Folded Mountain, China

While most teas come from carefully managed gardens, this tea offers something different. We tried quite a few Jiangxi green teas, but it was this unique example that we just had to share. The leaves are harvested from wild-growing tea bushes in the remote mountain valleys near the border of Jiangxi and Anhui provinces in eastern China. They are picked by local tea foragers, the only people who really know these isolated areas. Growing in valleys shrouded by cloud and mists for much of the year, the tea leaves have a distinct complexity that is captured beautifully in this tea.

Early each morning in late March, local tea foragers head deep into the misty valleys of northeast Jiangxi to pick leaves from the wild and uncultivated tea bushes. Our Fuliang tea master Mr Yirong Hu told us that when the foragers return in the late afternoon, their freshly harvested leaves inside small hessian bags, they have this sort of beatific smile on their faces. Yirong says the sight of them always lifts his spirits, reminding him of how important it is to keep this ancient wild tea tradition alive.