Huo Shan Huang Ya 霍山黃芽

Yellow tea is micro-fermented, with a profile similar to green tea but a little rounder, smoother, and warmer in the mouth. Huo Shan Huang Ya is known for sweet nutty notes, full-bodied umami, and a floral edge.

Huo Shan Huang Ya is a Huang Xiao Cha (yellow small tea), one of the three traditional yellow-tea classifications based on picking style. Its standard picking grade is one bud and one leaf. Tea Drunk’s Huang Ya is yellowed 3 to 7 times for a total of 160–260 hours. To finish refining the tea, it is placed on a bamboo tray and flash-roasted over charcoal for an hour. This technique, Zhuang Huo, is unique and ancient to the region. Because the leaves are already dry, Zhuang Huo is precarious, but it drives off the last impurities, fixes the tea’s character, and heightens its aroma.

Huo Shan belongs to Lu An, one of China’s oldest and best-documented tea regions. Records trace tea production here to the Han Dynasty (202 BC–220 AD), and Huo Shan Huang Ya rose to tribute-tea status during the Ming Dynasty (1368–1644). Its production appears to have disappeared by the late Qing; using historical documentation and the expertise of tea scientists, local makers recreated the tea in Huo Shan in 1973.

Within Huo Shan, Jin Ji Shan is among the most prized traditional producing areas. Tea Drunk’s Huang Ya is made there by Xu A-yi, the matriarch of her tea-making family and a specialist in Zhuang Huo (also called La Huo), the difficult finishing step in which nearly dry leaves are repeatedly flash-roasted over charcoal. This regional technique both preserves a living craft tradition and gives the finished tea its concentrated aroma.