What is yellow tea?

As the name suggests, it is a tea where both the leaves and the tea water are yellow.

It goes without saying that few tea lovers in other countries, even in the ‘home of tea’ – China, drink yellow tea on a regular basis. Among the six major types of Chinese tea, the production and circulation of yellow tea is the lowest, and those who can explain its flavor clearly are very few and far between. So, how did yellow tea become one of the six categories of tea?

Yellow tea is a long history of tribute tea, with a proud track record, and its processing method is obviously different from several other types of tea, with extremely obvious characteristics. The processing of yellow tea also needs to go through the basic steps of picking, killing, kneading and drying, but in the middle there is an additional time-consuming and laborious process – bored yellow. Simply put, it means wrapping the tea leaves in paper and smothering them a little. This is the key process for yellow tea, which breeds its unique flavor with great depth. The tea polyphenols are quietly oxidized during this process, so both the leaves and the brewed tea will turn yellow, hence the name ‘yellow tea’.

The most famous yellow tea is called ‘Junshan Silver Needle’, and only the most tender new buds are used. Only the annual production of this tea is extremely small, said to be less than 1 ton. But now, it is easy to find in the market …… I wonder if you have penetrated the mystery of it? If you see 100g of Junshan Silver Needle in the store for only 1,000 yen, it is likely that the merchant is using the yellowed green tea that has deteriorated as the second best.