Cui Zhu (Green Bamboo)
Green Tea 2026
Among the first teas to be harvested in all of China, this genuine “solid heart” Cui Zhu offers only the youngest and densest tea buds with refreshing, crisp, and floral tones.
Maybe we’re showing our hometown biases, but 2026’s Green Bamboo also suggests desert-like flavors to us: tender nopal, tangy cactus fruit, even the woody sweetness of mesquite beans.
We recommend steeping this one in a tall glass. Your smooth green tea buds will remain closed as they infuse but stand vertically and sway like a bamboo forest.
One of the first two teas of 2026’s Spring harvest, along with First Pluck Sweet Dew.
$29.00
- Tea Origin
- Shuangfu Township, Leshan Prefecture, Sichuan Province, China
- Tea Bush
- Wen Chun
- Tea Maker
- Luo Ping
- Harvest Time
- February 2nd, 2026
- Plucking Standard
- One bud
This bright green tea is made entirely of tea buds, gently processed to be the absolute greenest of greens in both flavor and color.
The stiff buds are known as a “solid heart” (实心 shi xin) plucking because they are so tightly packed with leaves that they cannot be kneaded. The shi xin stage is harvested so early that the solid bud does not yet have any air inside it, as it will only after mere one more day’s growth.
The frying step is critical to Cui Zhu’s greenness and overall quality. If the temperature is too low, the tea will have a dull, grassy smell. If it’s too high, the tea will lose its fresh bamboo-leaf color, or, worse yet, the buds may blister and burn, masking the gentle flavor of these buds with soot.
Only experienced makers can make this tea by the traditional process: frying the buds when the wok temperature is just right, gently working the tea to maintain the uniform shape and green color while they develop the fresh, spring vegetable sweetness of the tea buds without burning them. During the frying process, the fuzzy white down of the bud is pressed off of the buds, making each one glossy and green, like a fresh young bamboo shoot, thus giving the tea its name.
Fresh Cui Zhu is a visual experience too. We recommend brewing Green Bamboo in a glass. As your tea buds infuse, they will stand vertically, drifting up and down like the swaying leaves of a bamboo forest.
