Description

The last of the famous Chinese green teas to be picked each spring, we have been eagerly anticipating the arrival of this year’s Taiping Houkui. However, with a very short picking window of around 15 days, which starts from 谷雨 (literally “grain rain”) and runs until the start of summer (立夏), Houkui from the core region is severely limited for those who haven’t reserved theirs ahead of time. Within this period, there are often only 1-2 pickings, which only contributes to its scarcity.

After more than a year of preparation and sampling from at least 10 different plots of land in the villages of the core region, we’re very happy to have secured a small amount of Houkui from this spring that stands out not only from other styles of green tea, but from other Houkui teas as well. Unlike some other areas, such as Yunnan, where tea cultivation has at times traded places with other agricultural products, the practice of making Houkui in the core region has remained consistent for generations. That heritage shows through, both in the slender, labour-intensive leaves and in the cup.

Made from first picking, local “Tuzhong” (heirloom) cultivar bushes in Houcun, this particular tea combines a sugary sweetness with a nice orchid fragrance in the back of the throat. The texture in the soup is full and refined, with an embedded fragrance that makes this tea very cohesive. Compared to other famous green teas, this Houkui truly stands out as perhaps the most elegant among them, not just in appearance, but in the soup as well.

This tea is fully handmade with care, and as such we have done our best to pack it for safe international travel. However, please note that a small amount of breakage is unavoidable. Each purchase is for 30 grams, with 60 grams consisting of 2 x 30-gram tins.