Verdant Tea

This bundle includes three 25g offerings of white tea for 75g total (15 sessions). The Wu Family has been growing tea for generations, with bushes scattered across the mountainside between groves of bamboo and evergreens. With white tea’s recent surge in popularity, the family is rediscovering groves planted generations ago left for years untended, and picking them without introducing pruning or intervention. The Wu Family's white tea craft is all about non-intervention. There is no firing process, no heat applied at any stage. The fresh buds are rushed into a special drying room with continuous circulation to lock in the fresh vegetal floral complexity you'd get tasting a fresh leaf picked in the field. Mr. Wu combines this commitment to non-intervention with a meticulous background in engineering, crafting special fans to control air circulation and get the freshest most aromatic tea without heat or sun exposure.

The Wu Family's oldest prized tea bushes growing among wild trees, flowers and bamboo are picked once in the extreme early spring for a bud-only harvest, and then allowed to build up nutrients until they are picked a second time when delicate leaves begin to unfurl. This second harvest of buds and leaves is what makes their fine Bai Mudan- full of the complexity that later season sunlight brings but the sweetness and texture of the early cold-weather buds.

Bai Hao Yin Zhen is picked entirely from early spring buds, with almost no leaf at all. The result is extremely sweet and thick, with a light flavor but a lingering deep aftertaste and aroma. The biodiversity of the Wu Family’s multi-generational tea garden, left untended for decades yields tea with big rich flavor, the plant's response to competition from other plants and insects. The result is a silver needle with unparalleled refinement but a dynamic structure and energy. This year’s harvest is remarkably creamy while still maintaining a cooling, tingling aftertaste and deep herbaceous undertones.

The Wu Family's Shou Mei is picked from mature wild-arbor Da Bai varietal tea bushes on their high-elevation biodiverse plot. Their generously downy Shou Mei is a combination of young leaves and buds. This year's 2021 harvest includes small fuzzy buds alongside the mature late spring leaves, brewing up refreshing and balanced - great both for afternoon sipping or cold brewed iced tea.

The Wu Family's oldest prized tea bushes growing among wild trees, flowers and bamboo are picked once in the extreme early spring for a bud-only harvest, and then allowed to build up nutrients until they are picked a second time when delicate leaves begin to unfurl. This second harvest of buds and leaves is what makes their fine Bai Mudan- full of the complexity that later season sunlight brings but the sweetness and texture of the early cold-weather buds.

This new project from the Wu Family incorporates local mandarin orange citrus peel, grown wild on the hillsides around the village of Wuyangcun, with the family’s sweet, flavorful and spice-forward Shou Mei white tea before pressing both together into convenient 5g Dragon Pearls. The 2018 Shou Mei leaf material already displays depth and sweetness from aging made even more apparent blended with the mandarin peel.

This wild-picked Shou Mei from the Wu Family's beautifully-forested misty mountain plot has been carefully aged for over five years to bring out deep complexity. A mix of buds and leaves, this tea has become sweeter and more honeyed over the years and picked up a cooling eucalyptus quality. Fine white tea like this can age for decades and continue to grow over time.