Edward Eisler's Tea Talk - 1st December 2006

Zhejiang is also home to outstanding green teas like Anji Bai cha, Mogan Huang Ya, Purple Bamboo and Jing Mountain. I spent a couple of weeks in Zhejiang in April earlier this year and one of the regions that yielded one of the best finds of the year was Jing Mountain - the place where Japanese monks first came to learn about tea and Buddhism. The air is immensely sweet and fresh.

I visited a beautiful little tea factory at the bottom of the mountain, where the fresh tea was being processed.

As is always the way with the best tea in China, I did not have much time to make a decision on the tea. There is such a high demand for outstanding tea from China's domestic market that if I had not made a decision then and there, there was a queue of people including the Communist Party, willing to take the lot. Only 15kg had been produced in 3 days and each day’s batch was outstanding. Pure and elegant, the tea is made with small, tight sage green curls streaked with silver. They have an invigorating fragrance – like wet stones after a summer rain. Infused, the leaves impart a silky yellow hue with a spectrum of flavours, ranging from flinty to sweet hay. I could not resist.