Fuding Shou Mei White Tea Cake 2016

There is an old saying about Fuding white tea: “one-year tea, three-year medicine, seven-year treasure”. The leaves for this shou mei cake were harvested in 2016 and pressed into a cake in 2018; following several years of aging, the aroma, taste, and essential quality of this tea are continually changing. Because this cake is older than our 2018 shou mei, it has more of a light medicinal fragrance rather than the 2018’s bright pekoe.

The first sensation upon tasting this tea is the sweetness of the liquid, which follows through into the aftertaste. The tea leaves spread and expand throughout subsequent steeps and pour more of their essential substances into the liquid, resulting in a mellower brew later on - but even as the flavor fades, that sweetness remains until the end.

	Cup Method		Chinese Gongfu Method
	Teacup: 12oz / 355ml		Gaiwan: 3.8oz / 110ml
	203℉ / 95℃		203℉ / 95℃
	5g Tea		5g Tea
	Brewing time: 5 - 8 mins		10 steeps: rinse, 30s, 45s, 60s, 80s, 100s, 120s, 150s, 200s, 250s, 300s
			Rinse time is around 5 seconds

Chaitou Shan Tea Garden is located in Fuding, which is known as the hometown of white tea. The plantation is almost always blanketed with fog, 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.

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.