Of everything we brought to Europe this summer, this box was the most successful. It turned heads at the Paris tea festival and stood at the center of the modern gong fu cha workshop we ran in Belgium.
Dan Cong is a relatively new trend in the tea world, and most people have never tasted the original reference: tea that grew for years naturally, without the commercial pressure of volume and timing. When demand rises, what happens with new discoveries is competition between growers and opportunism that leans on heavy pesticide use, producing tea that is very limited in clarity, in endurance and in the interest it holds. Our Dan Cong are exactly the opposite. Three teas from three different sources in the heart of the Phoenix Mountains, Fenghuang Shan 鳳凰山, from growers who have never used pesticides and never pushed nature to grow more, bigger, faster. The difference is substantial.
This is our flagship series for 2026, from the 2025 harvest. Dan Cong at this level, like fine yancha, is drunk a year or two after picking. The biggest mistake is to buy it fresh and drink it right away, like a red wine that is meant to age in oak. The baking on all three is restrained and refined, because here the terroir dictates the profile more than the craftsmanship does.
 
 
Ya Hou Ba Xian 啞后八仙 2025. Ya Hou is the village in Wu Dong Shan where the original mother tree of this cultivar grew. According to local tradition, cuttings were taken from it in 1898 and only eight survived, hence the name "the Eight Immortals". Every other growing area for Ba Xian is a modern attempt to grow the cultivar somewhere that is not natural to it, out of a shortage of land and resources, and to bring down the price of a tea that is among the most expensive and prestigious in the genre. Once you drink it you will understand why.
 
 
Bai Shui Ca Ya Shi Xiang 白水礤鴨屎香 2025. "Duck shit aroma", the famous cultivar, from farmer Yong, who around twenty-five years ago went looking for clean land at almost 1,000 meters and has grown there under the yefang 野放 (natural farming) approach ever since: no pesticides, no fertilizers, and as little intervention as possible. We had the tea lab tested and it came back completely clean. Aromatic, floral and perfumed, medium in body, with a prominent chaqi 茶氣 (physical effect).
 
 
Wu Dong Gu Shu Shui Xian 烏崠古樹水仙 2025. Shui Xian trees more than a hundred years old in the heart of Wu Dong Shan, among the few outside Yunnan that deserve the term gushu 古樹 (ancient trees), given a slow bake of more than twenty hours over charcoal. A velvety texture that coats the whole mouth, hazelnuts, chestnuts and mushroom, and a huigan 回甘 (returning sweetness) that behaves more like a sheng pu'er than a wulong. Winner of the Favorite Tea Award in the tenth, celebratory edition of our Blind Tasting Club. This is a tea we age and experiment with in our warehouse in Xiamen, including its earliest form, the maocha before roasting, which was the great hit of that same edition, in a release kept exclusively for club members.

6 bags of 7 grams, 2 of each type. Special price; discount coupons cannot be applied.