Mengding Yellow Bud Tea - COLORFULTEA

Brewing difficulty: Easy.
Best season to taste: Summer.
Origin: Mengshan Mountain, Mingshan County in Sichuan Province.
Shape: stout and oily in appearance; yellow bright and oily in color.
Liquid: light yellow.
Aroma: sweet and delicate with elegant smell.
Taste: mellow and fresh.
Brewed tea leaves: Large bud in the bright yellow color.
Recognizing: Mengding yellow bud tea of top quality is featured with even, flat and straight bud sticks, yellow and embellish color, obvious golden fuzzes, yellow greenish liquid, sweet and tender, and mellow and fresh taste. It is the nonesuch of yellow tea.
Water temperature: boiled water of over 85°C.
Tea sets: glass.



Mengding Yellow bud tea is the gem of Chinese yellow tea. Wen Tong, a poet in Song Dynasty, once wrote in For Thanking People Who Sends New Mengding Tea: "Shu (another name for Sichuan Province) tea can be praised as holy, but the tea in Mengshan Mountain area is of incomparable precious taste." There are many other famous sentences that highly praise the famous Mengding tea series which are represented by Mengding Yellow bud tea. Mengding tea had been listed as tribute from Tang Dynasty to Qing Dynasty. It takes Mingqian single bud as its raw material and it's elaborately made with the unique "yellow-packing" technology. Mengding tea per kilogram is made with about 80 thousand tea buds.
Geographical conditions of Mengding Yellow bud tea
The beautiful Mengshan Mountain is rich in the famous Mengding Ganlu tea, but also a home to Mengding Yellow bud tea.
The all year round drizzle, widespread mist, fertile soil, and superior environment of Mengshan Mountain are very suitable conditions for the growth of Mengding Yellow bud tea.
History
Mengshan Mountain has a long tea-producing history, dating back to 2,000 years ago, and many ancient works recorded about it. Zhao Yi in Qing Dynasty recorded in his work Mengding Tea: Among famous tea mountains, Mengshan Mountain has the best tea; Mengding tea is better than that of Shangqing Peak. Seven plants in Mengshan mountain top are the best. It is said that Ganlu tea were planted by a Zen master and they neither wither nor grow. The tea is endowed with thin and long leaves, sweet and pure taste, has yellow and verdurous color. If you put the dry Mengding tea in the cup, they won’t separate. Since this peculiarity, the tea is termed as "immortal tea". Every year, about 167kilograms tea is picked and served as tribute...". Another poem wrote: "Many teas have leaves as soft as silk and are paid as tribute teas to China since Tang Dynasty." Mengding tea had been served as tribute tea since the beginning of Tang Dynasty to the Ming and Qing Dynasties, and it is also one of the most famous tribute teas in Chinese history.
Mengding (Mt. Mengshan Summit) Tea from Mt. Mengshan
Mt. Mengshan stands in the territory of Ya'an City of Sichuan Province. It is a famous tourist resort. It is also the birthplace of world tea culture and the first place for artificial planting of tea trees. Since the Tang (618 - 907) and the Song (960 - 1279) dynasties, many Buddhist temples and Taoist monasteries have been built in Mt, Mengshan, including the Qianfo (One-Thousand-Buddha) Temple, Jingju (Clean Residence) Temple, Zhiju (Wisdom Ruler) Temple, Yongxing (Forever Thriving) Temple, and Tiangai (Sky Dome) Temple. There are five peaks in the mountain, namely Shangqing (Upper Clear) Peak, Lingjiao (Water Chestnut) Peak, Piluo Peak, Jingquan (Well Spring) Peak, and Ganlu (Sweet Dew) Peak. They are like five petals of lotus in full blossom. Mt. Mengshan is covered with drizzle all the year round. Its cloudy and foggy weather and fertile soil provide tea trees with favorable growth conditions. In addition to ordinary tea gardens, there is an ancient royal tea garden in the mountain.
As the tea from Mt. Mengshan grows mainly on top of the mountain, it is called the Mengding Tea (Ding: summit) in general. The Mengding Tea from Mt. Mengshan served as a tribute tea for over 1,000 years from the Tang Dynasty (618 - 907) to the Qing Dynasty (1644 - 1911). It was a rare case in tea culture history. In the Tang Dynasty (618 - 907), tea drinkers took two things seriously - the tea from the top of Mt. Mengshan and the water from the center of the Yangtze River. The tea from the top of Mt. Mengshan certainly referred to the Mengding Tea. The water from the center of the Yangtze River referred to the water of the Zhongling Spring in Zhenjiang of Jiangsu, which was evaluated as the No.1 Spring in the World by Liu Bochu, a spring taster in the Tang Dynasty (618 - 907). Tea drinkers in the Tang Dynasty (618 - 907) put these two things together because they believed that the best tea should be brewed with the best water. A poet in the Song Dynasty (960 - 1279) once wrote a poem to praise the tea from the top of Mt. Mengshan as a drink better than the best wine.
Among many Mengding teas, the most famous are Mengding Ganlu (Sweet Dew) and Mengding Huangya (Yellow Bud). The Mengding Ganlu is a stir fixation green tea. It is twisted and tippy and has a tender, green, and moist appearance and a strong and fresh aroma. The tea soup is clear with a yellowish tint. The brewed tea leaves are even, tender, and elegant. The Mengding Huangya is a top-grade product among yellow teas. It has a flat contour, a greenish yellow appearance, and apparent buds and tips. The tea soup is sweet, fragrant, and brightly yellow, and tastes sweet and mellow. The brewed tea leaves are tenderly yellow and even. It is indeed the best of all the teas from Mt. Mengshan.