Forest Da Hong Pao (Big Red Robe)
Rock Wulong Tea 2025
This overtly aromatic rock wulong boasts piercing complex florals with sweet notes of puff pastry and peach syrup. An unusually green and tangy take on the famous Da Hong Pao wulong, made from forest-grown Huang Guanyin cultivar tea bushes.
$23.25
- Tea Origin
- Wuyishan City, Fujian Province, China
- Tea Bush
- Huang Guanyin
- Tea Maker
- Zhou Yousheng and Huang Shiying
- Harvest Time
- Late April
- Plucking Standard
- Zhong kai mian
This particularly unusual interpretation of Da Hong Pao (Big Red Robe) is the handiwork of master wulong maker Zhou Yousheng (our long-time producer of Rougui, Old Bush Narcissus, Xiao Hong Pao and more). Here, he crafts his personal take on the Wuyi standard with his distinctive stylistic emphasis on potent, well-developed aromatics, coaxed out of the leaves of forest-grown tea bushes from a largely-undisturbed patch of the Wuyi Mountains. We were impressed by his bright, light, and fragrant approach to this Wuyi classic and had to procure some to show off the floral end of rock wulong in finest form.
Unlike most blended Da Hong Pao, Mr. Zhou’s Forest Da Hong Pao is made from only a single variety of Wuyishan’s many rock wulong cultivars: the Huang Guanyin (Yellow Guanyin) tea bush, a hybrid descendant of the popular Huang Dan and Tieguanyin varieties that dates back to the late ’90s. Mr. Zhou’s forest-grown Huang Guanyin bushes are nearly 30 years old, making them some of the earliest commercial plantings of this cultivar. With Forest Da Hong Pao’s light roast and oxidation, you can taste a hint of this tea bush’s Tieguanyin ancestors in the tangy green notes of its full, smooth flavor.
Mr. Zhou’s Forest Da Hong Pao embraces the definition of “Da Hong Pao” in the most expansive sense: simply as a representative rock wulong from Wuyishan.
The Dark Horse of Light Rock Wulong
Among the wulong producers of Wuyi Mountain, Zhou Yousheng is something of a dark horse. He’s a tea maker with no teachers in the craft save for his upbringing in a tea farming family. By this, he’s the most representative of the generational knowledge held by Wuyishan’s tea people. He has been in contact with tea every day since he was a child as the youngest of seven. Although his name is not associated with this origin’s famous teachers, the standard of his craft commands unequivocal respect. His tea consistently wins Wuyishan’s tea competitions. His Huang Guanyin won the grand prize at Wuyishan’s Zhang Tianfu Cup in 2020, beating out hundreds of other teas. His blended Da Hong Pao also stood above over a thousand other competitors in 2021’s Wuyishan Cross-Strait tea competition, winning the silver medal for Da Hong Pao category.
Mr. Zhou’s tea making emphasizes aromas that are sweet, heady and persistent. There’s a daring lightness to his tea that drops some of the mellow body that rock wulong is known for in favor of keeping its bouquet.
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.
