First Pluck Bi Luo Chun

Green Tea 2023

The first spring harvest of the famous Bi Luo Chun green tea, entirely made by hand. Fresh from firing and shaping. Rich, cooling orchid fragrance meets bright white fruit blossoms and a wisp of cinders from the wok.

Limit 3 bags per customer.

$50.00

Clear selection

Tea Origin
Jingtingzhen (Xishan), Suzhou City, Jiangsu Province, China

Tea Bush
Xishan Xiaoye Quntizhong (Xishan Small Leaf Heirloom Tea Bush)

Tea Maker
Lu Genliang

Harvest Time
March 24th 2023

Plucking Standard
One bud, one leaf

Loquat trees surrounding tea bushes in the Bi Luo Chun garden on a misty hillside.
Loquat trees surrounding tea bushes in the Bi Luo Chun garden.

Bi Luo Chun is the second most famous of all Chinese green teas – after Shifeng Longjing, of course. This is the most traditional and authentic version of the tea, grown on Xishan Island within Tai Lake from seed-grown bushes of the local genetic line. This small lot of Bi Luo Chun are leaves from only the very first day of plucking (March 24th, 2023.)

The exceptionally small leaves of heirloom Bi Luo Chun requires one of the finest and most demanding plucking operations in the world, one done with precision in the dark, just as the early-morning mist is rising from the eastern waters of Tai Lake. These tiniest-of-tiny leaves are the most expensive material that will be produced in the garden all year. It’s an extremely small quantity of tea that can only be plucked in those cold and misty days of the early spring.

The heirloom tea bushes that are integral to this tea develop slowly. They don’t sprout new leaves until much later than the popular early-flushing cultivars. However, this means that the bushes unfurl new leaves at the same time that the many fruit trees in and around the garden are perfuming the air with profuse blossoms of loquat, red bayberry, coriander, chestnut, ginkgo, pomegranate, and yellow pear. Echoes of those sweet scents turn up in Bi Luo Chun’s pronounced fruity and floral character.

No chemical fertilizer, pesticide, or herbicide was used in the production of this tea. Click here to read more about our promise to fair trade and the environment.

First Pluck Bi Luo Chun brewing guidelines

5 grams (1.5 Tb) tea

12 oz 85°C (185ºF) water

3 min. first infusion

At least 4 infusions: 3, 3, 5, 8 minutes