The Famous One, Now in a Bag
Jin Jun Mei didn't exist before 2005. Jiang Yuanxun, 24th-generation tea master at Tongmuguan, developed it as an innovation on the much older Lapsang Souchong line his family had been making for centuries — and it became, almost immediately, the most sought-after black tea in China.
The reason it costs what it does is arithmetic: only single, early-spring buds go in, hand-picked from Tongmuguan's old-style seed-propagated bushes, and it takes roughly 75,000 of them to make half a kilo. The dry leaf is fine, tightly twisted, gold and black, with the "golden ring" in the cup that comes from a high concentration of theaflavins — the same antioxidant compounds tied to the tea's reputed cardiovascular benefits.
This bag dates to the fifth year of Baoputang's partnership with the Jiang family, and it's the same tea, leaf for leaf, as the version sold loose — just packed for the version of a day when steeping it properly isn't an option, and a cup still needs to be good.