Verdant Tea

"Our family has been tending to nearly wild white tea arbors in the mountains above Wuyang Village for generations.

For decades, most of our tea has remained unpicked, growing between stands of bamboo and evergreens.

I came back from school to help my father manage the sudden explosive popularity of white tea by laying out a slow sustainable approach to growth for the village- no intervention farming, limited picking, and a meticulous finishing process that brings out the natural sweetness and minerality of my family’s tea.

I devote the time to slow & intentional craft without adornment or pretense because I believe in the simplicity and honesty of white tea to evoke the beauty of the place where it grows.”

– Mr. Wu

Our Most Popular Teas

Explore White Teas from Wuyangcun

This bundle includes three 25g offerings of white tea and one 100g cake for 175g total (35 sessions). The Wu Family has been growing tea for generations, with bushes scattered across the mountainside between groves of bamboo and evergreen[...]

$45.50 $40.95

  1. 2021 Wild Bai Hao Yin Zhen Plot 2
    2021 Wild Bai Hao Yin Zhen Plot 2

    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.

  2. 2022 Wild Bai Hao Yin Zhen
    2022 Wild Bai Hao Yin Zhen

    This is the Wu Family's masterpiece offering, the pride of Wuyang Village. The oldest most established wild plants, growing among rich biodiversity on a mountainside fully devoted to organic practices are carefully selected and the first budding of the year is hand-picked and meticulously finished to lock in the sweet complexity of the terroir, the early harvest nutrients, and the natural quality of the established deep-rooted bushes.

  3. 2022 Wild Bai Mu Dan
    2022 Wild Bai Mu Dan

    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.

  4. Shou Mei + Mandarin Peel Pearls
    Shou Mei + Mandarin Peel Pearls
    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.
  5. 2022 Bai Mu Dan White Tea Mini Cake
    2022 Bai Mu Dan White Tea Mini Cake

    Bai Mudan, or White Peony tea from the Wu Family represents a balanced expression of their mountain's wild terroir, with both flavorful leaves and tender downy buds for a tea that shows off whiet tea’s iconic sweet smooth texture and a deep wild forest quality. The Wu Family finishes these leaves under a special shaded air circulation process developed by Mr. Wu to lock in the freshest most aromatic flavors possible. This year, they pressed a 100g small format tea cake to protect the leaves for long term aging.

  6. 2022 Shou Mei Mini Cakes
    2022 Shou Mei Mini Cakes

    Shou Mei is the biggest, boldest, most flavorful expression of White Tea, picked from late season larger leaves that are packed with the flavor and complexity that a wild, biodiverse landscape brings to the Wu Family’s old-growth Da Bai varietal bushes. The Shou Mei grows even deeper, sweeter and darker with age like pu’er, and this year, the Wu Family pressed their Shou Mei in mini wafer cakes to protect them for transit and long term aging.

  7. 2022 Bai Mu Dan Dragon Pearls
    2022 Bai Mu Dan Dragon Pearls

    Bai Mudan, or White Peony tea from the Wu Family represents their most balanced expression of the wild mountain terroir, with both flavorful leaves and tender downy buds for a tea that shows off whiet tea’s iconic sweet smooth texture and a deep wild forest quality. The Wu Family finishes these leaves under a special shaded air circulation process developed by Mr. Wu to lock in the freshest most aromatic flavors possible. This year they pressed a Dragon Pearl individual steeping size Bai Mudan to protect the leaves even better in transit.

  8. 2021 Shou Mei
    2021 Shou Mei

    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.

  9. 2016 Reserve Shou Mei White Tea Cake
    2016 Reserve Shou Mei White Tea Cake

    This reserve-level white the cake from the Wu Family highlights their wild-arbor Shou Mei, carefully air-dried to lock in fresh floral aromatics after picking and then allowed to age in a carefully-controlled environment for nearly seven years before gentle steam-heating and stone-pressing. The results show off the cooling, deep, medicinal side of white tea, and evoke jujube date-filled lotus-wrapped sticky rice with a sweet sparkling aftertaste.

  10. 2017 Aged Shou Mei
    2017 Aged Shou Mei

    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.

  11. 2020 Wild Bai Mu Dan
    2020 Wild Bai Mu Dan

    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.

  12. 2020 Shou Mei
    2020 Shou Mei

    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. The 2020 harvest has a generous amount of small fuzzy buds alongside the mature late spring leaves, brewing up extremely balanced and deliciously easy to sip all afternoon.

  13. 2020 Wild Bai Hao Yin Zhen Plot 2
    2020 Wild Bai Hao Yin Zhen Plot 2

    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.

  14. 2016 Wild Arbor Shou Mei Cake
    2016 Wild Arbor Shou Mei Cake

    Mr. Wu selected these wild arbor leaves and buds for a special club pressing to show off the natural terroir of his family’s mountain slopes. 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 result is this wild arbor tea, full of deep tingling cooling aftersensation and complex rich aromatics.

Our Home: Wuyangcun, Fujian

our wild untended tea plants in Wuyangcun
dense trees surround our cultivated tea fields

Wuyang Village is tucked in a valley between two mountain peaks, and everyone who calls this place home is part of our family.

 

Farming in such a small town puts us further from the markets and fame that the city brings, but it means that the whole mountainside is cared for by our big extended family.

One family means shared goals, shared values in sustainability and a shared vision for the future of tea.

We can practice true organic farming without having to worry about a neighbor using chemicals or clear-cutting the natural tree cover.

Our Family

Mr. Wu is the next in a long line of farmers in his family to lead Wuyangcun’s white tea cultivation.

In the 1990’s when he was growing up, white tea was not yet well known or popular. For the most part, the tea in Wuyang Village was allowed to grow wild and was only picked occasionally.

When white tea became wildly popular, Mr Wu left his work in engineering and came home to help his family. He learned about field management, picking and finishing from his parents and grandparents.

The whole family preserves their wild groves instead of clear-cutting and replanting for higher yield. These groves were untended for so long that they have returned to a more naturally balanced ecosystem, with bamboo forest, wildflowers, birds and other plants growing between tall white tea bushes.

The choice to let so much of the mountainsides above Wuyangcun grow wild and untended at a time when higher prices reward high yields is unorthodox, but the family feels confident that it is the right choice in the long run. Over time, their wild white teas can bring everyone a better living, and Mr. Wu and his young family is leading the charge, taking on the role of engineer, community leader, and advocate.

Mr. Wu at his workshop
Mr. Wu’s wife grew up in Bailin, where the family now has a small shop

Our Tea & Craft

our workshop drying room
our Bai Mudan white tea

Truly clean Da Bai white tea should have no dry astringency in the back of the throat. The green notes should be tempered with sweetness – not a lingering bitterness. The texture should be thick and crisp from the suspended downy leaf in the final brew.

Sun-drying and hot air finishing create too much heat exposure, and risk degrading the natural complexity of my family’s tea. To solve this problem, I used my engineering background to design a unique system of fans to control air flow and humidity during drying. Our drying room can be temperature controlled by the amount of sunlight we let in. Our fans create air flow that covers both sides of every bud and leaf on a special mesh bed.

With this method, the white tea process is much cooler and darker than traditional sun drying. This process is slower, but through controlling the rate of evaporation, we can prevent oxidation while avoiding heat reaction flavors.

The result is the true Da Bai white tea flavor that we are striving for, one that our family is excited to share with the world.

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