Grown in Yunnan province, this tea is fermented with lychee, rose and longan (a sweet fruit native to Southeast Asia). What results is a tea that is remarkably beautiful both in sight and color. The unique fermentation process results in its famous “golden tips,” which immediately set this black tea apart from its darker brothers and sisters.
The taste is the other remarkable thing about this tea. I’ve been sipping some dian hong and wracking my brain for adjectives for almost a half hour now, and all I can come up with is…round. This tea fills every nook and cranny of your mouth and nose with delicate yet powerful flavor which is best described as mildly sweet.
I’m still working my way through a stash that I bought from my favorite tea seller in Beijing, so I can’t give too much expertise on buying this in America. The type I have is classified as “Yunnan Pure Gold,: and it would be pretty embarrassing to admit how much I paid for it. Suffice to say, if you’re looking for a quality dian hong, look for tightly rolled, unbroken leaves which uniformly exhibit a golden color throughout and possess a strong aroma. This tea also takes milk extremely well. Many tea retailers in China told me that it is the preferred tea for making Chinese or Tibetan versions of milk tea. I’ll be looking up some good recipes for this on Baidu later and posting a few when I get the time.
