Korean Hwangcha (Balhyocha)

Hwangcha, the yellow tea of Korea, is a partly oxidized tea made around Hwagae in Hadong, on the foothills of Jirisan, and one of the teas Koreans call balhyocha. It is not Chinese yellow tea. Sellers describe dried fruit and a gentle roast, with honey or chestnut in some lots, in a soft golden cup. Brewed gently, at 85°C.

Origin & Story

In Korea, tea falls into two camps. Bulbalhyocha, unfermented tea, is green tea. Balhyocha, literally fermented tea, is everything else, which means any oxidized tea. Hwangcha is balhyocha, a partly oxidized kind, but not all balhyocha is hwangcha.

The name hwangcha, yellow tea, comes from the look of the leaf as it is made and the golden color of the cup, not from the process of Chinese yellow tea. Hwangcha has no kill-green stage. The leaf is withered, rolled, heaped so that it oxidizes a little, and dried, a sequence that makes it closer to a lightly oxidized black tea or an oolong. One producer describes heaping the rolled leaf in a shallow bamboo basket, covering it with cloth and keeping it warm in an ondol room, the traditional Korean heated floor.

The home of the tea is the Jirisan country in the south. Hadong, at the foot of the mountain, is counted as the oldest tea-growing area in Korea, and Hwagae is the valley in Hadong where much hwangcha is made. Like Korean green tea, hwangcha is sold by picking date, as sejak, jungjak or daejak, thin, medium and big sparrow.

In the cup it is gentle: dried fruit and a light roast, with honey or chestnut in some lots, and less grassy and less brisk than green tea. Hwangcha declined when fully oxidized black tea took the focus under Japanese rule, and it has returned in recent decades as a lower-priced alternative to labor-intensive green tea.

Steep 3 g of leaf in 240 ml of water at 85°C for two minutes, pour it off completely, and re-steep the same leaf two more times, a few degrees hotter and a little longer each time.

Reading the Flavor Profile

These values are comparative editorial positions within our own catalog, calibrated so entries can be ranked against each other. They are not laboratory measurements.