Junshan Yinzhen: An Island, Nine Refusals and Three Rises

Junshan Yinzhen is a bud-only yellow tea grown on Junshan, an island of about 0.96 square kilometres in Dongting Lake in Hunan. It is picked in a window of seven to ten days around Qingming, filtered by a nine-refusal rule that discards most of what is picked, and finished so that the buds stand upright in the glass and rise and fall three times. The island, the rule and the behaviour in the glass are the three things that make this tea itself.

The grade is a single bud and nothing else. What distinguishes it from another bud tea is where the bud grew and how it was chosen, and both of those are unusually constrained.

The island and why it matters

Junshan sits in the middle of Dongting Lake, surrounded by water on every side. The lake moderates the temperature, raises the humidity and produces a frequent mist, and the island’s soil is a lake sediment that drains poorly and holds moisture.

The result is a bud that grows slowly and stays small. A bud from the island is shorter and denser than a bud from the mainland a few kilometres away, and producers describe the difference as a matter of substance rather than of aroma.

The island’s area sets the ceiling on output. At under one square kilometre, most of which is not tea garden, the total production of genuine Junshan Yinzhen is measured in hundreds of kilograms a year. That figure is the origin of everything said about its scarcity.

The nine refusals

The picking rule is a list of buds that are rejected: buds that are opened, damaged, purple, hollow, short, long, thin, worm-eaten or wet. The list is traditional and it is applied by the picker in the field.

What the rule does in practice is reduce the yield drastically. A picker who follows it collects a small fraction of the buds available, and the rest are left on the bush. That is the labor content of the tea, and it is why the price is what it is.

The rule also explains the uniformity of the finished leaf. A tin of genuine Junshan Yinzhen is remarkably even, because everything that was not even was refused at the point of picking rather than sorted out later.

The three rises and falls

A genuine Junshan Yinzhen bud, brewed in a tall glass, stands upright and then rises and sinks three times as it absorbs water and releases air. The behaviour is a result of bud density and the structure of the bud base.

It is a beautiful thing to watch and it is also a rough authenticity test. A bud tea that lies flat and floats is either a different grade or a leaf that has been handled so that the bud base is broken.

The behaviour is best seen in a glass rather than a gaiwan, which is why the tea is traditionally served that way. A gaiwan hides the one visual property that makes the tea famous.

• A single bud, from an island of under one square kilometre.
• Nine refusals applied in the field, not in sorting.
• Picked in a seven to ten day window around Qingming.
• Buds stand upright and rise and fall three times in a glass.
• Total output measured in hundreds of kilograms.
• Even leaf because the uneven was refused at picking.

The grades and the cup

The domestic standard divides the tea into grades by bud uniformity and color, and the top grade is the most even. The difference between grades is smaller than the price gap, as usual.

The liquor is pale yellow and very light, and the taste is sweet with a note of cooked chestnut and a faint smokiness from the drying. The body is thin, which is characteristic of a bud tea and is not a defect.

Two infusions is normal and three is generous. The bud gives up its content quickly and the third steep is sweet water.

Brew it at 85 Celsius in a tall glass, three grams per 200 millilitres. Boiling water on a bud this delicate produces bitterness in seconds and destroys the sweetness the picking paid for.

The season and the timing

The picking window is seven to ten days around Qingming in early April. Before the window the buds are too small to meet the standard; after it they open and the nine refusals reject them.

A warm spell closes the window early. That is why the annual output varies, and why a good year and a poor year can differ by a third in volume.

The whole year’s tea is made in that week. Everything about the price follows from that: a fixed island, a short window and a rule that rejects most of what is picked.

The menhuang at Junshan is short, 24 to 36 hours, because the bud is delicate. A longer pile would soften it past the point where the bud structure holds, and the three-rise behaviour in the glass depends on that structure.

• Seven to ten days around Qingming.
• A warm spell ends the window early.
• Annual output varies by up to a third with the weather.
• The menhuang is short, 24 to 36 hours, to protect the bud.
• Pile condition affects whether the bud still stands in the glass.
• The whole year’s tea is made in one week.

What the cup actually tastes like

The liquor is very pale, almost colourless in the first infusion, and the taste is sweet with a chestnut note and a faint smokiness from the drying. There is no bitterness and very little astringency.

The body is thin. A drinker expecting the weight of a leaf tea will find it watery, and the thinness is the character of a bud tea rather than a fault.

The finish is long and sweet, and it is where the quality shows. A good Junshan Yinzhen leaves a chestnut sweetness at the back of the mouth that persists for half a minute.

Two infusions is normal and three is generous. Beyond that the bud has given everything and the cup is water with a memory of tea.

A drinker who wants a fuller cup from this tea is asking for something it does not do. The grade is defined by delicacy, and the price is paid for that.

A note on the price is deliberately absent from this page, because the market figures belong with the question of why the tea is called the king. What can be said here is that the cost is almost entirely picking labour: a single bud, refused nine ways, in a week-long window on a small island.

That is also why the tea is imitated. A bud tea from the mainland, made to a similar standard, is a good product at a fraction of the cost, and it is sold under a name that does not always distinguish it from the island original.

The drinker’s check is the evenness of the leaf and the behaviour in the glass. Both are hard to fake, because both come from the picking and the bud structure rather than from the finishing.

A final point about the glass. The three-rise behaviour is easiest to see in a tall straight glass with water at 85 Celsius, and the buds should be dropped in rather than poured over. A bud that is poured on is knocked over and may not stand at all, which makes a good tea look ordinary.

That is a small piece of technique with an outsized effect on the impression the tea makes, and it is the reason the traditional service is a glass rather than a pot.

One more observation about the leaf in the tin. Genuine Junshan Yinzhen is unusually uniform, and a tin in which the buds vary in length by more than a third has either been blended from several picks or has not been through the nine refusals. The rule is applied in the field, so the uniformity is a trace of the labour.

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