Shifeng ridge, ten days before the rain
Shifeng — Lion Peak — is the highest of the four classical Longjing ridges above West Lake, and the one most growers will quietly tell you they envy. The soil is a weathered yellow loam over sandstone, the mornings sit under mist until nearly ten, and the old qunti seed-bushes here push their first buds slowly enough that the sugars have time to build. This lot was picked across three mornings in late March 2026, ten days before qīngmíng, when the standard is still one bud and one just-unfurling leaf.
Chen Hui Yi sourced this batch through a grower cooperative she has worked with for six seasons. Her own expertise sits in the white teas of Fuding and the aged-white tradition of Guangdong, but she has spent every spring of the last decade walking the Zhejiang green-tea ridges during the pre-qīngmíng window — partly to keep her palate honest, partly because the wok-firing here is, in her words, the closest cousin to the careful low-heat finishing she trusts in whites.
The firing was done in iron woks within four hours of plucking. The maker is a third-generation Shifeng family who still presses each leaf flat against the wok wall by hand — the gesture called dā (搭) — which is what gives authentic Longjing its narrow, sword-flat shape rather than the curled or rolled leaf of cheaper imitations. We bought a small parcel; this 5g sample is from the second-day pluck, which Chen rates as the most balanced of the three.