#fuding
-
The Sovereign and the Minister, in a Tea Bag
君臣佐使 — a term from classical Chinese medicine formula theory — describes exactly what's happening in this boiling-bag blend: 2009 aged white tea as the sovereign ingredient, 2016 Xinhui chenpi as its minister.
-
Three Years Before It Became a Pearl
Fuding white peony picked in early spring 2013, sun-withered for 360 hours, and not rolled into dragon pearls until 2017 — a tea that spent years as loose leaf before it took its final shape.
-
Eight Rounds, Twelve Hours Each
Yu Bing Qing starts as bud-only white tea, the same grade as Silver Needle — then spends over a month absorbing jasmine, eight separate times, before it's finished.
-
The Humblest Grade, the Longest Reward
Shoumei is white tea's plainest grade — more stem and leaf than bud, the part nobody photographs. It's also the one that ages furthest, through lotus leaf, through zongzi leaf, into dates and medicine.
-
What Eight Years Sounds Like in a Cup
Named "Songbai" — pine white — for how the down on its buds caught the light. Eight years on, the same tea now tastes like a different sentence.
-
Three Hundred and Sixty Hours of Doing Almost Nothing
White tea's whole process is a kind of restraint — no firing, no rolling, just 360 hours of slow withering. The baseline vintage that makes the rest of this aging arc legible.
-
Small White Dragon, Scented Seven Times
Spring tea from Fuding, jasmine from Hengxian — how two provinces and seven rounds of scenting become Small White Dragon.