Huangshan Maofeng Tea

Huangshan Maofeng is a pan-fired green tea grown in and around the Mount Huangshan scenic area, its tender leaves picked around Qingming and Guyu, then fixed, rolled and baked; the dry leaf is lightly curled, clothed in white down with bud tips sharp as peaks, hence the name "downy peaks."

The tea was created around 1875 in the Guangxu reign by the Huizhou tea merchant Xie Zheng'an of Fuxi, who selected local mountain leaves and refined them into a fine tea that the Huizhou merchants carried by river to all of China, earning it a place among the ten great teas.

Steeped in spring water of around eighty degrees in a glass or lidded bowl, one first inhales its clear fragrance, then savours the fresh, mellow, sweet-returning liquor; the spent leaves unfold tender and yellow, a daily ritual of Huizhou hospitality.

Its golden fish-leaf and white down, the fresh sweet-returning liquor and the high-mist mountain origin are the marks of Huangshan Maofeng.