World Tea House’s Mogan Huangcha | Tea Review

512

Over the years, I’ve only ever had a handful of yellow teas, so whenever the opportunity arises, I will quickly take the chance to try it!

Description: “What makes this tea special is its secondary steaming and fermenting stage, yellowing the leaves and [bringing] out a beautiful butter-yellow cup with strong vegetal flavours.”

Instructions: 1 tsp | 3 minutes | 85°C | Re-steep 

Review: Yellow tea is similar to green tea, however, as noted on the World Tea House website, during the process of the leaves, there is a secondary steaming and fermenting stage which causes the yellow-hued leaves.

The dry dark brown leaves had a warm yellow undertone. It smelled fruity, roasted, vegetal, and fermented.

After 3 minutes of steeping, the golden-yellow colour liquor had a range of flavours from woody, caramel, floral, and chestnut, to vegetal in taste. It also left a pleasant roasted caramel aftertaste in the mouth and was drying at the back of the throat. During the following re-steeping of the infused leaves, the liquor was lighter in colour and tasted sweet like maple sap water.

I put some of the tea from the first infusion into the fridge and this brought out a sweet caramel and raisin taste.

Some infusions had a sweeter caramel and fruity note, whereas others were more woody or vegetal. The vegetal notes reminded me of Korean green teas like Camellia Sinensis Teahouse’s Woojeon Jeju Organic, which are more fermented and mineral.

After brewing, the wet leaves had a faint woody and fermented smell. It was reddish like black tea, which I did not expect, maybe from the extra fermentation step!

Since yellow tea is less common, the few times I’ve had it, each tea has a new profile of flavours. Despite being closer to a green tea, this yellow tea reminded me of a mixture of a green and oolong, since at times it was more green and other times it was more roasted. As yellow teas are more rare, I would suggest you give this a try (3.5/5 rating).