Designed for you or a special someone that should start the new year with their first foray into the world of Chinese tea. This box can help one make the leap from bagged to boutique while not breaking the bank. It includes entries from the five largest categories of tea production and four Chinese provinces.
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In this Box:
14g 2018 Shoumei (Fuding White Tea)
14g Mapo Green Tea (Hubei Green Tea)
14g Fragrant Dawuye (Chaochou Oolong Tea)
14g Osmanthus Red (Fujian Black Tea)
6g Anhua Dragon Ball x2 (Anhua Fermented Tea)
Here is the line up:
-14g: 2018 Shoumei (caramel, honey)
Representing white tea, we have an aged Shoumei cake from Guanyang, Fuding. This browned shoumei is a smooth, sweet, and calming daily drinker that will offend no palate and delay no bed time.
-14g: Mapo Green (watercress, cedar wood)
For green tea, we have a quiescently Chinese entry. Mapo is a pan fried tea that is spicier in taste and neater in appearance than most Japanese senchas. Full of energy, this obscure Jianshi County green tea takes no prisoners.
-14g: Fragrant Dawuye (floral, vegetal)
Dawuye, our oolong entry has all of the complexity that Dancong tea can offer. The sharp and varied floral aromas this tea produces requires multiple infusions to truly appreciate. It can show anyone the value of gongfu style brewing.
-14g: Osmanthus Red (osmanthus, mulled wine）
Our red tea is osmanthus red, a long time export favorite done right. It is sweet, energizing, and floral. This red tea is blended with real osmanthus flowers and sourced from the well known Wuyishan tea production zone.
-6g: Anhua Dragonball x2 (black pepper, pine sap)
Finally, the Anhua dragon ball is a fine representative of what Chinese dark tea looks like. In leaf shape and pick, it has dark tea's characteristic roughness; in taste and aroma it delivers spicy, arboreal notes rarely associated with tea. It is some of the finest tea dark tea Hunan has to offer.
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All of these teas are quality loose leaf products that we personally sourced and sampled. Drinking this sampler alone will give one an informed sense of the range in flavor, appearance, and aroma that Chinese tea has to offer. The differences between Chinese white, green, Oolong, red, and dark tea also should become clear. With this experience under one's belt, any mug-bound Tetley fanatic or boba imbiber may develop a taste for the wet leave juice au naturel.
For more experienced fellow travellers, we recommend our Distinguished Enjoyers Sampler.
