Verdant Tea

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.

True Competition-Level Black Tea from Laoshan. This is the earliest, sweetest, most delicate harvest of the year, meticulously hand-rolled and twisted in the style of high-end Wuyi tea. The "gongfu" finish brings out notes of nutmeg, brown sugar, and fine dark chocolate.

Hand-Twisted Craft Black Tea. First flat-pressed, then hand twisted, Laoshan Gongfu Black is a difficult finish favored by the He Family to bring out sparkling minerality in their tea. This spring tea has notes of rose, caramel flan and tropical citrus.

Bai Rui Xiang varietal is named after the Winter Daphne, a heady aromatic flower native to China. Traditionally finished as an oolong, this tea always has a rich nuanced undercurrent of incense spice and cooling tingling minerality. This season, the Li Family saved a small portion of this reserve harvest Bai Rui Xiang to finish as a black tea using old-school sun-oxidation in bamboo baskets at the family workshop in Tongmu. The result is an incredibly complex black tea where the intense florals of the oolong finish take a back seat to the cooling tingling textural excitement this tea has to offer, along for a rich spiced brew full of Wuyi’s famous minerality.

Feng Huang Black comes from transplanted Fenghuang Dancong from Guangdong established in the mountainous rocky slopes of Wuyi. As in Guangdong, these plants are cultivated as single bush trees instead of hedges. The result is an elegant expression of the bright, fruity, complex and sweet flavor of Fenghuang Dancong with the deep mineral notes of Wuyi. Black Tea Xiao Zhong style processing tempers the naturally tropical fruit of Dancong and supports it with elegant wood. Because this tea is grown as single bushes and picked only once a year, the annual yield for the Li Family is very small. We are excited to share this small batch from the Li Family's tea gardens.

Mei Zhan varietal is famous for its rich and focused fruit-forward oolong made from long skinny spring leaves. Recently, Mr. Li has been experimenting with a stand of his family’s iconic Mei Zhan in early spring when the plant puts out huge buds that are too delicate to withstand oolong processing. He personally leads the hand-picking of the Li Family Mei Zhan buds and brings them to the family home and workshop in Tongmu for Jin Jun Mei meticulous black tea hand-finishing. The slow oxidation in bamboo baskets brings out big savory notes and sweet rich honey and cream.

The Dongsa cooperative wild-forages the leaves for their hand-fired black tea from trees well over one hundred years old, growing on the cool high elevation slopes of the Ailao National Forest Preserve. The biodiversity and well established root stock makes for deeply nuanced and complex tea, normally reserve for pressing and aging as sheng pu’er. This experimental offering is a new project by the cooperative to hand fire over low heat in a wok for a more classic Dian Hong style. The application of heat makes this more closely related to other Yunnan Black, and indeed it shares a rich sweet potato thickness similar to our Yunnan Golden Fleece, but with Qianjiazhai’s signature tulsi complexity and touches of citrus, and florals.

Master Zhou is still experimenting with other farmers in Qianjiazhai to produce new black tea offerings each year. The cooperative started with simple oxidized and sun dried black tea without any processing. Recently they have begun experimenting with wok-roasted hand finished black tea. The application of heat makes this more closely related to other Yunnan Black, and indeed it shares a rich sweet potato thickness similar to our Yunnan Golden Fleece, but with Qianjiazhai’s signature tulsi complexity and touches of citrus, and florals. Anybody who loves black tea will love this wild complex black tea offering from the Dongsa Cooperative.

The Li Family and other members of the Dongsa Cooperative sustainably forage from towering crassicolumna trees to harvest the early spring woody buds that make this new black tea. Camellia Crassicolumna (厚轴茶) is a wild near-relative of tea native to Qianjiazhai; because this plant currently a protected species. one of the cooperative's responsibilities is to protect these trees from poaching. The incredibly-sweet. flavor-packed buds are traditionally piled and allowed to oxidize fully in the Mt. Ailao sun without heat treatment, locking in the natural flavor and aroma of the region. Crassicolumna is naturally caffeine-free and rich in antioxidants.

This spring harvest Yunnan black tea gets its name to honor the soft, rich textural experience of tasting this beautiful small harvest tea. Golden Fleece is hand picked from wild growth (unmanaged) Yunnan Da Bai tea bushes over forty years old. The biodiversity of the growing region and deeper roots mean a more complex flavor and aroma. Only the most perfect large tender buds are hand-harvested, and carefully hand-finished. The down from the buds infuses into every cup, yielding a uniquely thick mouthfeel. This year's harvest is full and complex with cooling cedar, and spiced nutmeg and cinnamon undertones to bolster the luxurious creamy base.

This exquisite offering from Wang Yanxin combines the very best of two of our favorite teas - Yunnan White Jasmine and Golden Fleece. Huge buds are picked from Yunnan Da Bai, a varietal normally used for white tea. These buds are allowed to fully oxidize into black tea, but during oxidation and drying, wild jasmine blossom are scattered among the buds, allowing the natural aroma of the jasmine to absorb over several days into the tea itself. The jasmine flowers have to be changed and renewed six times over six days to get a full aromatic infusion that lasts over many steepings. The old craft of true jasmine scenting is a slow laborious process, but the results are worth it. This tea is as rich and sweet as Golden Fleece and as luscious as Jasmine.

Lady Zhu Rong was a legendary dagger-wielding warrior-queen of Yunnan descended from a god of fire. The toasty-savory spice and sweet, creamy boxy of this Yunnan black tea evoke the kingdom of Dian, an independent state before it was conquered by China and renamed Yunnan. Dian Hong is a relatively new kind of tea introduced in the 80's that has recently taken China by storm for its full body and depth of flavor that comes from its signature downy buds. While budset black teas from Fujian tend to be very crisp, Yunnan golden bud harvests like this Zhu Rong are much bigger and creamier.

While Tieguanyin Xiaozhong uses smaller leaves for a traditional black tea, the Liu Family'a Tieguanyin Jin Jun Mei uses large Tieguanyin buds, orange with down, for a unique and particularly uncommon offering. This is a chance to taste the rich, sweet and savory flavor of bud material in the naturally floral Tieguanyin varietal. This tea is a clear demonstration that farmers like the Liu Family are not tied by tradition to only make what is currently accepted with the varietals they grow.

This experimental loose leaf black tea is made by the Liu family with leaves from their Tieguanyin tea plants. The inspiration for this tea is Wuyi Xiao Zhong, a traditional and full-bodied black tea from Wuyishan (sometimes smoked with special pine wood). You might expect a bracing and full bodied tea, but when you taste this Tieguanyin varietal processed as a curled, roasted black tea, you find something quite different. Cozy and satisfying, this tea has an unmistakable floral Tieguanyin core under the black tea finishing.

Classic Laoshan Bilochun is picked after the He Family removes the protective greenhouse coverings from their tea at the end of the cold season. The hand-twisting and slow finishing process of bilochun is Mr. He’s personal favorite, making this his own daily go-to tea. Hand-processing brings out even thicker texture and sweeter creamier flavors than classic Laoshan Green.

Mr. He’s daughter Qingqing, co-owner of Verdant Tea, pioneered this finishing style with her father. She loves the long delicate twisting technique for the way the leaves dance in a glass pitcher as they unfold yielding a delicate nuanced brew that lasts over multiple steepings. The hand pulled and twisted finish on this early reserve harvest shows off the delicate deep-green buds that the family picks with so much care, cultivating with sustainable chemical free farming, and fed by sweet mountain spring water.