Verdant Tea

2024 Old Tree Shui Xian

2024 Old Tree Shui Xian

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Wuyishan's Most Wild
Complex Oolong Tea
Picked from truly wild mountaintop tea trees covered in moss and hand-fired. This cooling, powerful tea is all about texture and tingly yun sensation. Notes of camphor, violet, muscat and turbinado sugar.
Spring 2024 ♦ Wuyishan, Fujian
Wuyishan's Most Wild
Complex Oolong Tea
Picked from truly wild mountaintop tea trees covered in moss and hand-fired. This cooling, powerful tea is all about texture and tingly yun sensation. Notes of camphor, violet, muscat and turbinado sugar.
Spring 2024 ♦ Wuyishan, Fujian
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Crafted by the Li Family

Hand-picked and traditionally hand-finished within the true Wuyishan Ecological Preserve on forested biodiverse, rocky, mountainous land for distinct Wuyi minerality.
 
The Li Family is an award-winning, highly respected force for sustainability, hand-firing craft, rare varietal preservation, and tea education in Wuyishan.
    • DATE OF PICKINGSpring 2024
    • Wuyishan Ecological PreserveWuyishan, Fujian
    • ELEVATION600 METERS
    • Shui XIanTea Varietal

    The Li family’s position as community leaders and environmental stewards gives them access to one of the rarest teas in the world- a grove of truly wild tea trees high up in the mountains, hidden within an untouched forest and perched over a waterfall coming out of a crack in volcanic rock . This handful of special trees yield tea with a stunning complexity and commending textural sensation. The deep roots pick up huge volcanic minerality, while the mossy wild environment encourages the tea to put out tons of polyphenols, meaning bigger complexity. Of course, for a tea this rare, the Li Family hand-picks, oversees hand finishing in the yaoqing process and mandates at least five fifteen hour hand firing sessions over several months before allowing this tea to leave the workshop. This tea is a special opportunity to taste one of the most yun forward and complex Wuyi Oolongs out there, a tea so rare that only a few pounds are picked in a given year. Tasting notes don’t do justice as so much of this tea is in the texture and tingling almost numbing sensations that build up over multiple steepings, and the way this tea evokes a deep sense of place - of deep wild forest.

  • true
    100
    aloeswood, camphor
    true
    60
    turbinado sugar, vanilla mousse
    true
    100
    violet
    true
    95
    muscat, yuzu
    false
    true
    swirling, powerful, cooling yun

    Tasting Profile

    • spice - aloeswood, camphor
    • savory - turbinado sugar, vanilla mousse
    • floral - violet
    • fruit - muscat, yuzu
    • texture - swirling, powerful, cooling yun

also available to sample in special reusable 7g (0.25) porcelain tea caddies


The Li Family also recommends:

  • 'In his own words, Li Xiangxi’s brother walks you through the Li family‘s Old Tree Shui Xian groves and explains how allowing the tea trees grow naturally and encouraging biodiversity creates this tea’s special, characteristic flavor profile.'

  • 5
    6-8
    208
    15 seconds
    5
    7
    5
    208
    6 seconds
    2
    4
    12
    room temp
    8 hours

    Steeping Instructions

    Western

    5 g.6-8
    oz.
    use 208° watersteep 15 secondsresteep many times
    add 5 sec. each infusion

    Gongfu

    7 g.5 ozuse 208° watersteep 6 seconds
    add 2 sec. per steeping
    enjoy many steepings

    Iced/Cold

    4 g.12
    oz.
    use room temp. waterrefrigerate overnight
    8 hours
    add ice & enjoy

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also available packed into
7g (0.25oz) mini tea caddies