Verdant Tea

Six kinds of tea & Six passionate growers- these are the iconic classics that represent what we and our partner growers stand for: true sustainability, transparency, and the taste and aroma that come from the impeccable terroir and craft of the best growers in China.

This tasting kit combines teas from six of our partners, spanning growing regions across China and representing six different styles of tea including one green oolong tea, one Wuyi black tea, one Anxi oolong tea, one Wudongshan Dancong oolong tea, one white tea, and one Yunnan sheng pu'er tea. Each tea is sourced directly from the people who grow and finish the teas themselves, for a representative and unblended taste of each family and craftperson's terroir and unique point of view.

Thank you for supporting Verdant Tea's project to connect tea lovers with the real people behind the teas we all love!

This bundle includes three 25g bags of oolong tea for 75g total (15 sessions). This special tea sampler highlights Master Zhang’s work to bring back an ancient oolong finishing technique - the Revival Style. This technique comes from years of research, travel and cultural exchange with other oolong communities, and extensive interviews tapping into the oral tradition to uncover the way that oolong was finished long before the modern rolled style that Tieguanyin is famous for. In this kit, you’ll get to explore light roast, dark roast, aged, and varietal comparisons to see how the Revival Style brings oolong to life with deeper aromatics and more powerful texture and aftertaste, all while connecting with a rich tradition of craft that nearly died out over the last few hundred years. The Revival Style takes more than twice as long to make as classic Tieguanyin thanks to the extended yaoqing process of turning and fluffing the leaves and the fact that so much has to be done entirely by hand, but the results are stunning - a half-twisted half-rolled style that Master Zhang describes as a Dragonfly shape.

When it's cold outside, we all need our cozy go-tos. This kit is about holding both hands around a beautiful mug and taking in the steam from some of our favorite teas. Whether you are looking for a gift for someone just getting into tea, or searching for the perfect companion to a good book or movie night, this set delivers. Beautifully glazed and fired in a traditional Longquen celadon kiln, the covered mug is meant to keep your tea warm between sips, and to feel good in the hands. The classic blue-green is a gorgeous contrast to brewed tea. We paired this mug with three of the absolute most classic and famous teas we are lucky enough to bring in: fresh, rolled Tieguanyin oolong with all its creamy saffron orchid notes, true Shi Feng Dragonwell (the iconic Chinese green tea!), and Jin Jun Mei - a stunning black tea made entirely of downy buds.

Longyuanhao Workshop only pressed a few thousand of these 100g Tuochas, a special collaboration with the Menghai Tea Research Institute back in 2006 in the heyday of the pu’er boom market. Wang Yanxin was able to secure a few dozen Tuochas back in 2008 thanks to her relationship with Longyuanhao Workshop, and is pleased to release them from her cellar after nearly 20 years of climate-controlled aging. This tea has beautiful notes of nutmeg, cardamom, cooling camphor, citron and passionfruit, with a sweet ginger molasses cookie aftertaste.

Yuan Zhang Workshop is a small producer befriended by Wang Yanxin on her lifelong search to find under-represented labels doing more interesting work than the big brands. This pressing is called Shen Xin, which loosely translates to “profound spirit,” an inspiration for this elegant and well balanced flavor profile. Notes of cardamom, brown sugar, dried apple, and rye with a juicy aftertaste.

De Hou Workshop is a small producer befriended by Wang Yanxin on her lifelong search to find under-represented labels doing more interesting work than the big brands. This cake shows that a talented small workshop can achieve that perfect ideal flavor profile that made bigger brands like Mengku so famous, even without access to a huge cache of leaf material from across Yunnan. Through careful harvesting, and slow clean fermentation, De Hou has put together a cake picked in 2016 and pressed in 2018, brewing up beautifully with iconic notes of molasses, chocolate,cherry, cinnamon, and vanilla with a smooth silky texture.

Gong Ting or “Palace” designation is a nod to the old tea tribute system and describes the tiny golden bud pressings once offered to the imperial palace as a form of tax payment. This grade of shu pu’er is famously silky, sweet and smooth. Jing Ze Workshop’s 2016 harvest gong ting cake is no exception. This is a stunning and iconic pressing with notes of ginger cookies, spice cake, pear, and vanilla with a clean sparkling texture.

Yuan Wang Workshop is a small producer befriended by Wang Yanxin on her lifelong search to find under-represented labels doing more interesting work than the big brands. This single-origin cake highlights the unique, cooling, tingling texture and aftertaste of Bulangshan. Yuan Wang Workshop started with early spring buds from old trees cared for using organic practices. The six plus years of age have allowed this cake to really come into itself with notes of banana cream pie, saffron, tulsi, and white pepper.

Wang Yanxin almost never features pu’er from one of the big workshops like this Mengku pressing, but finding decade plus aged true Bingdao sheng pu’er is rare since Bingdao only recently became so wildly famous, and the 2009-2014 era was a “depression” in the pu’er industry where less new cakes were being pressed. She was able to get her hands on this reserve offering in a low market and hold onto it for a decade to offer now. The wild arbor leaf material and high bud ratio gives this tea a wonderfully rocky mineral-laden texture and Bingdao’s iconic cooling aftertaste.

Yuan Wang Workshop is a small producer befriended by Wang Yanxin on her lifelong search to find under-represented labels doing more interesting work than the big brands. This single-origin cake highlights the unique, cooling, tingling texture and aftertaste of Bulangshan. Yuan Wang Workshop started with early spring buds from old trees cared for using organic practices. The six plus years of age have allowed this cake to really come into itself with notes of banana cream pie, saffron, tulsi, and white pepper.

Rui Gong Workshop is a small producer befriended by Wang Yanxin on her lifelong search to find under-represented labels doing more interesting work than the big brands. They don’t shy away from truly unique blends, pushing a flavor and aroma profile outside of the predictable and classic. This cake uses Banzhang’s famous leaf material, playing on the numbing nutty quality that the region is known for with honeyed undertones and juicy melon, giving it a powerful dynamic quality.

Rui Gong Workshop is a small producer befriended by Wang Yanxin on her lifelong search to find under-represented labels doing more interesting work than the big brands. They don’t shy away from truly unique blends, pushing a flavor and aroma profile outside of the predictable and classic. This cake uses Banzhang’s famous leaf material, playing on the numbing nutty quality that the region is known for with honeyed undertones and juicy melon, giving it a powerful dynamic quality.

Xingyang’s dragon pearl pressings are perfect for individual brew sessions. This blend is unique from their mini-brick format, showing off a juicier flavor profile with notes of apricot, jasmine, toasted coconut, ginger and cedar with a honeyed and tingling aftertaste.

Xingyang is famous for their rich, luxurious buddy shu pu’er. These single brew session pearls show off the workshop’s stunningly clean and meticulously slow fermentation craft with notes of malted milk, toasted marshmallow, vanilla, cinnamon, and sandalwood with a velvety texture. 

Xingyang has been experimenting with blending flowers and fruits with their teas for about ten years. These dragon pearls are an unbelievable expression of craft, finely balanced, and stunning to watch unfold. Each chrysanthemum blossom was blended in fully intact so that its petals open up to reveal black tea, giving the pearls many steepings that start out floral and become deeper and richer with each infusion. Notes of custard cream, cinnamon, chrysanthemum, bergamot and passionfruit with a crisp and elegant texture.

Huang Qi has recently taken off in Wuyishan, introduced for its very early bud growth in the spring. One problem small family farmers face in the deep mountains of Wuyishan is that when harvest season comes, there’s nobody but themselves to rely on for help picking. Planting a varietal that can be picked earlier helps manage the season! The Li Family grows a small stand of Huang Qi bushes on their remote, pristine hillside with the Wuyishan Ecological Preserve, surrounded by forest.  Deep, toasty and cozy with notes of pumpkin, cinnamon and cedar. Juicy hints of tangerine and muscat grape come through in the aftertaste

Shui Xian is named after the Narcissus flower (or Daffodil), and the dark roast on this Shui Xian brings out beautiful florals in contrast with dark forest and wood notes. Mr. Li hand-fired this batch of Shui Xian to give its cooling texture even more sparkling, tingling intensity. Shui Xian varietal is known for its foresty woody flavors and deep lingering texture. The Li Family’s biodiverse forested tea gardens within the Wuyi Ecological Preserve help play up the varietals natural complexity.

One of Wyishan’s rarer teas, cultivated by only a handful of families, Chun Gui was only introduced in 2015 as a new hybrid varietal developed for its intense aromatics. While most families in Wuyishan focus on famous teas like Rou Gui and Big Red Robe, the Li Family works hard to represent a beautiful diversity of  cultivars, seeking out even the rarest teas like this one, all for the sake of encouraging biodiversity and for sharing with the students at the Yangxian Tea Institute as part of tasting courses. Thanks to a long-standing relationship, we are lucky enough to bring in teas like this on a very small scale. This remarkable tea has notes of candied ginger, sandalwood, orchid honey, calamansi and molasses with a vaporous billowing perfumed aftertaste packed with minerality.

Zi Mei Gui, or “Purple Rose” is part of the Li Family’s commitment to cultivating rare and off-the-beaten-track varietals to preserve biodiversity within the Wuyishan Ecological Preserve and to share with the students at the Yangxian Tea Institute as part of their tasting courses. Thanks to a long-standing relationship, we are lucky enough to bring in teas like this on a very small scale. Zi Mei Gui is appropriately full of notes of rose, along with persimmon, apple, sandalwood and toffee, with a bright juicy texture.

Jin Qian is a rare varietal that the Wu Family grows on one of their most prized mountain plots on a tiny terraced sliver of rock surrounded by untouched forest on all sides. This tea benefits from morning mist, mountain spring water and tremendous biodiversity, yielding a beautiful juicy pear flavor profile and deep mineral-laden complexity. The Li Family has to climb their mountain plot to hand-pick Jin Qian and rush the fresh leaves back to the workshop for a 30+ hour yaoqing and hand-firing process to bring out incredible depth and nuance. Jin Qian literally means "golden coin" a reference to the golden rounded leaves of the Jin Qian tea bush.

Su Xin Lan was near extinction in the 1980’s with so many farmers tearing out this rare cultivar in favor of Rou Gui and other more popular well-known teas with an established market. Su Xin Lan is starting to experience a revival, with the Li Family growing true “Zheng Yan” or rock tea Su Xin Lan planted within the Wuyishan Ecological Preserve. Deeply cooling and aromatic with notes of frankincense and juicy melon. Toffee and brown sugar syrup, candied cherries, and a thick, deep, rich texture.

It takes thousands of buds to make an ounce of this tea, hand-picked near Li Xiangxi’s old family home in Tongmu, in a protected ravine with wild bamboo, orange trees and native flowers growing around old growth wild tea bushes. Once a year in the early spring, Li Xiangxi and her family pick the tiny golden buds off the cultivated tea bushes growing below her family home. The beautiful golden color and flavor of this carefully cultivated Jin Jun Mei (Golden Eyebrows) makes it one of the most prized teas in China.

Huang Jin Gui, or Golden Water Turtle, is actually most widely tasted when grafted onto Tieguanyin to make Jin Guanyin. It is a remarkable show-stopper of an oolong in its own right when cultivated for what it has to offer. Huang Jin Gui is hugely fruity with juicy notes dominating, and a luscious honey backbone to carry the fruit. When the weather, soil and finishing come together perfectly, this tea also has an intriguingly complex cooling quality and deep minerality behind all that luscious dessert-like goodness. 

Master Zhang takes his Special Grade designation seriously. In order for a batch to be set aside as Special Grade, it has to meet an incredibly high standard of sweetness, a long lingering aftertaste, and thick balanced texture and evocative aroma. It takes the perfect combination of high elevation rocky soil, cool stand-out weather during the growing season and on the picking and finishing days. In the autumn it is even rarer to get these perfect windows, so we are excited to be sharing this harvest for teh first time. This extremely limited special grade Tieguanyin was hand-picked and hand finished over an exhaustive day and a half fluffing and turning process to bring out deep intense florals and creamy texture. The true flavor of the Tieguanyin varietal is preserved with Master Zhang’s expert green finish.

Master Zhang takes his Special Grade designation seriously. In order for a batch to be set aside as Special Grade, it has to meet an incredibly high standard of sweetness, a long lingering aftertaste, and thick balanced texture and evocative aroma. It takes the perfect combination of high elevation rocky soil, cool stand-out weather during the growing season and on the picking and finishing days. In the autumn it is even rarer to get these perfect windows, so we are excited to be sharing this harvest for teh first time. This extremely limited special grade Tieguanyin was hand-picked and hand finished over an exhaustive day and a half fluffing and turning process to bring out deep intense florals and creamy texture. The true flavor of the Tieguanyin varietal is preserved with Master Zhang’s expert green finish.

Master Zhang cultivates this almost unheard-of varietal as part of his commitment to achieving the rich biodiversity in his tea fields, all while maintaining zero-impact agriculture for his Original Ecological Preserve designation. Liao Mian Ji is a unique cultivar, full of deep dessert-like undertones and spice. Master Zhang’s slow, careful roast brings out even more sweetness in the aftertaste.

This tea originally premiered in the Tea of the Month Club! Master Zhang cultivates this little-seen Cai Cong (菜聪) varietal to encourage biodiversity on his high elevation plot in Daping, Anxi. His careful processing has brought out a surprisingly floral-fruit flavor in this tea along with deep osmanthus florals and a sweet, long aftertaste. The light oxidation of this tea's traditional finish complements the dessert-like flavors of Cai Cong with a buttery, creamy finish.

Huang Ruiguang's family Mi Lan Dancong is picked only once a year from single trees that are not pruned back to encourage deeper roots & more robust flavor, year after year. His mountain plot and decades of work in improving agriculture techniques for the region have earned Huang Ruiguang's Milan awards such as the recent 2015 Gold Medal at the Sixth Guangdong Tea Expo. Mi Lan varietal is set apart with its distinctive golden green leaf color in early spring & its luscious deep aromatics.

The He Family’s Most Popular Tea. This cool autumn season harvest black tea is packed with flavor and aromatics, fully oxidized and roasted to achieve the iconic malty, chocolatey, honeyed Laoshan Black flavor.

The He Family is continuing their tradition again this year of wild-foraging caffeine-free native Laoshan herbs and using their expertise at green tea processing to finish the leaves like a traditional green tea. While Shandong native Lu mulberry leaf would normally be simply air-dried for use in medicinal tea, the He Family has applied withering, heat-fixing, curling and tumble-drying to bring out much richer and more subtle flavor through their craft. We are excited to share the He Family's herbal teas once again this spring season, and to offer a look at the flavor of Laoshan from another plant entirely different from camellia sinensis!

The green tea loose leaf classic from Laoshan, hand-picked in the He Family’s organic mist-shaded fields and packed with creamy green bean flavor. This harvest is picked in the cool autumn air after resting the plant through summer. The result is crisp, fresh flavor with more savory green bean and cream that Laoshan for which Laoshan is famous. The He family's signature green tea is fed by mountain spring water, picked by hand, and cultivated sustainably using traditional chemical-free farming techniques including growing rows of soybean between rows of tea to restore nitrates to the soil. The extreme northern climate means cold winters and short growing seasons, but the He Family perseveres, protecting their tea in greenhouses over the winter. The result is a deeply sweet and delicate green tea unlike any other in the world.

This is the He Family’s iconic loose leaf green tea: organic farming, curled leaves that dance in the cup, all carefully hand-finished for rich creamy flavor. Delicate hand-picked buds and leaves are withered in bamboo baskets, and carefully hand curled and rolled under low heat to form beautiful long twists that unfold gracefully in a glass teapot or tumbler. The fresh and delicate leaf material is the first new growth of the cool autumn season as the weather starts turning and the mornings and nights are misty again. 

This year is the sixth fantastic harvest of the He Family's new osmanthus-scented black tea. Once again, the He Family is sharing a rich reserve-level Autumn Harvest Laoshan Black, scented during finishing with tiny hand-picked Laoshan Osmanthus flowers. The brown sugar, honey and fruity chocolate notes are melded together perfectly with the luscious almost creamy floral of the He Family’s meticulously hand-harvested Osmanthus blossoms. This tea is one of the hardest to make in the He Family collection since the local osmanthus blossoms are so small that they have to pick thousands just to make tiny batch of finished tea, but the results are worth the effort.

A member of the Solanaceae family, the caffeine-free Goji berry plant (Lycium barbarum) grows wild across Northern China - including on the slopes of Laoshan in Shandong. Though the plant is most famous for its berries, its dried leaves have been a part of traditional medicine in China for centuries. Early this spring, the He Family foraged young and tender spring goji leaves and carefully finished them with green tea processing and an open leaf style. We are so excited for the opportunity to share this another experimental tea from the He Family!

The sweet potato is the most iconic fixture of Shandong province, and grows in every family garden in Laoshan village and up the mountainside. For decades, villagers have harvested semi-wild sweet potato from within the Laoshan National Park between rocky outcroppings and gnarled trees. As Laoshan tea becomes more famous and brings a better standard of living to the region, sweet potato has become a less critical crop, but this tea honors the tradition by applying tea finishing technique to foraged sweet potato leaf. This year's Sweet Potato Leaf tea is a collaboration between the whole neighborhood (the He Family District) and the He Famiy's workshop. Working together, several families picked Laoshan sweet potato leaves, then used the He Family's guidance and technique to oxidize the leaves in the sun, wither and roast, similar to black tea processing. This year, the cooperative had to roast the sweet potato leaf five times just to stop oxidation, making this a notably slow and time consuming tea to produce. Only several kilos were made this year, and we are lucky to offer the majority of the harvest while it lasts.

This tea highlights Mr. He’s delicate and meticulous hand rolling and straightening technique developed in producing Pine Needle Green, but introducing traditional sun-oxidation to make a rich and deeply complex black tea. The result is Lashan’s most mineral-forward and complex black tea to date. This tea is fed by mountain spring water, picked by hand, and cultivated sustainably using traditional chemical-free farming techniques including growing rows of soybean between rows of tea to restore nitrates to the soil. The finished tea picks up the rocky minerality of the soil, and careful low temperature roasting brings out deep brown sugar sweetness.

Biluochun is He Changke’s very favorite tea. He loves the way it shows off the minerality of Laoshan. His family's biluochun is made with tender young buds picked at the perfect moment of autumn when cool weather makes for sweet rich tea. After picking, withering, heat-fixing and hand-shaping into twisted biluochun, the He Family takes this tea as it dries and mixes it with their foraged Laoshan osmanthus blossoms, allowing the green tea to absorb the floral aroma. The effect is subtle, but stunning, giving the biluochun deep, rich creamy texture and a sweet honeyed flavor. 

For the fifth year in a row, Li Xiaoping is sharing her new Dragonwell Black Tea! She uses the same delicate early buds as her famous green tea, hand-picked from the slopes of Shi Feng, raised on sweet mountain spring water and covered in high elevation mist to protect against sunlight. After light twisting and rolling, this sweet, rich and distinctly mineral-laden tea is then set out in bamboo baskets and loosely covered for ten to fifteen hours and allowed to oxidize in the afternoon heat. This oxidation process brings out savory malty flavors in Li Xiaoping’s Dragonwell that show the unique texture of the region in a completely different light.

This early spring tea is all about a fine and subtle sweetness, and a long, drawn out aftertaste and crisp texture. Cool spring weather produces a small harvest of truly sweet tea. This is Mrs. Li’s first picking of the season, carefully hand-finished by her husband, Shui Huamin. Her true original cultivar Dragonwell (Longjing Qunti) grows on the mountain slopes of Shi Feng and draws in sweet mountain spring water.

#43 Varietal Dragonwell was specifically bred and selected to bud even earlier than classic Dragonwell in Shi Feng and yields yellower plumper buds that make for gorgeous steeping in glassware. While classic Dragonwell is all about rocky mineral texture, the new #43 is a crisp, bright focused experience centered around stronger flavor and aroma and more pronounced sweetness. Mrs. Li's first picking of the year is full of all the nutrients and sugars stored by the plant all winter long and offers a more complex, sweet and subtle taste experience. It has a longer aftertaste and thicker texture than later harvests. The soil is full of quartz and white sand while the water comes from natural mountain springs, yielding a flavor that simply can’t be matched outside of Shi Feng itself.

This famous tea is grown using beyond organic green tea cultivation techniques for rich sweet flavor, incredible texture and notes of bamboo and jasmine. Situated on a perfectly-shaded mountainside, Li Xiaoping’s Dragonwell benefits from Shi Feng’s unique climate, rocky quartz soil and sweet mountain springs. Her craft captures a rare example of true Dragonwell- deep minerality, persistent sweetness and complex aromatics.

This famous tea is grown using beyond organic green tea cultivation techniques for rich sweet flavor, incredible texture and notes of bamboo and jasmine. Situated on a perfectly-shaded mountainside, Li Xiaoping’s Dragonwell benefits from Shi Feng’s unique climate, rocky quartz soil and sweet mountain springs. Her craft captures a rare example of true Dragonwell- deep minerality, persistent sweetness and complex aromatics.