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Only the valuable, tender young leaf buds picked from high up on the cool misty peak of Mount Meng can be considered true Meng Ding Huang Ya. It is made in the original mountainous area where tea cultivation dates back more than 2,000 years and is a very famous tea. It was once made as an Imperial Tribute Tea during the Tang Dynasty (meaning it was only made for the Emperor and his Court) and is still hugely sought after.
Meng Ding Huang Ya has yellowish green leaves with a fresh, raw nutty aroma. Because the leaves come from the cooler, higher level of the mountain, the buds have a less even, thinner appearance. Once they are infused, they become plump and soft and settle upright at the bottom of the vessel. Brew in a glass pot to appreciate this unusual quality.The liquor is bright yellow with a smooth, fresh taste that offers a sweet, nutty flavour with a hint of citrus.
Our Buyer’s notes:
“ This year we bought the tea from a very traditional farm and the leaves look more like the authentic ‘sparrow tongue’.”
Okay…it’s been a HELLISH Day! So…in short with more reviews later…
DRY smells like fresh cut zucchini and once infused smells like a mellow green or white tea. Taste is REALLY yummy…
COOL (eventho I am drinking HOT), Cucumber-like, nutty, crisp, clean, delightful!!!!
This is the cutest tea I’ve seen in a long time – light green, flattened tips, soft and uniform, that look a lot like Douglas Fir needles. The dry leaf smells really fresh – almost minty, though I know logically that there is no mint in it, it’s just that fresh. When I really dig into the aroma, it’s generically like vegetables, and oddly, watermelon rind comes to mindas well.
I gave it two minutes at 180 degrees, and I think that was just about right. There is a lovely smell of new mown lawn and sugar snap peas. The taste is wonderful, melding vegetable goodness with a hint of sweetness. The liquor looks like slightly watered down apple juice, a clear golden yellow.
For the second steep, I stretched it out to 3 minutes to see what would happen. Mmm, still good. There is a noticeably rich mouth feel and a good amount of veggie taste as the base, with fresh cut grass filling in around the edges. A very relaxing and tasty cup!
This tea looks like shiny green orzo in the bag and smells of green veggies; something close to fresh peas.
I’ve never made a yellow tea before and the merchant didn’t provide any brewing suggestions, so I had to guess on preparation. I decided yellow was half-way between white and green, so I split the difference and used water around 180 degrees.
The final product was a very nice champagne color but the taste was slightly bitter over a light cereal and sweetgrass flavor.
Experts, help me out here. What’s the proper way to make yellow teas?
Thank you to TeaEqualsBliss for sending me some of this tea!
I love yellow tea! This is a beautiful yellow – soft, sweet with a hint of sour and bitter. Nutty but not a roasted nut, more of a sweet blanched nut.
Absolutely delicious.
The dry leaves smell a lot like Dragon Well. The color of the tea is an extremely light yellow.
Wow! I know you are not supposed to base the taste of the tea on it’s color… but because it was so light, I thought it was going to be rather mellow… it was not. It has an intense fresh, grassy taste with a nutty and buttery background. Even with the astringency, the tea was a pleasure to drink.
Basically, it reminded me a lot of Dragon Well… only ten times smoother and fresher.
crisp,clean tasting. Very refreshing. The smell reminds me of vegetables a bit- again, like cucumber ( 2 days with cucumber in my tea reviews- i must be craving them!). The flavor is slightly nutty with some lemon juice on the back end of my palette.
Great tea to sip this morning.I love that in my glass cup, I can see the tiny fine hairs from the tea, which reminds me of this tea being almost like a white tea, so it must be very lightly processed.
bamboo, bean sprout, and a sweet aftertaste with a mouthfeel that thickens as it cools. Score= 90 on review # 279 on Walker Tea Review
The sharp, brothy green element dominates this tea over warm and subtly honeyed flavors underlying the body. The extra fermentation adds wonderful depth, softness and a marvelous aftertaste to what would have been a potentially bracing experience kind of like adding dried fruit to a salad of bitter greens and walnuts.
This is another of the teas i have recently revisited using the glass brewing method.
Prompted by my recent success with a certain tai ping hou kui, i thought i would try brewing this modest yellow in this fashion.
Using the standard teapot method i found this tea to be mostly unremarkable, in fact as a yellow tea goes i found it distinctly green, not a bad thing but not yellow in the same way as a Jun Shan.
I took a standard 250ml glass, 2.8g of the tea and used 60 degree c water.
The taste really really suited this method of brewing, if i recall i got about 4 or more refills, ith a good flavour that persisted pretty much consistently until it finally died.
With the standard teapot method i think this tea tastes far too savoury and beany.
Using a glass and refill method it is more akin to say a Xu Fu Long Ya, not quite as much bite.
Overall i don’t think of this as a yellow, i think this years crop is very very green, so on a technical point i don’t think its what i would call a terrific example.
However, does that really matter?
Probably to some, but as i treat yellows greens and whites all the same it really just comes down to what i enjoy drinking.
And i have to say breed in this manner i am now enjoying this tea!
