Tea: Baikeng Caicha Cake Solidarity Cake (200g)
Type: White Tea
Harvest: Spring 2025
Press Date: January 2026
Region: Fuding City, Guanyang Township, Baikeng Village
Tasting Notes: Sugar Snap Pea, Sugar Cane, Vegetal, Mineral.
This is the second iteration of our cost-transparent, profit-sharing solidarity cakes. Going forward, we will aim to release one per season, aimed at relatively struggling producers. In this case, we worked with the Wu Family, a small family attic operation on the periphery of an already struggling Fuding.
This cake was made from the heirloom stock (Caicha) of heterogenous bushes that grew in the area before modern cultivars like Dabai and Dahao were propagated. Baikeng Village has been home to Wu Shiwei and his tea-growing aunt and grandfather before him. Although by no means a famous village, the family was one of many to grow tea there since the 1950's. Up until around the new millennium, that meant mostly making red tea for export. The white tea boom let Shiwei quit his job coal-mining up in Shanxi, and he has stayed on despite the recent market downturn.
His family's caicha's were one of the first we drank, but they have never been sold on here before. Refreshing and vegetal, heirloom teas like these are not always sweet or creamy in the same way as modern cultivars covered in fuzzy down. This one is, however, robustly fragrant, uniquely sweet, and without any of the unpleasant sourness or bitterness that can come with fresh teas made from such materials. It is a simply good and straightforward tea.
Transparent Price Break Down:
Including raw material, pressing, and packaging, the cakes cost in total 4920 RMB.
Each cake costs us about $7.05 USD (￥49.20) to make 100 cakes of 200 grams, of which we plan to sell 95. If we sell this tea at $28 per cake (a 3.9x markup), we have enough money to cover our costs and labor and split the total sale revenue 50/50 rest of the revenue back with the Wu Family.
For each of the 95 cakes sold, the Wu's will get $7.05 USD up front and $6.95 afterwards, for a total of 14 dollars. Once all the cakes are sold, they can expect another total pay-out of roughly 4601 RMB, and we can likewise take home the same amount.
