Su Mao Feng (素毛峰, Sù Máo Fēng, “Plain Hairy Peak”)

Su Mao Feng is a green tea from Emei Mountain in Sichuan province. It is the people's green tea, and we get this from the Ding Ding Xiang Collective, which is a group of about nine different farms in the central Sichuan region that specialize in green tea. This is one of the teas that we've actually carried the longest, and my contact with this tea originally came from the time I spent living in Chengdu between 2010 and the end of 2012. Su Mao Feng was the first Sichuanese tea that I ever tasted. It was actually in the office of the organization that I worked at. We had this tea in a little canister in the break room, and it was just there for employees to drink, and I just thought it was the best green tea I'd ever had drinking out of a paper cup. And they told me this is just ordinary tea, this is what we drink when we're just drinking tea every day. The Su in Su Mao Feng means plain, and that's to distinguish it from Hua Mao Feng, which is the ubiquitous jasmine tea that you find in Sichuan that is also based on the same style. This tea is produced in what I like to call the Western vernacular style, which means that you've got an early spring to mid spring pick, depending on the grade. The earlier in the spring, the more buds, the higher the grade. And they process it with a high heat Sha Qing firing, and then the shaping is very minimal. You get kind of an informal, loose roll shape to this tea. I like to get the grade that we do, because it has lots of downy buds, and you get a nice perfume off of it, but you don't sacrifice that very umami green body that the leaves give you. I think this green tea is a great teaching tea. It is a great tea to learn how to pour green tea gongfu style with, because although it can be bitter if you scald it or steep it too long, it can also be really sweet and mellow and delicious. And the way I like to make this tea is to, first of all, do a warm-ish rinse just to get those leaves open. The leaves are very small, and they are downy. They're fuzzy and downy, and so they take a little bit of time to fully get wet. On the rinse, because the leaves are so small, I like to roll those leaves by pouring in one spot and get some mechanical agitation on them for that rinse. And I'll rinse them at about 195 degrees to 200 degrees Fahrenheit, and then after that quick rinse, give them a second to kind of suck up that water and expand a little bit, because they are these small downy leaves. They take a second to really get wet. And then I like to cool my water, sometimes as low as 185 degrees or maybe even lower, usually just smelling the tea and feeling out the temperature. And that first steep, I'll do a gentle pour, circling around the leaf mass, letting the water rise up and lift up the leaves. And I want that water at about 185 degrees to 190 degrees. Second steeping, pretty much the same thing. The leaves are going to be expanding still. You won't have full expansion by the second steeping. So I just like to use a gentle pour, try to avoid rolling the leaves too, too much. And I'm really going for a sense of plumping up and gently filling that gaiwan and letting those leaves absorb that water. From one steeping to the next, I find that you start with a little bit sweeter note, a little bit more perfumey note, and you get into these really nice snow pea, almost savory notes in the middle. And then towards the end, as it starts to get more insipid, you get some more of that sweetness coming out in the mouth, kind of like a pulpy sweetness to it. I think this is a great one to get to know the process of steeping green tea with. And if you master it, if you can get good at making it, it's a great first green tea to serve to people, to really showcase the sweetness and the full body that green teas can have.