A mild winter and classic, cool spring has made for a beautiful early harvest of shade-grown Reserve Laoshan Green. These sweet and delicates buds and leaves are picked while still under greenhouse protection in the He Family’s ocean-facing plot at the foot of the Laoshan mountains. The early April picking is still intensely sweet and packed with deep minerality.

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This early spring tea is all about a fine and subtle sweetness, and a long, drawn out aftertaste and crisp texture. Cool spring weather produces a small harvest of truly sweet tea. This is Mrs. Li’s first picking of the season, carefully hand-finished by her husband, Shui Huamin. Her true original cultivar Dragonwell (Longjing Qunti) grows on the mountain slopes of Shi Feng and draws in sweet mountain spring water.

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Mr. He personally hand twists and finished each leaf in this labor-intensive early-spring biluochun style. Laoshan spring comes much later than southern China. At this time of year, before Qing Ming festival, the He Family's Laoshan tea is fully shade-grown, protected by greenhouse coverings to keep back the cold northern air. The nuance of the bilochun processing style brings out the subtle minerality of the Laoshan microclimate. 

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The 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 shade-grown 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.

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The flat-pressing process that Mr. He uses to finish this reserve spring harvest is inspired by Dragonwell green tea. In fact, Laoshan tea was originally brought to the area from Dragonwell, so for this cultivar, flat-pressing is a return to its origins. The day-long labor-intensive process to finish this delicate tea makes for beautiful leaves to brew in glass. The flavor is lighter but the aroma and sweetness more pronounced with flat-pressing. The flat-pressing technique really allows the subtle complexity of this season’s harvest to shine through. This early spring harvest is picked once the protective winter greenhouses are removed and the risk of frost has passed.

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Classic Laoshan Biluochun 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.

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Li Xiaoping grows this true Dragonwell cultivar on a perfectly-shaded mountainside in the tiny and sought-after Shi Feng microclimate- a uniquely situated spot with sweet mountain springs, quartz-heavy rocky soil, and mist. Li Xiaoping is a celebrated community leader for her advocacy in sustainable farming and working to protect the Shi Feng region, and her tea is recognized across the world as one of the few true Dragonwell expressions out there, capturing deep minerality, persistent sweetness, and complex aromatics.

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#43 Varietal Dragonwell was specifically bred and selected to bud even earlier than classic Dragonwell in Shi Feng and yields yellower plumper buds that make for gorgeous steeping in glassware. While classic Dragonwell is all about rocky mineral texture, the new #43 is a crisp, bright focused experience centered around stronger flavor and aroma and more pronounced sweetness. Mrs. Li's first picking of the year is full of all the nutrients and sugars stored by the plant all winter long and offers a more complex, sweet and subtle taste experience. It has a longer aftertaste and thicker texture than later harvests. The soil is full of quartz and white sand while the water comes from natural mountain springs, yielding a flavor that simply can’t be matched outside of Shi Feng itself.

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Dragonwell varietal #43 has been carefully bred and selected in the last fifty years as a new tea well suited to Shi Feng’s terroir. It buds earlier and in colder weather than classic Longjing Qunti varietal and yields yellower plumper buds that make for gorgeous steeping in glassware. While classic Dragonwell is all about rocky mineral texture, the new #43 is a crisp, bright focused experience centered around stronger flavor and aroma and more pronounced sweetness. Mrs. Li’s #43 varietal is true Shi Feng Dragonwell, growing on one of the highest slopes of the tiny microclimate that Emperor Qianlong declared as one of the best in the world for tea. The soil is full of quartz and white sand while the water comes from natural mountain springs, yielding a flavor that simply can’t be matched outside of Shi Feng itself.

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This limited offering from Li Xiaoping can only be picked in years where the weather is cool and temperate and the rain is very light. At the very top of the peak of Shi Feng, there is a grove of trees that have been allowed to grow undisturbed to preserve a natural habitat for birds and increase biodiversity. Among the trees, the Li family has tea plants that have not been cut back and trimmed every year like the lower slope plants. Because these semi-wild Dragonwell bushes are not tended, they require perfect weather to yield the right flavor. Li Xiaoping was able to pick these bushes again this year and offered us the majority of her tiny yield in the interest of cultural exchange and sharing a unique side of Shi Feng’s terroir not often seen. The flavor is rich, bold and complex, sharing the lingering sweetness an aromatic subtlety of early harvest Dragonwell with the big flavor of later harvests. The tea benefits from Shi Feng’s unique quartz-heavy white sand soil and mountain spring water, as well as the cool protected microclimate that the mountains form.

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