From Henan to Wuyi — a master cupper’s selection
Fang Ting first encountered Wuyi Ròu Guì during a sourcing trip to Fujian in her early years as a green tea specialist. The spice-forward character intrigued her, and she spent that autumn apprenticing with a fourth-generation roaster in the town of Xingcun. For this 2025 lot, she returned to the same family workshop in the Banyan Creek micro-area of the Wuyi Scenic Reserve. The bushes, grown on reddish clay soil at 600 m, were plucked on a cool late-April morning with three leaves and a bud, then withered under shade for four hours. The charcoal roasting was done in two passes — the first at a gentle 90 °C for eight hours, the second at 70 °C for ten — using longan wood charcoal. Fang selected only the batches that showed exceptional yan yun (rock rhythm) after a 60-day resting period. She describes this tea as a bridge between the bright floral rock teas and the deeper roasted styles, with a clarity that speaks to her own northern-palate training in Henan’s delicate green teas.