Fuding Shou Mei White Tea Cake 2019 – Bodhi

This 2019 Shou Mei white tea comes from Dieshi Town in Fujian Province, harvested according to the standard of one bud with three leaves, including a few tea stems. Upon close sniffing, the dry tea emits a faint aged aroma and woody notes. Once moistened, the leaves gradually release a sweet fragrance and a red date aroma. The tea liquid is clear, bright yellow, with a high sweetness, rich date flavor, and a hint of longan. It offers a smooth and mellow mouthfeel, warm and delicate on the palate. Moreover, this tea has good endurance for multiple infusions. If you find the flavor diminishing after several brews, boiling can also be a good option.

	Cup Method		Chinese Gongfu Method
	Teacup: 12oz / 355ml		Gaiwan: 3.8oz / 110ml
	203℉ / 95℃		203℉ / 95℃
	5g		5g
	Brewing time: 5 - 8 mins		8 steeps: rinse, 30s, 40s, 50s, 55s, 65s, 80s, 100s, 130s
			Rinse time is around 5 seconds

Jiayang Tea Garden is located in Fuding, which is the "green source" of Fuding's mother river, Tongshan Creek. The environment here is beautiful, surrounded by mountains and rich in vegetation, providing the perfect conditions for the tea bushes to accumulate a wide variety of microminerals and nutrients. The soil here is rich red and yellow in color, signifying an abundance of important organic material. The tea species mainly grown here is the Fuding Dabaihao variety.

This Shou Mei cake was produced in Fuding, a famous center of tea production located in northeastern Fujian Province. This area is of the subtropical monsoon climate characteristic of coastal areas, with an average annual temperature of 18.5C and rainfall of around 1661mm.

As we all know, the world’s white tea is in China, and Chinese white tea is in Fuding. Mr. Chen was born in Fuding, Fujian Province. He has been influenced by tea since he was a child. It seems that he came with the mission of inheriting white tea culture from the moment he was born. He has been engaged in tea cultivation and production for more than 30 years, and has always adhered to the principle of "quality first" for many years. He is not only a successful tea industry operator, but also an excellent inheritor of white tea culture, allowing more people to taste and understand Fuding white tea.

This cake is made of the leaves of the Fuding Dabaihao plant, called Dahao for short. It is a small tree that propagates asexually.

In 1985, Dahao was certified as a national variety of tea plant. It grows up to 2.8m tall with a thick trunk. The tea from the spring leaves of the bush contains 1.8% amino acids and 28.2% tea polyphenols, which marks it as a high-quality base for making white tea in particular.

Tea has been grown in Fujian for centuries as an ever-important staple of commerce and trade throughout ancient China. Originally, the process of drying the leaves was followed by a variation of hot-air drying and sun-drying, a meticulous step intended to remove excess water from the leaves to ease the preservation process and preserve the tea for sale. The leaves of tea dried in this way were often compared to the eyebrows of Shouxing, the longest-living man in mythology. It is from this myth that Shou Mei earned its name, from the Chinese for “long curved eyebrow”, 眉毛, or ‘meimao’.