Exceptionally beautiful deep green tea with large flat, straight leaves 7-10 cm long! Handmade.
This tea is carefully picked and sorted and processed by hand. By no means all leaves are eligible for this tea. Suitable leaves must have 2 leaves and the bud or 3 leaves and the bud.
The leaves are spread out and left to wilt for 4-6 hours. For this tea, 50-100 grams of tea leaves are stirred at 120 degrees until they begin to give off fragrance. After this they go on a cloth they are pressed flat by hand and a roller. This step of pressing is repeated 4 times to properly crush the leaves and give them their characteristic shape. After this, the tea is dried. In some leaves you can still see the imprint of the cloth. In some leaves a red line can be found. This occurred because the thicker leaves were not heated through and through and were given a chance to oxidize slightly.
- Origin: Anhui
- Region: Huangshan Mountain, Houkeng tea garden
- Harvest period: April 2022
- High: From 800m
- Cultivar: Shidacha (seedling, bushy tree with long leaves)
- Gradation: Tea King Tai Ping Hou Kui, High End
- Infusion: clear, light yellow green
- Flavor: Mild, smooth, slightly sweet, refreshing, peas, long aftertaste
- Aroma: soft orchid, fresh cut grass, corn
- Caffeinated: Yes
- Organic: No
Recipe:10-15 leaves | 250 ml soft water | 80-85℃ | 2-3 minutes
There is a beautiful legend about the origin of Tai Ping Hou Kui green tea:
Once upon a time, high on the slopes of Huangshan Mountain, there was a little monkey. One day he went out to play and wandered off to the next town of Taiping County.... He got lost there, trying to find his way home. He came to a strange place where he had never been before.
When his parents realized he had not come home, his father monkey went out to find him and searched all over the country. He did not find him and eventually died of exhaustion in a remote spot northwest of Taiping County.
In a valley near the village lived a kind-hearted man named Wang Laoer, who made his living picking wild tea leaves and digging up herbal roots from the deep slopes. One cool foggy morning, he discovered the old monkey's body nestled in a small hole along the mountain slopes, and out of respect he buried him there and planted a young tea tree nearby to mark the grave.
A year later, Wang Laoer found his way back to this spot while looking for wild tea trees to pick from, and discovered that the place had changed dramatically, with large, beautiful tea trees everywhere. Then he realized that it must have been the monkey he had buried who gave him the tea trees, in recognition of his kindness. In honor of this, he chose to call the place Hou Gang and named the leaves picked from the trees here Hou Kui.
