Ming Qian Mogan Green
Green Tea 2024
The earliest spring tea harvest on Mogan Mountain, made into a classic green tea instead of their unique yellow tea. Distinct aromatics of fresh snow pea overlay faint notes of sweet toasted grain. Deeply complex and flavorful, with elusive sweet, mineral, and green vegetable flavors that are so well balanced that they are difficult to characterize.
$30.00
- Tea Origin
- Moganshan, Deqing County, Huzhou City, Zhejiang Province, China
- Tea Bush
- Mogan Quntizhong (Mogan Heirloom Tea Bush)
- Tea Maker
- Wang Xiangzhen and Zhao Xianqin
- Harvest Time
- April 4th, 2024
- Plucking Standard
- One bud, one leaf
Ming Qian Mogan Green was made with the year’s earliest available harvest on April 4th, 2024, plucked at a standard of one bud and one leaf.
Mogan’s Green Tea
While Moganshan (Mogan Mountain) is famous for its production of the rare yellow tea Mogan Huangya (Mogan Yellow Buds), it is far more widely known for its outstanding green tea. Ming Qian Mogan Green is a classic high-end early spring tea: crisp and fresh, layered with rich flavors due to concentrated amino acids and antioxidants, yet light and airy all the same. Unlike yellow or black tea, green tea is processed as quickly as possible to discourage any oxidation of the leaves. It’s made from the earliest available harvest of one bud and one leaf pluckings, as soon as the bushes produce them—historically the most prized leaf of the year, the earlier the better.
Due to the altitude of Moganshan, the spring harvest comes a little later than in the lowlands. As a result of cold winter weather and unprecedented freezing rains this year, the harvest was delayed 10 days later than usual. Mogan is the highest mountain peak in the Hangzhou City region, in both Deqing and Anji Counties of Zhejiang Province. Hengling Gardens lies at 1800–2000ft in altitude, where the colder mountain weather encourages the tea bushes to produce higher levels of amino acids and antioxidants in their leaves to survive the temperature fluctuations.
The heirloom tea bushes of Mogan Mountain
Mogan’s teas are made from the leaves of heirloom tea bushes that have been cultivated at Hengling since the 1970s. While these bushes were originally from the popular rich-flavored Jiu Keng cultivar native to western Zhejiang, they have changed and adapted so much after living in Mogan for so long that they are now considered a Mogan heirloom cultivar. Furthermore, at Hengling Gardens, these bushes have been propagated from seed (rather than by cuttings) to preserve the plants’ genetic diversity. In turn, this variety translates to a remarkably layered and complex flavor in the final tea. This type of heirloom cultivar is often described as quntizhong (literally, “group varieties”) by tea scholars. Many of China’s most distinctive teas are made from these bushes that have evolved alongside their particular processing styles.
While Mogan’s yellow tea is the most distinctive, its green tea is definitely the most well-known. The majority of each year’s harvest goes toward this most classic of traditionally-made Chinese teas. In fact, Mogan’s green tea was recognized nationally in 2000 when it won the prestigious Magnolia Award, the grand prize of the Shanghai Television Exhibition.
Origins in the Green Tea Capital: Hangzhou
Moganshan has long been praised for its green tea, and actually produces far more green tea than yellow. This particular origin was even mentioned in Lu Yu’s Cha Jing, the first book on tea ever written over 1,200 years ago. Mogan is the tallest mountain peak in the Hangzhou area at 758 meters. This entire region of Zhejiang Province has a very long history of producing excellent green tea, including Longjing (Dragon Well), the most famous green tea in China. The Hangzhou origin which produces our Shifeng Longjing (Shifeng Dragon Well) is only about an hour’s drive away from Moganshan.
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.
