Specialty shops
Yellow tea is the category where a specialist shop is close to essential, because much of what is sold is not yellow tea.
The piling step, men huang （闷黄）, leaves the leaf yellow-green, and that colour is the fastest way to tell the real thing.
A photograph can be corrected and a description can be wrong, but the leaf in front of you cannot be either.
Ask for the garden and the picking date. A shop selling real yellow tea has both.
You should also be able to smell it, and a grassy smell means the piling did not happen.
The premium over online is significant, and it is worth paying here more than in any other category.
A shop will also sell you 25 grams, which is the sensible unit for a tea at this price.
Ask whether they stock yellow tea all year or only in spring. The honest answer is spring, and it tells you they know.
Use the shop to compare a yellow tea against a good green tea from the same producer, which is the lesson that sticks.
Online
Yellow tea is the riskiest of all categories to buy online, because the fakes are cheap and the real thing is not.
A listing that says yellow tea and costs what a green tea costs is selling green tea.
Look for the producer’s name and the picking date, and for a photograph of the dry leaf rather than of the tin.
Reviews are close to useless here, because most buyers cannot tell real yellow tea from a mild green one.
Buy from sellers who specialise in Chinese tea and who also sell Longjing from named producers.
Order the smallest size, which is usually 25 or 50 grams, and treat it as a test.
Avoid gift tins and gift boxes entirely in this category, because they hide the leaf and the date.
Postage on a small order hurts, so combine it with a green tea you were buying anyway.
Online works for restocking a yellow tea you have already bought from a shop and confirmed.
Markets and direct
Markets are the worst channel for yellow tea, and it is worth being direct about that.
The category is small, expensive and easy to fake, and a stall has every reason to sell a green tea as a yellow one.
Prices at markets are lower, and they are lower because the tea is not what it says on the tin.
You cannot verify the garden, the picking date or the piling, and there is nobody to go back to.
Buying direct from a producer at Huoshan or Junshan is possible, and it is the one version of this that works.
It needs a contact who knows the producer, an invoice, and a willingness to take a season’s worth at once.
Group orders are the usual route, and they work when the organiser has done it before.
A market is worth one visit for a comparison: buy the cheapest yellow tea on offer and see what it actually is.
If you can taste it, a grassy cup with no rounded edge means you bought a green tea at a yellow price.
The practical mix
Buy yellow tea from one specialist shop or one specialist online seller, and stay with them.
Use a market only to learn what the fakes taste like, which is a cheap and useful lesson.
Start with 25 grams from two producers and compare them, which costs less than one bad 100 gram purchase.
Once you trust a source, buy 50 grams once or twice a year and drink it within months.
Keep the annual spend small. Yellow tea is a tasting category rather than a daily one, and the budget should say so.
Do not chase cheaper listings. In this category the cheap version is a different tea.
Keep a note of the producer, the price per gram and the picking date for every purchase.
Buy in spring when the new pickings arrive, and do not buy it in December at all.
Whatever the channel, the test is whether they can name the garden. If they cannot, it is not yellow tea.
Two producers is enough to compare for years. Beyond that you are buying labels rather than learning a tea.
At 3 grams a cup, 50 grams is about 16 sessions, which is two to three weeks of a morning habit.