Wuyi Black Tea vs Oolong Varietal Taste-Off
Wuyi Black Tea vs Oolong Varietal Taste-Off
Tasting Kits
Oolong Tea
Li Xiangxi – Wuyishan
This bundle includes six 25g bags of Wuyi tea for 150g total (30 sessions).
This special limited-offering tasting kit is a chance to do a unique taste-off showdown of three of Wuyishan’s most sought after varietals, crafted by the Li family as both oolong and black tea for six unique offerings.
The purpose of this kit is to show off the intense influence of craft on finished tea, even when that tea is the same varietal grown by the same family in the same place. Mei Zhan, Bai Rui Xiang and Rou Gui are all famous Wuyi teas traditionally finished as oolongs. Indeed, all three have brought the Li Family best in show awards year after year.
Recently, the Li Family has begun to apply their masterful traditional black tea craft to famous "oolong" varietals at the family workshop in Tongmu, yielding exciting new ways to taste and feel the terroir of the region. This kit will let you compare oolong and black tea finishes on the same varietals while these unique limited harvest offerings are available.
This bundle includes four 25g bags of Wuyi tea for 100g total (20 sessions).
This special limited-offering tasting kit is a chance to do a unique taste-off showdown of two of Wuyishan’s most sought after varietals, crafted by the Li family as both oolong and black tea for four unique offerings.
The purpose of this kit is to show off the intense influence of craft on finished tea, even when that tea is the same varietal grown by the same family in the same place. Mei Zhan and Bai Rui Xiang are both famous Wuyi teas traditionally finished as oolongs. Indeed, all three have brought the Li Family best in show awards year after year.
Recently, the Li Family has begun to apply their masterful traditional black tea craft to famous "oolong" varietals at the family workshop in Tongmu, yielding exciting new ways to taste and feel the terroir of the region. This kit will let you compare oolong and black tea finishes on the same varietals while these unique limited harvest offerings are available.
Taste + compare across cultivars:
"Praised by emperors
and immortalized in poetry across the ages,
the Wuyishan Ecological Preserve
is the cultural epicenter of tea.
My family has been tending to wild bushes and farming old tea trees
within the preserve for generations.
Living in a place of such natural beauty, we have come to seek balance
in our agriculture and balance in our tea. We preserve the natural forest cover,
we use beyond-organic methods, and we finish our teas by hand in small batches
- all to honor the gift of the place we call home.
I invite you to take the time to taste in our tea the deep complexity, rich texture, and intense aromatics
that define the true heritage of the Wuyishan Ecological Preserve."
- Li Xiangxi 李享熹
Our Home: Tongmu, Wuyishan
-
the most famous tea region in the world
-
wildly propagated tea bushes
grow out of volcanic rock
-
biodiversity strictly preserved
by National Park designation
-
established old-tree tea rootstock
-
rocky soil and sweet mountain springs
for intensely textural teas
-
wild foraged and hand picked tea
accessible only by family and local Tongmu natives
Our Family
Li Xiangxi, her brother, and her cousin work together as a team to manage the family’s wild-preserve teas in Tongmu & old growth varietal oolongs along the Longchuan river.
Li Xiangxi is an ordained Taoist priest, and founded the Yangxian Academy to teach Taoist tea ceremony as well as a philosophy of tasting and growing tea that is in harmony with nature.
While many investor-backed farmers ignored environmental laws in the early 2000’s, tearing out native trees to plant more tea, Li Xiangxi worked with her brother and cousin to reduce the family’s footprint when she inherited the land, encouraging rich wildlife and biodiversity. This effort has made her family pioneers in sustainable farming and local champions as the whole region becomes more mindful of its future and responsibility as the most famous growing region in the world.
Li Xiangxi and her family’s harvests amy be smaller, but their care in agriculture and their meticulous hand-finishing process have won them awards and inspired change throughout the region.
Our Teas and Craft
We believe that tea should be part of daily ritual.
We finish each leaf with the care that it takes to create tea with lingering aromatics, intense aftertaste, rich engaging texture, and the elusive yun, or after-sensation.
We delicately tease out the aromatics through an 18 hour fluffing and turning processso demanding that our family can’t take the time to sleep when tea is being finished. We devote ourselves fully to the process and see it all the way through.
When our teas' aromatics are just right we lock them in with another 16 hour hand firing, a nearly lost art that we are working to maintain to bring out texture and yunin every leaf. After the initial firing, we rest our teas at least a month and often re-fire up to five time for the perfect balance.
Our dedication wins us gold medals annually at Wuyi tasting competitions, but more importantly, it honors the gift of tea that this incredible region gives us.
Hear our vision for tea
We aren’t in this business for money. We share tea as a connection to nature and as a cultural bridge. We work with importer Verdant Teabecause of years of friendship and deep shared values. We invite you to explore just a handful of videosfrom our time together.
If you are buying tea from one of the most famous regions in the world, video sharing the voices of the growers should be one of the most basic minimums from any importer.
Learn even more!
