The Tea Lu Yu Ranked First
蒙顶甘露 carries one of the oldest reputations in Chinese tea. Tang poet Bai Juyi wrote of it directly: "the water of the Yangzi, the tea atop Mengshan" — the line the tea takes its place-name from. Lu Yu, in the Cha Jing, went further still, ranking it first among all teas he knew, ahead of even Gu Zhu.
Mengshan sits in Ya'an and Mingshan, a region wrapped in near-constant cloud and rain, conditions that suit tea more than almost anything else grown there. Every spring, Sichuan's tea comes in earlier than most of the country's, and Mengding leads even within Sichuan. Ganlu, "sweet dew," is the finest grade grown on the mountain: slender, fully intact leaf and bud, dense with silvery down, a persistent, high floral note, and a flavor that's rich without losing its freshness.
This lot is this year's very first opening pick, from the same high-altitude garden — 1,200 to 1,500 meters — Baoputang returns to every spring, hand-fired in the traditional wok method. The name has survived more than a thousand years. The tea itself is meant to be drunk within the season it was picked.