$12.50 – $50.00
Because this white tea has a fair amount of buds and smaller leaves more typically found in earlier harvested grades, some may take qualms that Chen classed this production as a 寿眉 Shou Mei.
If it was 5-10 years earlier, the classic 贡眉 Gong Mei grade — then categorized as a leafy plucking standard between Bai Mu Dan and Shou Mei before being reclassed by Fuding officials as a cultivar varietal synonymous with the old 菜茶 Cai Cha (unclassified "heirloom" feral self-propagated tea plants) — could have qualified as an apt name for this tea’s particular pick IMO.
the classic, now defunct plucking grade graph. Gong Mei was recently taken out
In any case, Chen wasn’t too concerned about semantics when he and his harvest crew made their biannual sojourn to his family’s old tea thicket up the mountain at 5am on April 15th. As usual, they simply harvest what makes the most sense whenever they can find the time to make it there during this busy time of the year, and worry about categorizing the material later. Historically at this time of year, this pilgrimage to these older thickets yields a leafier harvest, perhaps the reason this tea inherited the shou mei title despite its more tender bud + small leaf attributes. Whatever you want to call it, we're not complaining.
The dry leaf on the warmed porcelain brings out a nose of raspberry lemongrass tart with plenty of sweetness in balance with a herbaceous savoriness. Singed marshmallow with autumn forest floor and granola coming off the liquid open the session. The palate is greeted with more of this sweet and savory balance, framed with a juicy, medium-body mouthfeel. Hints of cask-aged mulled plum wine send you off into the late steeps with copious minerals. A wonderfully complex and sturdy tea from naturally-managed older-growth tea trees — a tasty treat now, with an enticing trajectory of aging from here on out.
impressive 50 year old Fuding Da Bai thickets naturally-managed by the Chens, a tea family nearly 30 generations deep
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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This is a perfect example of what old trees/bushes bring to the tea table. Warm and smooth, the liquor clings to the lips, tongue and throat much like the qi as it coats the soul. I'm floating somewhere between vanilla chai and Captains Morgan!