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Tasting through the last 9 days of white tea harvests with Mr….

Tea Adventures

Tasting through the last 9 days of white tea harvests with Mr. Lin, whose family is the top producer and leader of the white tea industry in Fuding. He’s not happy today- the rainfall has made the wilting indoors really difficult and his staff were not paying enough attention.
We tasted through samples of each day, along with the senior tea buyer of Anxi Empereur Tea, who is responsible for purchasing for a mere 600 stores. It was nice to taste with other professionals much more senior to myself, and finding exact concurrence. Day 7’s harvest of the White Peony and Day 9 were the best. Day 7 was sweeter and smoother, day 9 was most flavorful. Though I agreed completely- Days 3 through 6 were too light yet – I chose Day 7. It represented bright clear Spring.
One year, I sat in that same room tasting white teas with some Russian buyers who knew little of what they were tasting. It was a far cry from tasting with real black belts and finding that after all, my choices matched theirs exactly. That means while tea tasting is subjective, judging is less so. If we ever get to 600 stores, I guess I would still be the teabuyer!

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I don’t think any of the tea encyclopedias even knew or included…

Tea Adventures

I don’t think any of the tea encyclopedias even knew or included the Fuding Small White Varietal. This is the original，ancient varietal of the white tea. Some years ago producers decided that cultivating them into the Large White Varietal (Da Bai Ye Zhong）have better yield. The small varietal had few too few sprouts, and so, most were uprooted in favor of the Large White. Mr. Zhou has kept up his family’s tradition: aside from no pesticide use ( not necessary due to elevation and hardiness), the plants are not fertilized. Instead, they are pruned to the root every single mid April, after the rain, and allowing the sprouts to grow very sparse. This allows the rainfall to trickle down to the roots, oxygenating and creating its own nutritional system. Besides, applying fertilizers will force the leaves to grow fast, dense, large, and flavorless. No thanks. Mr. Zhou opts for the thankless, profit less, and completely ancient methods, all so the tea taste so unique, so sublime, that one would be moved to tears and appreciate the fact that one is alive, and to be able to taste this tea. I weep and find resonance. Especially the thankless and profit less part. Why, that’s what we chose to do as well, garnering us wonderful Yelp comments like ‘overpriced’ when they have no idea the level these teas go and what they really should be priced at. Mr. Zhou and I will both lose money just to keep this tradition of Bailin Gongfu alive.

Ah, the bittersweet decade plus years of trying to bring the top teas into the US ….I wonder how much longer I will keep going. If not for such love of tea, seeing the uneducated levels of even other tea purveyors and the junk they put into the market (Starbucks ‘biluochun’), makes one feel very, very, alone in the universe.

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Hands down the most beautiful, sublime black tea ever tasted- in…

Tea Adventures

Hands down the most beautiful, sublime black tea ever tasted- in my life, which is a lot of tea by my advanced age. Bailin Gongfu from Pan Xi Village, made from nearly extinct Small White Varietal, made by Mr. Zhou, third generation devoted tea master, otherwise a school teacher in spare time.
This is a connoisseur batch he considers ‘middle top’ grade. If this is middle top, is there a leader grade?
‘No way’, said Mr Zhou. ‘I refuse to gift to government officials, they don’t appreciate it. ’. That is why there is no market for his sublime tea- he’s unwilling to grease the palms. I vow to introduce this to our fine community- at 100 times more expensive than commodity black teas but 10,000 times better!

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