This is one of the samples Mandala generously sent me. So nice of them!
This brews up incredibly light, as to be expected given the nature of yellow tea. It’s a beautiful color in the cup. Smells fresh and wonderful dry and steeping. At first it was so, so light, but the flavor builds as you drink more of it. It’s way different from the yellow tea I had from Zen, which was surprisingly dark and tasted like if you took qualities from every basic kind of tea—black, green, white, and oolong—and mixed them all up. This is more the way I expected yellow tea to be—light, refreshing, with elements of green tea (nutty, buttery) and white tea (lightly floral, gently sweet) and none of the bitterness greens can sometimes have. It’s delicate and delicious, so sweet and clean tasting like sweet corn (it tastes like fresh corn silk smells, if that makes sense), but with a very subtle creamy nut element too. It would be perfect on a warm summer day; it calls to mind crisp sugary-sweet spring and summer vegetables. Yay!