Stellar rendition of Mending Huang Ya. Made from heirloom old bushes and yellowed to its fullest for a rich, creamy and candied character.
This one only took about 20 years to find! This tea has been bugging me for many years because it is such a famous tea and yet I could never find a batch which justified the price and renown. I found all of the samples over the decades to either be too green or too muted and empty.
At the beginning of 2023 we spoke to our network in Sichuan and issued them with the challenge - find us the ultimate Mengding Huang Ya and show us why this tea should be so famous.
Then this batch arrived and all that I had imagined this Yellow tea could be was there in the cup. Warm, milky and rounded with candied pecans and papaya in the taste and a ridiculously sugar-sweet finish. Where had this tea been hiding all my life?!
Sovereign Bud is made from 50+ year-old Qun Ti Zhong (old heirloom) bushes growing about half way up Mengding Mountain. It has been yellowed FULLY without any shortcuts using the fully handmade 'Men Huang' Yellowing process of Sichuan. This involves:
- A long wither to develop aromatics
- At least 3 stages of small batch pan frying and then wrapping the buds in special paper while warm and moist for about 5 hours
- Final pan frying to fix and then low baking to dry
The whole process from picking to finished tea should take a couple of days of careful and diligent work by true masters of this craft. I suspect that a lot of Mengding Huang Ya on the market may be made with a slightly shortened process of withering and yellowing making a tea with a remnant of greenness which just make the tea taste incomplete.
Perhaps it is the skill and patience in this tea's processing, perhaps it is the old heirloom bushes, perhaps it is the slightly lower elevation, perhaps it is the drier 2023 season - I do not know. All that I can say is that THIS is the Mengding Huang Ya of my dreams which I cannot imagine being bettered and I am fighting myself not to keep a kilogram all for myself.
Sovereign Bud is one of Don's favourite teas of the year:
