Two Boxes, Twelve Years Apart
Twice now, a Jin Jun Mei release from this partnership has used its packaging to say something rather than just hold the tea.
The first came in 2024, the twelfth year of working with Jiang Yuanfang at Tongmuguan: a box built from Tongmuguan's own wood, not a generic gift box sourced from wherever boxes usually come from. The second came the following year, wrapped instead in paper printed with poetry — marking the most recent harvest, picked first-of-first at the highest altitude the gardens reach, 1,200 to 1,800 meters.
The tea inside both is the same special-grade Jin Jun Mei the partnership has produced all along — early-spring single buds, the same six-century family processing sequence, the same arithmetic of 75,000 buds per half kilo. What changes is what the box is asked to do. One ties the tea back to the wood it grew under. The other marks a moment — this year's first pick, this year's best. Different gestures, same twelve years underneath both of them.