Yu Wei Fuding Shou Mei White Tea Cake 2019

This Yu Wei Fuding Shou Mei White Tea was harvested in 2019. Fuding white tea is said to be "one-year tea, three-year medicine, and seven-year treasure." It has a faint herbal scent after three years of maturing, in addition to the jujube and sweet aroma. The tea liquid is clear and brilliant, sweet, soft, and delicate in flavor; after drinking, a pleasant honey aroma lingers in the bottom of the cup. In a word, the taste of white tea is elegant, neither bitter nor astringent, which is suitable for everyone.

	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		8 steeps: rinse, 30s, 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, 80s, 100s, 120s
			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.

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 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. 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’.