Huangshan Maofeng (Yellow Mountain)
Green Tea 2024
One of the great teas of the world, Huangshan Maofeng is a direct descendant of the earliest modern green tea production techniques. Brews a crystalline infusion that is sweet, clean and blooming with a cool floral aroma. Made by one of Huangshan’s most eminent tea makers from the local heirloom tea bushes.
2024’s Huangshan Maofeng remains light, yet its flavor is slightly darker and more savory than usual, a green tea style that is more commonly found in the domestic Chinese market.
- 2023 $19.50
- Tea Origin
- She County, Huangshan City, Anhui Province, China
- Tea Bush
- Huangshan Dayezhong (Yellow Mountain Large Leaf Heirloom Tea Bush)
- Tea Maker
- Wang Huizhou
- Harvest Time
- Early April
- Plucking Standard
- One bud, two leaves
Huangshan Maofeng’s (Yellow Mountain) taste is very clean and smooth with a delicate sweetness and a fresh floral aroma, making for a green tea that is both easy-drinking and pleasingly complex.
This tea has been hand-picked at a young age for beautiful leaves and buds. In addition, this particular tea has been dried in an oven rather than pan fired, resulting in a very clean and soft aroma. As a result of the high temperatures of the drying ovens, some leaves will naturally develop small blisters on the surface.
Maofeng tea leaves are not aggressively kneaded; the kneading step needs to be done very gently, only just enough to twist them into shape without breaking the fragile buds and young leaves of spring growth. The resulting natural leaf shape looks like it was just plucked from the bush.
The Tea Makers of Huangshan
Our Huangshan Maofeng is produced under the leadership of the renowned Wang family. Master tea maker Wang Huizhou and his late father Wang Fangsheng are part of a long lineage of tea making that extends back generations. Wang Fangsheng was a famous expert in Chinese tea and also the original inventor of the wildly popular blooming display tea that opens like a flower when infused. He was well-known for supporting the local community and tea industry in Huangshan with his devotion to teaching tea cultivation and production to other tea farmers. His son, Mr. Wang Huizhou is a highly respected tea maker and inventor in his own right and represents the sixth generation of tea makers in the family. Their teas exemplify the high standard that ranks Huangshan Maofeng one of the famous teas of China and have been used as state gifts (tribute teas).
We made our first trip to meet Wang Fangsheng in 2006 and Seven Cups is honored to have imported the Wang family’s tea every spring since then.
Read more about the Wang family and their extraordinary tea factory in our tea producer section.
Origin
Huangshan Maofeng is produced in She County, Huangshan City. The Huangshan mountain range is not only famous for producing green tea, the area is also a well known historic center of Chinese culture. For example, some of the earliest loose leaf tea production began here and Huangshan area’s masters taught other tea makers around 600 years ago.
The leaves of this Huangshan Maofeng are grown in a high-elevation mountain tea garden 1,000 meters above sea level, far away from industrial areas. This garden uses traditional methods of taking care of tea bushes and fertilizing the soil naturally that has been passed down through generations, such as methods like fermented animal manure, fermented bean paste, and pulling weeds with a hoe.
Harvest
Plucking season for this tea begins just after the Qing Ming festival on April 5th. We have selected Huangshan Maofeng from the second harvest of the spring for its rich character and affordability. Producers will continue picking tea until early May for lower grades of tea, but ourMaofeng is made only from leaves harvested early in the season. The plucking standard for this tea is one bud with two newly-opened leaves.
Processing
This tea is picked by hand and then carried back to the factory for processing. The leaves are sorted and then withered naturally for a few hours before they are roasted at high heat in an oven to prevent oxidation. Then a lower-heat oven will slowly roast the tea in the span of two or three further sessions. The length and intensity of each roasting will depend on how much moisture is in the air and in the tea leaves.
