Price range: $9.00 through $50.00
Dasha's favorite tea of the year: huang ya grade old bush material from wild gardens dry yellowed to an exquisite profile that she thinks is some of her best work.
This one checks a silly amount of pedigree boxes: old bush, wild/feral, seed grown quntizhong, delicate pickings, high elevation, 100% handmade. Even though this tea's price was substantially more than I'd like, this one is an absolute treasure and rarity that couldn't be passed on. Not as umami as this year's wet-yellowed huang ya, but more bold, textured, fragrant, and clear.
Having made the pilgrimage to off-the-beaten-path Huoshan to stay with, assist, and learn from rebel purist Dasha twice now—with a bit more trust earned and dues paid—I feel privileged to access Dasha's more full range of teas with a greater understanding of what goes into them. Dasha and family exclusively produce tea in micro batches, with a three person crew harvesting in the mountains most days of the week in the spring, with 100% hand-processing and intensive yellowing overseen back in their home factory unit in Da Hua Ping township.
Unconvering Living Traditions in a Buyers Beware Market
The 芽 Yá in Huang Ya means “bud,” referring to the tippy end of the picking spectrum. While apparently up to six picking standards can still be classified as Huoshan Huang Ya before tipping into the leafier categories of Huang Xiao Cha and Huang Da Cha, this particular Yellow Bud follows the most common market standard: one bud, one leaf.
Most Huang Ya from Huoshan is machine-straightened into needle-like shapes to match the market’s expectation of what a tea with “芽” in the name should look like. However, in Dasha’s case, her teas are handmade and intentionally unshaped, allowing the bud and leaf to sit naturally in their splayed form. The result is a coarser, non-uniform appearance compared to the market's typical machine-straightened Huang Ya (see below).
Like other yellow teas from the few pockets in China where the tradition still hangs on, Huoshan’s Huang Ya suffers from widespread counterfeiting and corner-cutting. But Huoshan in particular has become notorious, with producers passing off cheap green tea—or teas with only the faintest yellowing—as the real thing under the more lucrative Huoshan Huang Ya label. Fresher, greener, and earlier-to-market spring teas are easier to sell and appeal to a broader audience. As a result, the slower, more complex, and more expensive world of true yellow tea has largely taken a back seat. Traditionally, harvest in Huoshan begins in mid-April or later—around 谷雨 gǔyǔ "grain rain" in the Chinese almanac. Proper yellowing and finishing pushes many of these teas to market by mid-to-late May—long after most buyers have wrapped up their spring tea shopping.
The on-the-ground reality is that machine-made, straightened green yellow tea has become the default in Huoshan—and even mediocre Huang Ya sells for a relatively high price. Some estimate that 99% of what’s sold as Huoshan Huang Ya is not the real thing.
Knowing this, I understood that finding the genuine article wouldn't be easy. The original story is told in this video here. I wanted to understand what went into crafting a true yellow tea, so during my most recent visit with Dasha, I documented the full process. After harvest, withering, and pan-frying, the tea is prepared for either gàn mèn 干闷 dry-yellowed or shī mèn 湿闷 wet-yellowed.
This particular Huang Ya is dry-yellowed, outlined below. For those curious about the wet-yellowing process, check out this year's wet yellow Huang Ya.
Dasha's Dry Yellowing
Yellowing or 闷黄 men huang "covering-yellow" is the critical step that defines yellow tea, without which the tea would be considered green tea as the processes are identical otherwise. Dry yellowing is less moisture-rich and therefore not as risky form of men huang. It is also the best way to preserve and deepen good fragrance characteristics. After harvesting, withering, and pan-frying (rolling/bruising is entirely skipped for her delicate teas not as robust as Big Yellow Leaf), the hot and moist leaves are taken off of the wok, left piled during a lunch break before being exposed to a brief charcoal heat. This charcoal heat is not about roasting, but more about drying to control the moisture level for the next step.
This brief charcoal heat will dry out the leaves to a determined amount of moisture before being covered. While the percentage of moisture is higher in wet-yellowing and therefore this brief drying via charcoal heat is skipped, this step is essential to ensure the proper humidity for dry-yellowing.
Similar in green tea, during the pan-frying phase enzymes responsible for oxidation are deactivated via exposure to the wok's heat. The covering of the warm and moist leaves that occurs in the nearly anaerobic environment under linen fabric transforms the leaves by dampening some of the greener catechin (bitter/bright/fragrant) profile of the leaves into a more mellowed, sweeter, less-bitter and yellow-hued tea. The transformation into such a profile typically would take place through enzymatic browning (the oxidation of the enzyme polyphenol oxidase and peroxidase) akin to what we see in red tea, yet since deactivation of these enzymes has already occurred in this process, yellowing relies on a mild Maillard Reaction (polymerization of sugars and amino acids to produce a caramelization effect) as well as an incomplete polyphenol autoxidation (the non-enzymatic oxidation of catechins into mild theaflavins and thearubigins).
L-Theanine and its corresponding flavor umami is preserved through the yellowing process. This is notable since L-Theanine and other amino acids are not well preserved through other forms of oxidation.
Dasha's tea leaves are covered during her dry yellowing for about 5-7 days, gradually reducing the moisture content down to about 30% before final charcoal firing. Throughout this time, the tea is periodically uncovered, de-clumped, turned, and recovered as to evenly allow the yellowing the set in. Each day the tea is assessed visually and by smell, and brief charcoal heat is applied to ward away any unwanted characteristics. Each batch is different, and factors such as picking grade (density of tea material), weather, and batch size contribute to the variable time each tea spends yellowing.
Dasha decides whether a batch is to be dry or wet yellowed depending on the characteristics of its tea garden. Gardens producing material with distinctive aromas (as well as tippier grades in general) are usually destined for dry yellowing as to preserve and accent fragrance. Bolder flavors + mouthfeel and astringency in material are good candidates for wet yellowing.
After yellowing, the final step is a series of charcoal baking/drying called zhuang huo 壮火 "fire strengthening" that stabilizes the yellowing, perks up its aromatics, and dries it for storage-stability. It's a set of three exposures to charcoal heat of increasing time and temperature ending with a crush test of the leaves; if the leaves can be crushed between the fingers into dust, it's dry enough.
Throughout Dasha's entire handmade process, no electrical outlet is needed. There's not a single machine used.
Dasha's brother Ocean guided our rigorous hike up to the family Tianji "skyrim" heirloom gardens resting at 200-300 meters higher than Huoshan's more famous Jinjishan, the area's core production region
Exploring the Gardens
The steep trail's grade only broken by the intermittent creek crossing, we hiked with our socks pulled up over our pant legs to avoid the area's leaches inhabiting the damp leaf litter beneath the bamboo groves waving gently overhead. A sweaty yet somehow serene hour-long trek later, we had finally reached Tianji tea gardens, Dasha's family's heirloom tea gardens that sprawl up the back of a mountainside to an impressive 960 meters in elevation. We eventually came out onto the cliffside to peer down at Jinjishan, the area's most promoted core production tea area, resting some 300 meters below. Tianji translates to "skyrim" and this is why: in this bamboo covered mountainous landscape corner of Huoshan County only the massive granite bluff—Bai Lian Cliff—separating Skyrim from Jinji reaches taller.
At an earlier time, these Tianji gardens were left to grow feral, unpruned and self-seeding, likely during a time when the market couldn't consistently pay a price for such a strenuous trek up the mountain to be worth it. No longer neglected, Dasha and her family reclaimed this garden twenty years ago, thinning out the wilderness that had engulfed it, and planted some new bushes by seed. These bushes are never sprayed or chemically fertilized. Bushes estimated to be 100 years old towards the top of Tianji give us a glimpse into the history of tea activity of this micro terroir, and Dasha thinks these older specimens were grown from Qimen County seeds brought up from further south in the province.
filming in an overgrown and older section of Tianji. This is the plot from which this tea was harvested.
Dasha' two workers + her brother and a student are the harvesting crew for the day
Documenting the process from start to finish, from garden ecology, harvesting, processing, finishing, to drinking, deepened my respect for not just for a dying artform—traditional yellow tea—but of Dasha's adherence to clean, integral, handmade tea; as high a caliber as you can find anywhere and which can only be achieved through committing to producing tea in micro-batches.
Not much of this tea exists. Treat yourself!
another glance at the old wild bushes
Lovely artisan Yellow! Fragrant vernal malty aromas & returns. Malty floral mouthfeel. Slight verdant bitterness accentuates the sweetness; sheng like. Lots of character & evolves wonderfully thru sessions.