Yunnan Early Spring Bi Luo Chun Green tea * Spring 2014

Gave this as a xmas gift to someone and just got to try it with them. Yum. Really great super tippy first flush spring green, super light and clear, very sweet and super thick and fuzzy texture.

The “Spring Snail Shell” dried tea from Yunnan Sourcing is some of the most beautiful I’ve seen. The shape really is snail-shell-like, and the colors range from white to dark green with stunning silken yellow shimmers interspersed. Each piece looks like a tiny sculpture!

With infusion, these tiny snail shells bloom into full leaf sets. This tea is picked as two leaves and a bud. The volume must have quadrupled by the second infusion, with the leaves now large and a striking yellowish green hue. Even if the tea weren’t so tasty, it would be worth infusing just to witness the metamorphosis!

But the tea is tasty, so I have two reasons. I just read the fascinating chapter on Bi Lo Chun in The Harney & Sons Guide to Tea, where I learned that this tea is quite rare, as it is produced only on a small island, Dongting on the Tai Hu (Tai Lake). It’s a very special tea in that it is harvested only once in early spring, before the Qing Ming festival.

One caveat offered by Michael Harney is that this tea goes stale easily. I guess that means that I’d better make this my first green of the day (GOD) more often!

To me the flavor is more subtle and less vegetal than Mao Feng or just about any other China green. The texture is smooth and silken. I have no idea how to describe the scent. Does it smell like roasted endive? What a great comparison (by Michael Harney), but perhaps not that helpful, since for many people it’s bound to be a clear case of obscurum per obscurius!

This bi luo chun is tightly rolled with about 50% of the visible leaf being silver green downy buds and the other visible portions being a spruce grey green. Once exhausted and unrolled the leaves, the buds and the attached stem are visible and seem to be of good quality.

This is a nice tea with the brightness and sweetness of an early spring tea combined with the nuttiness and density you often get in this tea type.

I steeped 1 TSP of leaf in a 150 ml Gaiwan and using my regular progression of 45 s + 15… I made 6 steeps of this tea.

This tea like the Yunnan white bi luo chun I had ( also from boychik, thanks by the way!), had nice spicy gardenia like floral notes, which in this case were tempered by a lemony note. It also had deepening over time chestnut and plum notes, snap pea, spinach, alfalfa, cream and orange rind. It was slightly astringent while brewed in the low to mid 80’s but had a nice thick and creamy density.

Altogether a really nice tea and a good change from the lighter and very sweet greens I tend to drink most often!

it is truly Spring in a cup. pale green, sweet nutty and so refreshing. like sugar peas
165F 1tsp 8oz could be brewed many times. Steeped only for 1min. As cools doesnt get bitter.
i’m not green tea person but I love it.