SPOTLIGHT on Expensive Chinese Greens - Huangshan Maofeng

hey tea heads this is don from madelife in this video i am going to be diving into one of china's most famous teas and a tea which we have not stocked for many years that is huangshan malfung aka yellow mountain fur peak we've just shortened it down to fur peak here it is we're going to dive straight into the scope of this tea i'm going to give you the information about it and then i'm going to be talking about well i'm going to try to give you everything that i know about the theory around this tea and once we come to tasting it i'm going to explain to you the reason why we haven't stocked it for several years and what you should be looking out for with this and other similar kinds of green tea so let's quickly scope this tea season this tea was picked on the 15th of april 2020 so early spring but note it is after the ching ming festival we'll talk about that later the cultivar on this is the indigenous heirloom huangshan variety which is then propagated out so it's broadly called the huangshan chun tijong variety the origin of this is from huangshan which is in anhui province in china this area used to be called huizhou huizhou was the old name for it and it was only in the 80s that it got changed to huangshan huangshan means yellow mountain and in this area the very beautiful the incredibly beautiful in fact one of the most beautiful places i've ever visited on earth the yellow mountains is there picking and processing this is a bud and one leaf or a bud and two leaves so very delicate pickings we'll talk further about the significance of the pickings in a little bit and the processing this is stir-fried by hand so this is hand stir-fried so the shocking process over a wok and then it's finished in uh bake baking drawers so you have this this set of drawers that's heated by like charcoal ash and that heating process bakes the tea dry so this is officially a baked green tea even though it does go through the initial charging process over a wok which is stir-fried there are different ways of making the uh of achieving the charging process so we'll talk about that as well and finally elevation on this is 800 meters which is significantly higher than most green tea production in china and in japan when you compare it for example with longing the elevation of longing on average is around 100 to 200 meters so much higher up huangshan mountain is definitely higher elevation and that's an important factor to consider when selecting this tea so we're going to now dive into that scope information i'm going to give you more information about what you need to look for and the reason for that is because huangshan malfung is one of those ubiquitous teas you see it around a lot and in my opinion the vast majority are not worth the price tag and we're going to be talking about the sort of common flaws that i experience with huangshan mao fung when we do our tasting but first of all what is mao fung you'll see the word malfunc in a lot of places in fact it's one of those terms that's used oftentimes for sort of commodity tea or bulk green tea sort of like that meat low to medium range quality green tea fung sort of sounds chinese and a lot of companies use green tea mao fung as their sort of way of describing tea what does it actually mean well it's a kind of confusing one for me because mao fung is malfunct translates to fur mao and peak fung so that's why it's called fur peak malfung and often times people talk about it relating to this long straight shape but then if you look at for example chimon malfung which is a black tea that malfung is naturally slightly curly it's a little bit more twisted so it doesn't necessarily have the same shape and i've tried to figure out what mao fung actually means it certainly relates to shape but i think it mostly relates to teas which are unshaped in other words it doesn't go through a process of shaping the leaves so with longing it goes through a flattening process you'll have the ball rolling process for for um oolongs and for uh gunpowder green teas pearl teas in general whereas malfung i believe from going to visit producers producing malfung it seems to me that it doesn't go through a shaping process it's sort of allowed to sort of dry naturally and not be shaped before the drying process so that's my interpretation of malfung feel free to add any comments in the section below if you would like huangshan maofang clearly means maofang made from tea picked around huangshan which is the yellow mountains a stunning stunning area as i said so if you see mao fung it doesn't mean it's huangshan malfung it doesn't mean it comes from that particular area so you know malfunc just is a sort of descriptor for whole leaf unshaped tea right right now let's go through a bit more of the intricacies here so the season on this tea one of the common um misconceptions with all green teas from china is that early picked means better and with mao fung in my opinion that is not the case uh remember it's higher elevation and that means that you don't really apply the same calendar as you would with for example long jing or dragon well so those famous teas from lower elevation you're looking for pre ching ming festival so before the fourth of april being sort of your your top level t in terms of season and of course it's worth saying always that ultimately top tea relates to your taste so you might like tea which is picked later on even with long jing but overall the general consensus is pre-ching ming for those lower elevation tees but because this is higher elevation you do not want tea picked preaching ming in my opinion it's too early and a lot of the sort of sellers and producers get sucked into this race of like we need to bring it to market quickly because the earlier spring green teas command a higher price so they pick it earlier which means that it has not developed sufficient enough flavor and the biggest flaw in my opinion with these expensive higher quality huangshan mao fungs is their lacking depth of flavor and body and a lot of that is because of the fact that they're picking it too early for the altitude of the elevation and they're picking usually a bud and a very very small leaf um and they're not allowing the buds and the leaves to just extend a little bit further and you'll see these leaves once they're brewed up but you know you'll see that it is delicate but you definitely don't want it to be just in my opinion again all opinions i find that the huangshan mafungs that are very much simply buds and very few small leaves do not have the right level of depth so season you're looking for mid-april this is 15th of april it's around the right time 15th to 20th of april is usually spot on it depends on the weather fluctuations of course now let's move on to cultivar this is from as i said the chunti jeong variety so the heirloom variety which first grew with seeds but then became propagated there are cultivars again which are being produced to sprout earlier and therefore trying to bring it to the market earlier so watch out again for early huangshan malfung because it may mean that they're using those earlier sprouting cultivars i always think that the heirloom cultivars are best and these tea trees are around or these bushes are around 35 years old so they're nice aged for green tea especially aged green tea bushes so 35 year old is you know a nice a nice decent age 35 to 40 years old is a sort of good age range for green teas the origin this has to come from that area around huangshan there are many many hundreds of villagers around huangshan area and as long as it comes from one of those villages fushi is a very famous one for example then you should be okay picking and processing so this is technically a baked green tea so they may be the charging process or kilgreen process may take place in a wok to start off with but in this case the tea is finished via baking so it's baked in drawers as i said so you have a stack of drawers um the the fire or the the ash is at the bottom and so that's bringing heat up and so they move the drawers around so there's different levels of heat and they dry the tea so there's a baking phase and you can also bake it over charcoal as well but the stir-fry process of this can be done in a few ways the two ways that i think are acceptable is hand done over walks which is what has happened in this one which is great and in my opinion probably the best but those spinning drums that you see with oolong tees which is sort of heated spinning drums and they could be electrically heated but often in this area it's also wood fire heated those drums can do a very good job as well as long as they're checked regularly by the tea master so smelling looking taking leaves out etc etc that's fine in my opinion what you don't want and you see in mass production is this sort of spinning circular um heater so same thing but it's got an opening at either end and what you're doing is throwing fresh leaves in and it acts sort of like a conveyor belt it sort of spins the leaves through this heated chamber and comes out the other side so there's absolutely no variation there's no flexibility it literally is you know you throw the leaves in and there's a certain timed area i guess they can change the angle of the drum slightly but there's a basically it's set via a set time of how long it's going to take for the leaves to spin their way through this heated drum and arrive at the end and in my opinion that never produces the right quality because it's not personalized it's not really looking the leaves it's not done by look or feel it's very very much a mass-produced version of this tea and i would avoid that at all costs it tends to again produce very weak flavored tea and so finally let's talk about elevation as i said huangshan is relatively high elevation area for growing green tea so you're looking for huangshan malfung around that sort of i don't know 500 to 900 meters is sort of a good you know ballpark range for me if you see tea which is brought to the market early another telltale sign if it's been brought to the market early it may be coming from lower elevation flat land lowland plantations which again is not ideal so again the big warning sim signal for me with huangshan mao fang is you don't want it to be too early because it may mean the cultivar has been messed with it will mean that it's been picked too early or it's been picked from lower elevation plantation sort of very flat land uh plantations and it's not just the elevation but the fact that it's on flatter land whereas if you if you go to the plantations for good quality tehuwak for huangshan malfung it's steep it's very rocky and all of that tehuwak the rocks and the the fast flowing water makes for higher quality tea so the flatter lands with richer soils is not going to produce high quality tea but it will bring it to the market quicker so you want the elevation to be higher and you've got to watch out for those early t's right let's warm this up well let's take a look at these leaves so you can see here the color is a sort of asparagus green slight sort of mustard tones in here so it's not green green right again i would avoid anything that looks too green on the dry leaf you want it to look sort of like it's been processed okay and the uh the shape of these leaves is relatively straight there you can see some nice fur on the leaves you want the leaves to be furry malfung means furry peak so you want it to be furry but again watch out because you know early spring pickings where it's very very early will have more of that those the trichomes from the bud um but it's not necessarily going to make better tea again it's all a matter of taste these are just some flags for you to be aware of so you can see that it is relatively straight shaped but this is unshaped so it's not gone through a shaping process not gone through any official shaping process it's gonna you know be laid out flat on the on the drawers for heating etc but it doesn't go through an official shaping process and that is why you get malfunctions which may look very very different sort of twisted gnarly a little bit you know all over the place so with green teas as i said you've got different types of green tea you've got the uh and it depends on the how it's finished in this case it's baked with long jing it's stir-fried the whole process is the the is the pan frying process so it goes through from beginning to end in pan frying overall you know there's some machinery involved as well and then you've got steaming so you get the steamed and then you've got sun drying which obviously is very famous in yunnan area so this is a baked green tea okay there's a lot of baked green teas in anhui province and a lot of them share similar characteristics in terms of what is a positive note and a negative note and i'll say from the outset that the big thing that i think a lot of people who try huangshan mao fang sometimes taiping hokwei sometimes anji by char so all teas from anhui province a lot of the time you will find that the flavor is too weak and there needs to be a distinction between light flavor and weak flavor and that's really something that comes from tasting right let's have a sniff of these leaves so the first thing that really jumps out to me here is the warmth of the smell of these leaves so i would say one of the things you should avoid is a tea which just smells in a way too fresh so everything here is about you don't want a huangshan malfung that tastes or smells or has a character at the beginning which sort of presents itself as being too fresh and green because it will usually mean that the experience is a bit weak not light but weak so the smell of this smells like it's gone through an intense process of warming so that baked smell is coming through i'm getting things and it might sound a bit surprising but i'm getting things like chocolate chip cookies you know chocolate shortbreads i'm getting yeah like like like yeah i'm imagining sort of dark chocolate shortbreads medium chocolate shortbreads some nuts in there as well like toasted hazelnuts it's not as beany and nutty as like a nutty long jing but it certainly has the character which you would sort of throw into the spectrum of warming rather than bracing right let's give it a quick rinse just so that we can smell the wet leaves i'm brewing in 85 degree water here okay here we go smell of the wet leaves so that persists now i am getting a little bit of those broad beans ah savory so a quality marker again in my opinion but let's just take it as read that everything here is in my opinion so i don't have to give you that disclaimer every time huangshan mao fun one of the beautiful things about huangshan maofang is its savory character a savory warming character and that's more in the aromatics than the taste but the taste also has that a brothy note to it but the smell here oh it's so lovely it makes me hungry it reminds me of those fried broad beans if you go to a tapas restaurant and you have those fried broad beans as a starter and it's dusted with paprika so paprika on top of it just so addictive that smell is it very very much a savory smell it's got some vegetable stock in there as well but mostly it's this fried broad beans with not smoked unsmoked paprika powder oh it's so nice now there is a little fruity note coming through but it's very very light and i would sort of put it in the sort of very light green melons so you know how you have your uh starters of your maybe you have melon and ham and you've got your fried broad beans so imagine that imagine it's it's like your your ultimate sort of little tapas aperitif okay here we go i did not measure the amount of leaf here but as always with these kinds of teas more is better now there's some controversy about whether or not this should be covered or not i have done my own test i don't really see that much of a different i don't notice any difference really if you uncover it or cover it so i just revert back to type and cover it and we're going to brew this for a while now the reason for that is because right it is uh bud and uh and and young leaf that has been unshaped so that means that it hasn't gone through a process where the outer layers are being broken up when you have pearl shaped teeth they get broken up when you roll the tea you're taking off that outer layer and therefore you're getting you know a much easier quicker extraction with these kinds of teas similar to white tees they have not gone through a shaping process and therefore they're going to take time because the leaf and the bud is naturally water resistant so you you want to sort of overcome that water resistance so there you go i think that's about right here we go let's pour this in here take a look at the color of that liquor now we are here at this point where some people would maybe say well that looks very very very light and we need to create the distinction between lightness and delicacy and purity with weakness and a lacking in intensity right and i think that this is one of those things that people struggle with a little bit this is glistening and you probably can't see it i have the benefit of the light going through this has got trichome central just like clouds of trichomes those furry the fairy part of the bud just floating suspended in this liquor the color of the liquor is a sort of slightly green yellow like almost herbal liqueur kind of look to it it is a lovely color i have to say right here we go let's see what the body is like just the look of that gives me a lot of encouragement look at that lovely thick texture ah thick soft not oily it's sort of it's sort of hard to describe it's thick to soft to fresh but the thickness and brothiness is there from the outset so key floor here if you taste huangshan mao fang if it tastes like it i mean if the texture of it is very thin again you're probably it's more in that big category of huangshan male fungus which i reject on the basis of too weak right because this has a beautiful lightness about it and tease like angie by char and tease like hulk way they are the teas which it they're always a slight struggle to source because you're looking for that certain something that je ne sais quoi that is hard to put your finger on but is so revered amongst chinese green tea lovers and that is this combination of lightness elegance delicacy and purity with character depth complexity body and flavor but for a lot of people who are first getting into green teas they may may because some people go for it immediately they may find oh this is a bit weak and they prefer to go down the line of um senchas yokuros long jings other sorts of stronger initially stronger teas but even if you compare it with long jinx the most expensive long jings have a real lightness of touch and elegance and delicacy that the stronger teas don't and this is due to processing it's due to picking etc but if you have a a really high quality version of a huangshan malfung a typing whole way or an there is a certain something that's hard to put your finger on because if you tasted it next to another one which you may think is lower quality it may have a similar sort of freshness about it it may have a similar sort of um delicacy about it but it just doesn't have a potency within it it's like one is empty and one is full it's very hard for me to explain without sitting down with someone and tasting quite a few but i hope people out there who who have a passion for these kinds of teas understand what i mean so let's talk about the taste here so this is a combination you are getting that creaminess and savoriness now it's moved out of the sort of broad bean and beany note and it's still there a bit but it's more in this sort of creamy taros yeah creamy yeah taro root and then you combine that starchy warm note with the purity of what you would imagine like licking fresh dew off you know when you come out of a camping you know you camping you get up early morning you get that that that intense smell of dewy fresh ionized air right that is in there as well but not winter like summer so you know it's going to be a hot day it's a sizzling day in london today so it's one of those this morning if we were out camping just that that beautiful summer morning early morning dewy aroma and taste combine that with this sort of warming starchy taro and then afterwards this fresh cooling slightly lemony finish and that as always with tea the finish tells you so much information do not ignore the finish the finishes is really especially with these kinds of teas is going to be the definer of you know taking teas that incrementally maybe in the tasting in the initial tasting as you sort of you know do your first cursory tasting increment you may notice just incremental differences but in the finish you will notice a bigger difference and the finish here well it's difficult for me to explain because when you go to china oftentimes you say well what's important is the finish and when you ask people what's a good finish for you and instead of them talking about long and taste and aromatics they just say it makes you feel comfortable and this is a tea which just epitomizes that and good high quality delicate elegant green teas will have this feeling on it especially on a warm day like this that it just gives you a feeling of comfort not warming cozy comfort like a freshness like you know that feeling like you've just stepped out of a shower right that feeling that fresh showered feeling that feeling encapsulated as a sort of finish is what you're looking for in these teas and that is that je ne sais quoi that i'm talking about you may not be able to to sort of describe it or define it in terms of taste or aromatics but it should be there in terms of its effect a little bit of mineral coming through but it's sweet in its minerality rather than sort of something that's too sort of calcium drying i'm getting a little bit of like watermelon rind the green part of the watermelon but it's very very light and does not dominate i again i'm not looking for something that is too green like that because for me that means that it's not being processed properly or it's not being processed to the full extent to really usher out the complexity of the flavors that these leaves contain zingy now starting to get zingy starting to get fresh cooling lemony um sweet yes but not as sweet like as a as some of those other stronger tasting teas like a dragon well will leave you with much more of a sweet finish or or even some angie by chars if you were going to compare this to angie baichar which is something that i think a lot of people would do considering the sort of look of these leaves and the fact that it's from the same province angie baichar for me is sweeter and fresher huangshan malfung should be more savoury moving to to sort of warming starchy notes with more body in it and um the finish should be fresh and juicy rather than very sweetened nothing i mean if there is sweetness but it's just not as much as with a high quality angie by char high quality huangshan mafangs have a different personality right let's smell the empty cup and this is one of those teas that you just can keep sipping just keep infusing and you can forget this brew you can brew this grandpa style if you don't know what i mean i'll stick a link in the description below so basically never stopping it from being covered with water just always just topping up this is a perfect tea for glass brewing grandpa style right let's have a sniff of this empty cup i might do the empty gong dao bay as well right sweet oh yeah okay so i'm getting sugar sweetness like meringues but um very very um un let's say unposh meringues right so there's nothing added it's just a sugar meringue one of those ones that just breaks up like powdery sort of sugar meringues but then with a jammy apricot jam and there is a nuttiness there like hazelnuts it's more like fresh it's lighter like either fresh hazelnuts or fresh almonds definitely apricot jam that's surprising one more infusion i'm just going to leave this now to brew and then we'll take a look at these leaves so the reason why we have not purchased huangshan malfung for many years i think the last time we purchased it was like 2017 is because there is a lot of it on the market that looks the part that has good credentials to it let's say that costs a lot that comes from the right terroir usually earlier picked and i'm sort of you know that's my one of my telltale signs here as i said but it has all the right look and all the right information on the dry leaf but when you brew it just like typing hawkway and oftentimes like angie baichar it's lacking something and sometimes it's hard for you to put your finger on what it is but all i can say is i'm talking about the contrast between light delicate elegant and pure which are all positives contrast that with weak and empty and oftentimes what you get are teas which which have lightness and delicacy but also have weakness and emptiness and what do i mean by that i mean that they're lacking character they're lacking body they're lacking aromatics although the aromatics and the flavor profile is almost sort of like third in line it's more about the body and the feel of the tea the character of the tea how it makes you feel it's empty it feels empty it tastes empty it it has just an empty character to it but when you find teas which have likeness delicacy elegance and purity but with that have body with that have a fullness of character and a sensation afterwards of really feeling good then that is a higher quality tea and that is worth the price in my opinion for these premium teas and oftentimes you may find as you as you move in your journey through green teas with chinese green teas that you start to taste teas and they taste a little bit weak to you but try to discern the difference between weakness and lightness and with high high quality chinese green teas of this ilk it is all about that that balance of trying to achieve a very pure light delicate liquor that is rich in character and has a personality to it that is undeniable right taste this oh yeah i'm going to grandpa brew this afterwards i'm just going to put this in a glass and keep brewing it with water similar flavor profiles the creaminess of that taro mixed with the freshness of that morning air now it's a little bit sweeter now i'm getting a little bit more simple sugar syrup there as well it's just a delight in its purity and it still has complexity in that purity take a look at these leaves now these leaves are a lot greener sort of a very vibrant bright lime and some olive green let's take a look at the quality of the pickings here so you can see a bud and one leaf and you can see that leaf is not a little short leaf it's you know extended it's it's it's an extended leaf all of these leaves you can see are relatively they're still young of course they're still young leaves but they have some length to them they're almost the same length as the bud so we are having a bud and one leaf picking overall here so you hear here's just bud and you'll see some ones maybe with two leaves overall you're getting a bud and one leaf but the leaves have been allowed to develop they are not just early early picking which i think would make for a worse tea it's important to note that the picking protocols of these teas is really you know it's it should not be seen as something which is any kind of dogmatic way that it has to be this picking versus another picking it really depends on the tea plant and the picker right so huangshan mao fang the flaws you need to look out for are the most common for me is weakness and emptiness versus lightness delicacy purity and its own character also you want to look out for the classic so any smoked aroma you i would say is generally considered a flaw again up to you if you like smoky tea but it usually means that the wood firing process was done and a little bit um it got a little bit out of hand and smoke started to either go into the leaf or the leaves during the baking process fell into the charcoal ash and started to create its own smoke i also think you should be looking out for teas which are excessively green i would certainly look for teas which are more warming in terms of their aromatics and savory savory and warmth that's what i would be sort of the characteristic that i would be looking for especially when you're sniffing those dry leaves the body sensation on this as i said leaves me feeling very comfortable very fresh but not fresh like cooling fresh just sort of like i feel like i feel warm but not cozy if you know what i mean i feel like warm and fresh just like walking out of a hot shower and you just dry yourself down that feeling that's the feeling that i'm looking for with huangshan mao fang and lots of these kinds of green teas i hope that this gives you information so that you can make better buying decisions this one is available in small batch online if you want to give it a taste that's it tea heads check out our other videos taste rts wherever you are in the world by browsing mayleaf.com and come visit us if you're ever in london other than that i'm don from mayleaf thank you for being a part of the revelation of true tea stay away from the tea bags keep drinking the good stuff and spread the word because nobody deserves bad tea bye

Channel: Mei Leaf

Views: 8,164

Keywords: tea, mei leaf, don mei, loose leaf tea, white tea, green tea, yellow tea, oolong tea, matcha tea, black tea, puerh tea, puer tea, pu erh tea, websites for tea, tea tasting, tea shopping, high quality tea, chinese tea, taiwanese tea, japanese tea, tea ware, teaware, tea gifts, gong fu tea, gong fu brewing, maofeng, huangshan maofeng, mao feng, maofeng green tea, mao feng tea, fur peak, yellow mountain fur peak, expensive green tea, gaiwan brewing, chinese green tea

Id: iWWu05AHv38

Length: 37min 17sec (2237 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 01 2020