Welcome back to the new and improved Green vs Brown Shoumei comparison box!
We have worked with our friend Wu in Fuding's Guanyang county to help us press a small collection of 100 gram tea cakes both in the green and the brown style. It was after all Wu who first turned us onto this growing phenomenon. Often called the "New Processing Method" or the Xin Gongyi 新工艺 makers of White tea have recently gone out of their way to take the fresh green leaves of white tea and process them to look brown and aged.
While this does change the flavor into something more iconically recognized as shoumei (read: woody, sweet, earthy), it loses the natural vegetal freshness that green shoumei has. The reason for this is a complex interplay between market expectation and farmers incentives, it's easier to sell brown shoumei as aged tea, even if it is fresh!
After Wu brought this to our attention, we wrote a blog post on it, talked about it on the podcast, and created out very first educational tea sampler: The Browning of Green Shoumei. This realization shook us, because it brought up the question, just how many of the "old shoumei" teas we were drinking were actually processed to look old and brown, rather than made green and aged naturally.
Our friend Qiu, from whom we source a majority of our white tea, laments the browning of shoumei, concerned for the longevity of shoumei. He believes that ideally, shoumei should be processed as green as possible and naturally aged into a brown state. He fears that browned shoumei will simply not age the way shoumei should.
Thus, we have recreated this sampler with the future in mind. We want to offer these tea cakes at a price point that makes hoarding and personal aging possible. While this is the comparison box for those wanting to experiment before taking the dive, we also offer the individual cakes and tongs (bundles of 5 cakes) as individual options here for the Green Shoumei and the Brown Shoumei.
Included in this box:
One 100 gram cake of Green Shoumei
One 100 gram cake of Brown Shoumei
These cakes feature photos we personally snapped while visiting Wu and his family in their tea garden. Wu himself is featured in the Brown Shoumei tea cake standing in front of his childhood home.
We hope you enjoy this sampler, and thank you for your interest in tea education!
Recommended brewing is 6-7 grams of tea in a 100-120ml gaiwan with water right off the boil (though also consider exploring with cooler temperatures to see how it affects the bouquet and mouthfeel).
