2019 Chinese Green Teas are available in our store | HOJO Online Speciality Tea Shop

We have now received three types of 2019 Chinese green tea and one yellow tea. Thanks to less rain in this spring, the quality of these teas is excellent.

Shi Feng Long Jing 獅峰龍井茶

Long Jing is the well-known Chinese green tea. It is produced in Zhejiang Province. In particular, Shi Feng Long Jing produced in Long Jing village is known to be the king of Long Jing. The Long Jing village is located at higher altitude compared to other tea production area. In addition, Long Jing village has many old tea trees and many of these tea trees are grown from seeds.
Nowadays, majority of Long Jing is made from the cultivated tea called Long Jing No. 43, it is propagated by cutting. If you compare the tea tree grown from seed with the tree grown from cutting, the different is less noticeable. But the root structure is completely different. The tea tree planted from seed produces long and straight root that grown vertically underground, while the cultivated tea produces multi-number of hairy roots that grow aside like beard. The vertical root is able to absorb minerals efficiently while the horizontal root of cultivated tea is easy to absorb fertilizer applied on the ground surface. The difference in root structure is clearly reflected on the growing speed and the taste of tea.
The Long Jing No. 43 grows faster and ready for plucking in early spring, while the seed-grown tea is coming up very slowly and it is only available in later timing of spring. The taste of seed-grown tea is thick and it gives long-lasting flavour with deep aftertaste, while the cultivated tea generally gives lighter aftertaste.
Ironically, the price of cultivated tea tends to be rather higher thanks to the faster growing speed. Some people misunderstood that the earlier the tea grows in spring, the better the tea quality, and there are quite a number of people willingly paid a higher price for the earlier-plucked tea. The fact is in early spring season, the cultivated tea is ready in the tea market, while the old tree of seed-grown tea is only available later in spring.
We always cherish the aftertaste and more three-dimensional taste. So, we only purchase the seed-grown Long Jing.

This year we have selected new tea manufacturer in order to improve both the quality and the cost. We managed to increase the quality, yet the selling price is lower than before. Please experience the three-dimensional taste of our new Shi Feng Long Jing. This tea gives fresh nutty aroma with a hint of sweet floral note, and long-lasting sweetish finishing down the throat.

Xi Hu Long Jing 西湖龍井茶

Xi Hu Long Jing refers to the Long Jing produced around the West Lake of Zhejiang Province. This tea is also made from the seed-grown tea tree. We positioned this product as a little more casual line-ups as compared to the Shi Feng Long Jing.
Xi Hu Long Jing gives quite long-lasting aftertaste with a clean sweet nutty flavour. I recommend this tea for those who like to drink more teas casually as a daily tea in this season.

Meng Ding Gan Lu 蒙頂甘露

Meng Ding Gan Lu is the famous green tea from Sichuan province.
Last year, we released this tea and it was sold out in less than two weeks due to the limited availability. This year we made a pre-booking before tea season started. So, we have successfully sourced more quantity.
Although the name of this tea seems unfamiliar, according to the tea history, it is known to be the first green tea produced in China back in 2000 years ago, and it was a tribute tea.
We particularly selected tea garden that uses no fertilizer, and not to mention pesticide is not used at all. This tea gives a sweet and refreshing nutty note, with a hint of mild floral undertones, with long-lasting aftertaste. You may be able to brew it over many times.

Junshan Yinzhen　君山銀針 – Yellow Tea

We have been introducing this uniquely special tea for several years till 2014. We stopped purchasing this tea since 2015.
Junshan Yinzhen is the famous yellow tea from Hunan Province. It is one of the top ten famous Chinese tea. It is only produced at the Junshan Island located in Dong Ting lake. Chinese government often used this tea as the tribute tea when the prime minister or president of other countries are visiting China. This tea was presented as the Gift Tea when Russian president and German prime minister visited China.

The Junshan Yinzhen tea garden at Junshan Island

Yellow tea is processed in a unique manner, and it is different from green tea. It undergoes smothering (Meng Huang) process which is sort of maturation process. At first, tea is pan-fried to inactivate the enzyme. Then, the freshly fried tea buds with higher moisture content are kept for a day to cause the maturation. Due to this unique way of making tea, the tea taste is well-rounded up and at the same time develop distinctive flavour that reminds us of fresh bamboo shoots or sugar cane shoot.

In Junshan Island, tea garden is solely owned by one company. So, it is literally monopolized. Due to the fame, there are a number of people produce similar tea outside the island too. Needless to say, both the taste and the flavour is totally different despite the appearance of the dry tea buds looks similar.
The uniqueness of why the Junshan Yinzhen became so popular in China is the soil in Junshan Island is very rich in calcium. In addition, the tea trees in Junshan island is very old and all tea trees were seed-grown. So, the genuine Junshan Yinzhen gives both strong body and deep aftertaste.

Since we established our tea line-ups in 2006, we have been consistently buying this yellow tea produced in Junshan Island. However, in recent years, the tea price was speculated a lot due to the consequences that the tea garden is solely monopolized by a single company. In addition, we noticed that the quality was not very consistent despite the price kept increasing. So, we have stop buying this tea since 2015.
But then last year we got a breaking news! The Junshan Yinzhen manufacturing company was sold to other company. So, we contacted the new company to request for the new crop of 2019. We are pleasantly surprised when we tasted the tea. The new company managed the process very well and the quality is perfectly good as how it used to be in the past before 2015. In addition, the price is lower than before. So, we are pleased to purchase Junshan Yinzhen once again.