Verdant Tea

This bundle includes three 90g mini cakes and one 100g mini cake of Wuyi tea for 370g total (72+ sessions). The Li Family makes some of the most sought-after oolongs in China, grown within the pristine Wuyishan Ecological Preserve, hand-picked  and hand-finished by the Li Family and meticulously had-fired multiple times over several months for deep complexity. The biodiversity and rocky geography of their plot contributes to deep forest-evoking teas with a strong mineral texture.

Take all this exquisite circumstance and add aging into the process and you get some stunningly nuanced powerful teas unlike anything else out there. This tasting kit is a chance to build your own Wuyi tea aging program, and see why pu’er isn’t the only tea that gets better with age. This collection spans twelve years and four unique varietals.

Most years, Li Xiangxi doesn’t do any pressing at all, only selecting harvests that she has had the chance to taste over several months when she determines whether they’d be suitable for aging. When she makes her selection, the family gives these teas even deeper hand-firing before finally pressing these mini-cakes. See for yourself what makes aged Wuyi tea so special.

This bundle includes four 25g bags of Wuyi Oolong for 100g total (20 sessions). This kit is a rare opportunity to try all four of the Wuyi tea varietals recognized as the 武夷四大名枞, theWuyi Si Da Ming Cong. These are the four teas recognized by traditional consensus as the most definitive representation of the flavors, textures and aromas that Wuyi oolong has to offer. If you are interested in getting a glimpse at the aesthetic “standard-bearers” of the weighty Wuyi traditional this is the place to start. These four teas in many ways set the modern vision of the ideal, and their deep minerality, textural complexity and layered aromatics are strived for and judged against at every Wuyi tea competition. With the Li Family’s perfectly situated plot of old growth tea within the true Wuyi Ecological Preserve designation, and their commitment to biodiversity in the fields and meticulous hand firing in the workshop, it is no wonder that their Si Da Ming teas earn them gold medals year after year. With such small harvests it is a rare event to have all four Si Da Ming Cong in stock at the same time. If you are interested in a foundational understanding of the quintessential Wuyi flavor, try these together while they are here

This bundle includes 25g each of five different Wuyi oolong teas for 125g total (25 sessions). Wuyishan is perhaps the most famous tea growing region in the world, and our partner Li Xiangxi and her family cultivate their award-winning oolongs in a perfectly-situated gorge along the Longchuan river within the Wuyishan Ecological Preserve, a pristine environmentally-protected region where biodiversity is key, and tea grows alongside wild bamboo, evergreens, and flowers.

Part of that biodiversity is about encouraging not just the widely known varietals like Rou Gui or Qilan to grow, but also making space for rare and difficult to find varietals not often seen or known outside of Wuyishan. Li Xiangxi believes that each varietal bring its own unique style to the pure expression of Wuyi minerality, and this sampler is a testament to those unique perspectives. Taste through five Wuyi oolong teas - including famous cultivars and less-well-known varietals.

This bundle includes five 25g bags of Wuyi tea for 125g total (25 sessions). Wuyishan is one of the most famous tea growing regions in the world, and true hand-crafted tea from within the Wuyi Ecological Preserve is incredibly elusive with a proliferation of imitations out there. That is why we are so lucky to be working with the dynamic award-winning Li Family, who have been visionaries in restoring biodiversity and forest cover within the preserve and leaders in oolong craft.

Li Xiangxi, founder of the Yangxian Institute of Tea Culture, works with her brother and cousin to finish deep aromatic and wildly complex oolongs, as well as traditional old-school black teas from their ancestral home in Tongmu.

This collection represents a classic tasting curriculum, spanning the most important flavors, textures and aromas to be familiar with in beginning to understand what makes Wuyishan so special. This kit has been put together to provide a foundation to explore the wider Li Family collection with a deep tasting vocabulary, and of course, to come out with a true sense of the Wuyi microclimate.