$12.50 – $50.00
Graded as a wild 荒野 huang ye tea, harvested just below the mountain's summit at 900 meters from an abandoned tea garden recently recovered, processed in traditional fashion, this White Peony 白牡丹 Bai Mu Dan is a no frills example of high-end heirloom white tea.
Jostling the dry leaf around the warmed up gaiwan before the first steep, the nose isn’t so floral. At the time of these notes, Spring 2023 was 1.5 years ago, and the typical peony meadow bouquet has already dropped a bit lower and deeper into aromas of chocolate, cherry, and almond cookie dough. The first couple of steeps yield balanced, clean, mineral-rich forest spring water flavor with a pleasant return sweetness on the sip’s exhale.
Steeping in more, hints of sweet herbs and fresh ironed linens comes off the gaiwan lid as the tea soup’s texture takes on a slightly slippery olive oil thickness. A sweetness starts to stick to the palate and gums in the later steeps, and true to what we love about Zhenghe — what this tea lacks in a fireworks start — it earns back with longevity as more mellowing charm is uncovered as the session progresses.
The Ye family believes these estimated 40-50 year old 政和大白 Zhenghe Da Bai cultivar gardens were abandoned by 富板 Fuban villagefolk around the turn of the century out of preference for lower, more accessible gardens, and now contain multiple generations of tea plants including some larger heirloom specimens indicating tea propagation even prior to the primary remaining ecology.
Like most tea families in Zhenghe, the Ye clan hasn't adopted any of the new artificial aging techniques invented in Fuding. The minimal processing of tradition white tea production leaves the tea expression naked, with nothing to hide behind, and we find this high elevation material harvested from this unmanaged mountainside shines this way.
The Ye family does not graduate their finishing bake to from low temperature to high. Whereas it's common in Fuding for tea factories to bake their white teas up to 120°C (250°F), depending on the tea, the Ye family keeps their finishing exposure down below 80°C (175°F). This lower temperature allows for more leaf enzymes to remain active, ensuring a more rich and expedient transformation as it ages.
Just like in the world of pu’er where buyers go to great lengths to obtain the best material while it’s still available at an affordable rate when it’s young (never a bad call regardless of fresh or aged preference), this tea represents that type of investment acquisition. This one is great sipping now, and if aging is your thing this one is set to transform into something even more magical. When not outright sold out, older vintages of this production from this family sell at a premium. We recommend grabbing at least a couple of cakes just for aging before they’re gone.
reclamation of this abandoned tea garden began in 2018
The tea cake inkwork for this release was penned by our friend Green, a tea friend we met in 2019 during our travels in northern Yunnan. Him and his girlfriend are artists that run a teashop in the small town of Shaxi. Each cake features a drawing of one of his favorite birds in China.
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Out of Stock
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You all, this tea is amazing. One of the best whites this year. The flavors are savory and thick. If you love white tea, this one just might kick your others aside. Very nice herbal and honey notes with a nice Qi to start the day.