White Peony Tea, known as Bai Mudan (also Pai Mu Tan) is a sweet, mild-tasting tea made from unopened tea buds, as well as the two newest leaves to sprout. The freshly-harvested leaves are allowed to wither and dry in the sun. The natural oxidation which takes place during this withering gives White Peony Tea beautiful, lush flavors. The nose is warm, floral and rich like fruit blossoms. It is most often found today in its loose-leaf form, but historically has also been stored packed or compressed – for aging or simple ‘keeping’.
This type of tea has been popular for a long time but is particularly popular now (the last twenty years or so) due to the mistaken belief that it is low in caffeine (which it is not, it is actually among the highest caffeine content teas that one can drink) and for reputed health benefits (also subjective and questionable!).
But basically, it is simply a very tasty tea and well worth its time in the teapot just to savor its deliciousness! It is also extremely economical due to the huge number of cups of steeped tea a measure of tea will yield.
White Peony Tea is probably the most common white tea in the market, and it is the most widely-loved white tea. Because there are more people now who enjoy white tea in its aged form, white tea is also being pressed into cakes, like puerh, because white tea cakes are convenient (and are an excellent method for both aging and storing). White Peony Tea Cakes have flourished in the most recent two decades, resulting in a wide range of quality in the market, with inevitable huge price differences – some pricing based on quality and other times not.
The White Peony Tea cake that we offer here is sourced by us from traditional tea farmers on Taimu mountain in Fuding. Its leaf is made in the traditional sun-dried production method, and then the beeng cha is stone-mould-pressed. When you taste it you will find this White Peony Tea cake to be totally different than the widely-available ones made in the large-scale industrialized factories.
This cake, if purchased in Shanghai, Beijing, Taipei, or Hong Kong today (for instance) would normally cost two times what we are charging for it, simply because the demand is so great for a beeng of such high quality.
Our 2016 White Peony Tea cake is excellent for drinking now, but if you store it for a few more years, it will taste even better. You can also do both, by sub-dividing the beeng. It will likely be best consumed by the end of 2026, but who knows at this time?
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New Tea, Rested Tea & Aged Tea