A special batch of first-pluck Long Jing Dragonwell with a unique balance of aromatics. Hazelnut butter, pralines, chocolate, raspberry jam and roasted beans.
Finding our Long Jing Imperial Green this year was easy - a few sessions with this tea and I snapped up the whole batch.
This is a first-pluck Long Jing, meaning that it is made with the very first pickings of the spring. While this does not necessarily always produce a better tea, there is something unique about teas made from the first pickings of the year because they represent the experience of the plant during the winter dormancy and the early spring.
February 2026 weather in Zhejiang was very favourable without any late-frosts (which can hinder the first plucks of the year), and so these super-early harvests can really sing!
Our 2026 Imperial Green is made from the Long Jing 43 cultivar which is unusual for us.
The 43 cultivar is the most widely used variety for Long Jing and can produce great tea but is often a bit 'average' tasting with a safe balance of flavours - warm enough to satisfy the 'roasted bean aroma' of traditional Long Jing but with extra lightness to appeal to the majority.
We usually buy different cultivars likle the Qunti or Xiao Ye Fuding to accentuate the old-school character of the roasty and toasty bean flavour but this batch of 43 beat all the competition.
The reason?
While this is unmistakeably a Long Jing 43 with green acorn and lightly flowery aroma and an easy-drinking quality, it also has remarkable depth that comes from building richness over the winter dormancy (captured in the first pluck).
The roasted fava and savoury borlotti beans are there as a foundation to anchor this tea as a classic Dragonwell. But, the taste is elevated in this batch.
Bridging the light and the deep is a land of candied pralines, hazelnut butter, white chocolate and raspberry jam. There is also a starchy sweetness of adzuki and sesame mochi bathing in syrupy sweetness.
The mouthfeel is brothy moving to mineral moving to juicy with a nectar sweet juiciness and the creamy freshness of custard apples.
So we have Long Jing with a unique expression of the 43 cultivar - a balance between deep and light with an empasis on the sweet candied and nutty midtones.
Will we find a batch like this next year or is this a one-off? Just like all in tea, we can only celebrate the tea in our cup and wait for nature to surprise us!
WEST LAKE XIHU vs NON WEST LAKE
This tea is not a Xihu tea. Xihu tea is, in my opinion, almost always over-priced and the quality of experience does not justify the extra expense. You can drink comparable or even better tea from elsewhere without paying for the nametag.
I taste dozens of Xihu tea every year and if we find a batch that I think is really pinnacle and deserves to be tasted then we offer this as Long Jing Supreme.
Please note that you may find white-yellow fur on the tea and little balls of fur in the tea. This is NOT mold but is tea fur showing that the tea is a very early spring tea.
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