Golden Monkey King

Yunnan Province has been producing tea, most famously puerh, for over 1,700 years. However, it is only since the turn of the last century black tea started to be produced in Yunnan with an explosion of interest from the 1950’s due to the rich, full bodied, smooth flavour of these delicious black teas.

Golden Monkey King is made from the assamica variety of tea plant which thrives in the temperate, humid climate. The large assamica leaves, traditionally used for puerh production, are known as da ye (large leaf), and are lightly rolled to produce a long twisted dried leaf with an abundance of golden tips. The tea consists of 1 or 2 large leaves and 1 big long bud. The buds take on the rich golden colour due to oxidization, an enzymatic process all black teas go through. The buds are full of sugar, a nutrient bank to help the bud grow into a big leaf, producing a tea which is molasses sweet and malty.

Black teas from China tend to be sweeter, more complex than black teas from other countries and this delicious tea certainly does deliver all those properties and more.