The Vanished 90s Enshi Yulu That Tastes Like Apple

The rarest Yulu I've ever tasted tastes like apple. Fresh apple, dried apple, apple juice, all in the same cup, from the dry leaf straight through to the last steep.

I've had a lot of different steamed Chinese teas by now, different cultivars, different techniques, different places. The most famous is Enshi Yulu. Usually it falls into one of two flavor groups: seaweed, or young chestnut. Young chestnut is even named in the official standard documents. That made sense to me. Seaweed (Japanese gyokuro falls into that category too, it's been promoted for a long time as the flavor of steaming) is kind of the universal note for steamed tea. Young chestnut is more Chinese, the same way pan-fired tea is what's popular here, so is that flavor.

Then the story changed. I got invited to a tea festival to speak about Enshi Yulu, the processing technique, the history, all of it. I'd heard all the stories about the connection between Chinese Yulu and Japanese gyokuro, but I'd never actually seen any material with my own eyes. So I went to do my homework.

 

A Factory Called Chama, at Wufeng Mountain

Wufeng Mountain, on the eastern edge of Enshi, has been ground zero for Yulu longer than I've been alive. Back in the 90s, the Enshi Tea-Hemp Company ran one of the biggest Yulu factories in the region there. My teacher told me about it long before I ever saw a photo of it.

It's also the factory Japanese tea researchers came to see.

 

Why the Japanese Came Looking

In 1937, a Japanese researcher named Shimizu Shunji carried gyokuro-making tools all the way to Enshi, trying to trace where the craft actually came from. War broke out before he could finish what he set out to do.

His son, Shimizu Yasuo, picked up where his father left off decades later, and came back more than once. After one visit in 1995, he wrote four characters: 温故知新, revisit the old to understand the new.

Around the same period, another Japanese tea expert, Matsushita Satoshi, studied Enshi's steamed tea craft up close and put what he saw into his book, 中国名茶の旅. He wrote that Enshi Yulu's aroma and taste don't lose to Japan's own gyokuro.

I used to read that line as flattery. Old-era politeness, the kind of thing a guest says to be polite. I don't read it that way anymore, not after this tea.

The Factory Doesn't Exist Anymore

Neither does most of what it made. The tea disappeared along with it. That's how these things go. A factory closes, the people scatter, and twenty years later nobody outside a couple of old tea makers remembers it was ever there.

The factory's director is still around, though, an old man now, retired many years. I got his phone number and called him. He has no social media, so it took several calls back and forth before we actually managed to meet.

He carried a big briefcase with him. When we finally sat down, he pulled out a photo album. Pictures of the visitors, including Matsushita Satoshi. I saw those young faces, carrying big cameras around the factory. Those pioneers, decades before I was ever doing this work.

Qiu hasn't made any tea in years, for a lot of reasons, none of them about marketing. He doesn't make Yulu anymore. It felt like he'd lost hope in it.

What I Never Got Past About Enshi Yulu

I've never been fully satisfied with Enshi Yulu, honestly, especially standing next to how people talk about Japanese gyokuro. What's actually different about Chinese steaming. What's our style, not a copy of theirs.

My teacher got annoyed when I kept asking. My friends thought I was overthinking a cup of tea.

An Apple Aroma Nobody Believed

I thought that was the whole story, the factory, the visitors, an old man who'd stopped making tea. Then, at the end, Qiu said: I made an apple aroma one, back then. It was a real thing.

This man who used to run the Chama factory told me there used to be a Yulu with an apple aroma. I didn't believe him at first. After you drink enough tea, you learn some flavors sit right at the edge of noticeable, there but not really there, and people talk them up more than they deserve.

He looked me in the eye, and I think he saw that.

 

Asking a retired factory director to come back and make tea by hand again felt like too much to ask. I asked anyway. I'm glad I did.

He made it himself, just for my sample.

What's Actually in the Cup

I drank it. It was amazing. Stronger than any steamed Yulu I've had, and it tastes, smells, exactly like fresh apple.

Fresh apple, dried apple, apple juice, all through the same cup. It's there in the dry leaf, and it holds through every steep, first to last. You don't need a trained palate to catch it, just a normal nose and tongue.

Layered like a French meal. Nori and a briny edge up front. Something like cream and butter, even a little black truffle, underneath. It settles into apple, a sweet tart jam note, a touch of floral. Nothing about it is thin, and it holds up fine against food too, which breaks most of what people say about Yulu being delicate and easily overpowered.

I brewed it for 8 steeps once, and it felt like a full course meal top to bottom. It opened with flowers set on the table, filling the air with floral freshness. Then apple and other fruit jam brought in something sweet and tart. Then the main course arrived, a smooth, creamy texture, nori and salt wrapping around yogurt and butter, filling and satisfying. It finished clean and sweet.

The Direction I'd Been Looking For

Gyokuro gets its character from shading, that seaweed note everyone associates with it. Tasting this apple aroma Yulu, I think I finally found what the Chinese version of that direction actually tastes like. Not a copy of gyokuro. Our own steamed tea, doing something Japanese gyokuro doesn't do.

This is summer leaf, not even spring. I can't stop thinking about what the same hands would do with spring leaf.

Why I'm Calling It French Cuisine Yulu

I'm naming it after what it tastes like standing next to food, not after where it's from. Wufeng Mountain and the Chama factory already had a name once, and it got buried when the factory closed. I don't want this one to disappear the same way.

This tea shouldn't have disappeared. I can't even imagine how many other wonderful teas have gone extinct the same way.

Taste it for yourself, French Cuisine Yulu is in the shop now.

This article is part of the Enshi Tea Knowledge Series by FlowInverseTea. Written by June, tea farmer and cooperative member in Enshi, Hubei.