The Flagship, Eleven Years In
By 2023, eleven years into working with Jiang Yuanfang at Tongmuguan, Baoputang released this as the flagship loose-leaf Jin Jun Mei — special grade, picked from forest tea gardens between 1,200 and 1,800 meters, the first single buds of early spring before anything else gets touched.
The arithmetic hasn't changed since the tea itself was invented in 2005: roughly 75,000 individual buds for half a kilo, hand-picked from old, seed-propagated Tongmuguan bushes rather than grafted cultivars. The processing follows the same sequence the family has refined since then — sun-withering, indoor oxygen-enriched withering, hand-rolling in stages, fermentation, drying — landing on dry leaf that's fine, tightly twisted, gold-and-black, brewing into a cup with the bright "golden ring" that signals a high concentration of theaflavins.
Packed in a sealed ceramic tea caddy rather than a tin, this is the version meant to sit on a shelf and be reached for regularly — not a gift, not a special occasion. Eleven years in, it's just what the house red looks like now.