 months ago.
I would struggle to call it ‘rare’. The word ‘rare’ in the tea world has often been abused so frequently that even items I could buy by the container in China are labeled ‘rare’ on the internet.
Yellow tea does constitute a shade below 1% of the total volume of teas produced in China in 2010. Nevertheless 1% of 1.6 million MT is sizeable, if it was a country, it would rank about 21st in the global ranking.
Last year, it was not ubiquitous, unlike say Puer or Tieguanyin, but we didn’t have to search long for it in China.
This year, the story is a little different. We weren’t entirely satisfied with the Huoshan Huangya we had. After having brought about a marked improvement in our green tea lineup in 2013 as compared to 2012, we felt we should do the same for yellow tea.
So we set out to look for Junshan Yinzhen, which you could make a case is the only true ‘authentic’ yellow tea. Mengding Huangya, Huoshan Huangya, Mogan Huangya and Taishun Huangtang were all ‘resurrected’ in the 20th century- from the 1950s to 1980s.
Junshan Yinzhen though thrived since the Tang Dynasty and continued its popularity through the Song and Qing Dynasties. Having appeared on the definitive Hangzhou Top 10 Famous Tea published in 1959, its popularity ensued today.
So the start of spring, we focused our energies on snaring some Junshan Yinzhen to add to our lineup. We found 1 version that was exquisite, worthy of its heritage.
But I wasn’t comfortable of the price, having risen by 20% on a Y-O-Y basis. It would be fine if it was oolong or puer, I could ‘buy and hold’ but yellow tea has only a slightly longer shelf life compared to green tea.
To take on the ‘obsolescence risk’ of such an expensive tea was something I wasn’t prepared to do, at least not at our current infancy.
So we turned our affections to Mengding Huangya, the earliest resurrected yellow tea and the next best regarded one.
The story remained the same, price was a factor. If we were comfortable with selling Junshan Yinzhen at say $60 per packet, $30 was the internal ceiling we set for Mengding Huangya, just to provide some reference figures.
The representative varieties of Mengding Huangya were higher than those figures and where it was affordable we had reservations of its authenticity. (Yes, this is always the conundrum on tea buying, especially in China).
The problem was exacerbated but the unfortunate occurrence of the H7N9 outbreak in China, delaying our travel plans.
To add insult to injury, when we decided to ‘take the plunge’ with the Junshan Yinzhen, inventory was no longer available.
So the long and the short is we give up.
At least for this year.
Spring season is over, there will be no more new production of yellow tea. In any case, we generally only get spring teas- exceptions include winter harvest Taiwanese teas and certain autumn oolongs.
While we will have some yellow tea for upcoming events (spoiler), we probably can only secure it at retail prices.
Oh well, it is going to be a long wait till the next spring harvest, but don’t fret, we have loads of other great teas that you can get too
