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

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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