Zhulincun Dashu Bai Cha 2025

„Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?“ one might ask like the greatest English bard ever living. Well, do not. If anything, compare this tea to an autumn night, rather strong and obscure yet perfectly clear. Or compare it to a „big block“ as in the huge engines of—for the sake of nature—now outdated muscle cars. This block, um, brick offers all the flavor of a big tree (Dashu) and provides great mileage (as in # of resteepings). Applying perfume terms, one may call this the most masculine white tea as compared to more floral whites; this one offers raw wooden power whilst still being soft—like the smooth acceleration of an eight cylinder engine—or simply put, what every modern EV provides. 

This tea comes from a Dashu grove on a steep slope in Zhulincun, a village on Nannuoshan. The garden is owned by the same family from which we source the Banpo Lao Zhai Sheng Pu'er, as they moved from Banpo Lao Zhai to Zhulincun a generation ago, the two villages being about a 30-minute walk through the forest apart. We visited the family during our 2025 tea tour and tasted two different white tea, this qing xiang and a nong xiang, selecting the former for its fragrance. 

Also worth mentioning: when brewing with Berlin water, it tasted even better than in Yunnan, which rarely happens.