Fuding White Tea: The Homeland of White Tea and the Return to Nature

The year is 2019, we are a young tea company in the Florentin neighborhood of Tel Aviv, almost COVID time. One rainy day, we made a controversial decision - to immediately stop marketing Chinese white tea from Fuding. In one moment of realization, we stopped pouring and selling some of our most successful and best-selling tea types from the past year.

The Birthplace of White Tea

Located in the east of Fujian province, about a three-hour train ride from our home in Xiamen, the town of Fuding is the homeland of white tea (Fuding bai cha 福鼎白茶). White tea relies on a seemingly intuitive and simple process of plucking, withering, and controlled drying, without the need for machinery or sophistication, which are the bread and butter of wulong tea (oolong tea) making and a source of pride for Fujian province. Tea cultivation in the Taimu Mountains (Taimu shan 太姥山), the core of Fuding, dates back to the Song Dynasty, and continued to develop into the white tea we know today, primarily within a local framework.

In the early 2000s, the Fujian government began working to promote white tea in its homeland. The revival of white tea proclaimed a return to the simplicity and purity of tea leaves that retain their natural shape, storing energy from the earth and sun. This new trend, which required almost no technological investment, aligned with today's conscious consumer movement and spread quickly. Today, white tea is grown and produced in almost all tea growing regions around the world, alongside the timeless black tea.

Fuding town from the Taimu Mountains viewpoint, Fujian 2024

So what went wrong on that gloomy day that caused us to make a radical and uneconomical decision for our new tea boutique?

As professional tea traders and long time consumers, we consistently drink tea daily. At that time, we also began importing tea into the country in a regulated manner, which required us to perform quality control and learn import standards, including those for spraying and pesticide residues in tea leaves. The combination of these two roles, business and personal, brought together different areas of interest around tea and naturally broadened our horizons. We began to delve deeper and research how tea affects us daily, what role it plays in our well-being, and what level of responsibility we have when providing tea and service to customers.

To our great surprise, we discovered that the field of laboratory testing for pesticide residues, molds, and heavy metals in tea leaves is a Pandora's Box that few dare to open. Regulations are hardly enforced in Western countries, relying primarily on tests performed by growers according to local standards of the growing region, with the responsibility ultimately resting on the importers. You would surely be surprised to hear that precisely in the main growing countries – China, Taiwan, and Japan – the use of a variety of chemicals for pesticides and fertilizing tea leaves is particularly permissive by law (1), and does not align with food import regulations in European countries (2), the US, and Australia. The gap in legally permitted dosages is also enormous, sometimes by hundreds or thousands of percent, and there is a list of hundreds of pesticides that are only allowed for use there and not here. These shocking news back then are still very much relevant today.

We knew what we had to do and that the only way was to test every source and raw material ourselves that we work with or consider working with in the future. We created a database of tests for 552 registered pesticides and sent tea samples from all the growers we worked with to the Eurofins lab in Taiwan. Anyone who did not meet the new standards we set was out of the game. The raw material from our grower in Fuding, who claimed to us that it was organic, was among the few that did not pass the test, so we decided to stop working with him immediately. Since the same chemical suppliers provide the materials and spraying services to other growers in the area, and also because tea prices in Fuding at that time were particularly high due to the popularity of the area, we decided at this point that it was not worth continuing to invest and look for an alternative. This was essentially a turning point for our tea venture, which began to gain momentum from the outside and shape itself from within.

The Difference Between Organic Tea and Free Tea

Parallel to the laboratory tests and the decision-making process regarding future collaborations, we began researching and taking interest in organic, natural, and sustainable farming methods. We quickly became exposed not only to the ideological gaps and the damage pesticides cause to human health (3), but also to the short-term and long-term damage caused to the soil, and harm to the animals that are an integral part of the tea farm ecosystem – the natural growth and fertilization process of tea.

Organic tea is a legally protected term describing a certification given to a producer who meets defined procedures regarding limited use of chemical sprays and fertilizers. However, this certification does not guarantee that the tea is clean – meaning it was not sprayed at all; it is possible that organic tea has been sprayed and/or fertilized with substances permitted by regulations. Furthermore, organic certification does not necessarily guarantee the absence of broad environmental harm and the preservation of animals as part of the ecosystem where the tea trees grow.

Organic white tea plucking, Fuding 2024

In contrast to organic tea, tea grown with natural farming and in harmony with nature grows with minimal human intervention. Tea grown under these conditions is necessarily clean tea, and we call it "Free Tea" (ye fang 野放, ye sheng 野生). It grows without any spraying at all, and even without fertilization except for natural pruning from the tea trees. There are significant differences in agricultural yield between organic tea and tree tea. The profile of Free Tea is not fixed and predictable like organic tea; it is more dynamic and open to the interpretation and creativity of the grower and the terroir it comes from.

Behind every clean tea, we discovered an ethical farmer with a value agenda towards the environment and human health, and a personal "uneconomical" story just like ours. We could empathize with the compromises and business sacrifices farmers had to make to produce clean tea in a world where the commercial aspect sets the tone. We learned that clean tea requires more maintenance, knowledge, and creativity to deal with weather changes and nature. Clean tea is also characterized by a small and inconsistent yield from season to season, which makes the raw material more expensive but allows the growers to earn a respectable living. However, in many cases, it is more "economical," as a small weight of leaves is enough to make a more energetic and effective infusion compared to commercial tea.

Free white tea growing wild in Taimu Shan, Fuding, Fujian 2024

In that same year, we found our purpose and in retrospect understood our values and priorities in our work. Our questions to our mentors and our entire approach to sourcing changed, and day by day, we developed in a new direction of clean and sustainable tea, out of awareness and responsibility to nature, people, and the future of the tea industry, which cannot continue to exist if the damage we cause to the environment persists. All the puzzle pieces fit together perfectly, and we decided to inscribe the symbol of nature and sustainability on our banner in all our actions – from fieldwork in the fields, through marketing products, to the trips we guide in Asia.

Fuding White Tea Makes a Comeback

Later, it turned out that the decision which stemmed from a genuine concern for import legality and for our health and that of those around us, proved to be no less than a prophecy. In the following years, the emergence of clean white tea versions in other growing regions in China, such as Moonlight White in Yunnan province, or Shan Cha in Taiwan, threatened the future of the local industry. In response, the local government began implementing dramatic administrative and legal changes in the policy for maintaining growing lands and trading Fuding white tea. To preserve the unique image of the homeland's terroir, it imposed restrictions on the use of chemical pesticides and fertilizers and began enforcing policy against those who do not meet the standards.

In early 2024, with our return to China after the Corona crisis, which included relocating to Fujian and opening another ho yum tea branch in Hong Kong, the search for clean white tea from Fuding resumed. With more experience and resources than before, we succeeded in finding two sources of clean tea from the most prestigious area in Taimu Shan, with whom we are happy to start working this year. The laboratory tests of both growers came out completely clean, and when we visited the plantations, there was no room for doubt regarding the natural cultivation method by which the tea has always grown.

Free tea trees in a nature reserve in the heart of Taimu Shan, Fuding, Fujian 2024

After 5 years during which we were content with clean white tea from Yunnan province, Taiwan, and even from India and Georgia, the longed-for comeback of Fuding white tea arrives with creative and unique agricultural produce. Qing Shou Mei was the first in our new white tea series, a tea that was introduced and educated our blind tasting club members last winter due to its uncharacteristic green nature. Earlier this winter, we announced three more products from the Spring 2021 and 2023 harvests in the Taimu Mountains, including two grades of Bai Mu Dan 白牡丹 from different farms (Bai Mu Dan 2023 at a particularly high grade is available only at the Hong Kong branch).

The process of grading white tea takes months, sometimes more than a year, until the tea stabilizes and receives its final grade and price tag. We continue to monitor closely and sample different versions of Bai Mu Dan and Shou Mei that we collected from the Spring 2024 harvest until we start making decisions regarding purchasing, further aging, and selling the tea. In autumn 2025, a course is planned to be held at our house in Xiamen that will delve into different types of white tea from various terroirs across Asia, including Taimu Shan.