Green Shoumei

Tea: Green Shoumei (chuantong shoumei - 传统寿眉)
Harvest: Autumn 2024
Region: Ganyang, Fuding, China
Producers: Wu Family
Tasting Notes: cut grass, spring violets, bee pollen

It mildly irks us that we need to call this tea ‘green shoumei’ instead of simply ‘shoumei’.  This is a tea made in the traditional methods that creates a clean white tea with plenty of green leaves visible in the soup.  There was careful attention paid to the leaves as they withered and dried, the maker meticulously controlled the temperature and the rate of hydrolysis, which in turn preserved the chlorophyll and the sweet, vegetal green.

When compared to the ‘brown shoumei’ counterpart, this is a different tea entirely, so much so that some people do not have a taste for real green shoumei anymore, preferring the more earthy and mellow notes of the brown stuff.