Tea: Melon Seed Green (Lu'an Guapian - 六安瓜片) Type: Anhui Green Tea Harvest: Mid April 2026 Region: Lu'an, Anhui, China Producers: Wang Family Tasting Notes: Nettle, Kale, Cabbage, Daffodil
This year we got something special from the Wang Family. Due to the general downturn in the green tea market, prices have dropped substantially. This means we were able to buy a grade of Guapian that was once 30% more expensive than the usual mid-season grade that we buy. Lighter in color and taste, this more tender pick has all the richness and power you can expect from Guapian, but with less bitterness and homeliness in shape.
Guapian is a type of green tea that has survived in roughly the same form since antiquity. These wok-fried leaves are large, natural, and a little ugly. Guapian has been one of China's top ten teas for hundreds of years, and the methodology behind this tea is very unique, featuring whisking the leaves with a hand-held straw broom in a wood-fired wok. This processing creates the iconic wabi-wabi leaf shape iconic to the Guapian, or Melon Slices.
As this tea consists of larger leaves, there is very little 'mingqian' guapian made in Luan. The tea is thick, rich, and delivers a powerful cup of tea without too much bitterness. This is a great tea for those who want a little force in their green tea selection, and are not afraid of some big ugly leaves.
The brew starts off very vegetal, but gets sweeter and creamier as the session progresses, and even positively floral by the final infusions.
We recommend brewing this tea in a gaiwan (2.5 grams to 100ml water with flash infusions) or in a tall glass grandpa style (3 grams to 8 oz of water with a death steep).
it took awhile to get to Australia.
the tea arrived well, the name on the label was a great touch, very much like receiving a present from a friend.
I would have lived alittle more tea, so to experience it on more than 1 occasion.
The tea itself was very good, good flavours, good roast and excellent aroma.
When I first tried this tea I liked it, but it was only when I experimented with temperature and steeping time that I understood just how extremely good it can be, and ended up getting 100g of it. Now it's a breakfast ritual!
Dare I call this a hidden gem of the One River Tea selection?
It has a delicious sweetness and lip-smacking umami not unlike a good green tea, combined with a puerh-like astringency: clean and complimentary to the other flavours, it adds a moreishness to the brew that keeps me refilling my cup.
The tasting notes are subtle and hard to place, but I might name asparagus and a hint of dried fruits. This tea is very tasty and I find myself dwindling my considerable stock quite quickly.
1) Dancong is a tea that takes a couple of tries to brew perfectly. Only including 4-6g of some of the teas simply isn't enough. It gives the customer only one chance.
2) If there are only 4-6g of some of the teas, at the very least some sort of tried and tested brewing recommendations would have helped.
3) overall the choices were OK. The new varietal Mi Xiang was brilliant and the kind of thing you dream of in a tea club. The wild tea was unique, so just about justified it's place, but was such a small amount and with an average flavour. Including a mother bush Duck Sh*T Oolong felt like a waste of money. At that price, there are even better mother bush options on the ORT website. Including such a famous tea with such a cost contributed to the small amount of tea overall.
