Outside of Hangzhou, we visited an organic tea farm with some incredible views and incredible tea. After lunch and tea in her family home, Tea Master Zheng invited us up to the roof, where we sat in a Buddhist shrine with the resident Master, who overlooks the tea fields…”overlooks” but also blesses water that is distributed over the tea trees (yes, really!).
Master Zheng’s tea is completely organic; no chemical fertilizers or pesticides are used on their farm. A high quality harvest is assured by integrated farming techniques, including fertilizer rotation, interplanting of osmanthus trees, and limiting the harvest to only six weeks out of the year. We have been fortunate enough to taste the fruits of their labor here at the shop…and it is quite impressive. These teas hold up to any we tasted in Zhejiang Province.
I tried this Mao Feng when I was at Stone Leaf last weekend; absolutely amazing tea!
Ah, the first harvest of the year! Even with difficult growing conditions this year, Tea Master Zheng has produced some incredible organic teas. We’ll be sampling this all week. Next week we will have in the later harvest of her Mao Feng and Long Jing.
[…] I decided to pit two green teas, fresh from China this spring, against each other. One was the Anji Bai Cha (Anji White Tea), which is actually a green tea but named for this particular tea plant varietal’ s white-ish leaf appearance. Usually only found in Anji, China, this unique tea variety is hard to find but worth the search. (to read more about Anji Bai Cha, click here) The other tea I chose for this head-to-head match up was the White Buddha Long Jing. What makes this tea special, is that it is made with the same unique Anji varietal as the Anji Bai Cha, but it is processed like a Long Jing. Produced by Master Zheng outside of Hangzhuo, this is not a true Long Jing – just as sparkling wine is not truly champagne. It is, however, processed in much the same manner as a true Long Jing, so it shares many of the same characteristics but with the twist of the Anji white-tea bush. (to learn more about Master Zheng’s tea, click here) […]