Verdant Tea

This bundle includes six 25g bags of Wuyi tea for 150g total (30 sessions). This special limited-offering tasting kit is a chance to do a unique taste-off showdown of three of Wuyishan’s most sought after varietals, crafted by the Li family as both oolong and black tea for six unique offerings. The purpose of this kit is to show off the intense influence of craft on finished tea, even when that tea is the same varietal grown by the same family in the same place. Mei Zhan, Bai Rui Xiang and Rou Gui are all famous Wuyi teas traditionally finished as oolongs. Indeed, all three have brought the Li Family best in show awards year after year. Recently, the Li Family has begun to apply their masterful traditional black tea craft to famous "oolong" varietals at the family workshop in Tongmu, yielding exciting new ways to taste and feel the terroir of the region. This kit will let you compare oolong and black tea finishes on the same varietals while these unique limited harvest offerings are available.

This bundle includes five 25g bags of Wuyi tea for 125g total (25 sessions). Wuyishan is one of the most famous tea growing regions in the world, and true hand-crafted tea from within the Wuyi Ecological Preserve is incredibly elusive with a proliferation of imitations out there. That is why we are so lucky to be working with the dynamic award-winning Li Family, who have been visionaries in restoring biodiversity and forest cover within the preserve and leaders in oolong craft.

Li Xiangxi, founder of the Yangxian Institute of Tea Culture, works with her brother and cousin to finish deep aromatic and wildly complex oolongs, as well as traditional old-school black teas from their ancestral home in Tongmu.

This collection represents a classic tasting curriculum, spanning the most important flavors, textures and aromas to be familiar with in beginning to understand what makes Wuyishan so special. This kit has been put together to provide a foundation to explore the wider Li Family collection with a deep tasting vocabulary, and of course, to come out with a true sense of the Wuyi microclimate.

This bundle includes 25g each of five different Wuyi oolong teas for 125g total (25 sessions). Wuyishan is perhaps the most famous tea growing region in the world, and our partner Li Xiangxi and her family cultivate their award-winning oolongs in a perfectly-situated gorge along the Longchuan river within the Wuyishan Ecological Preserve, a pristine environmentally-protected region where biodiversity is key, and tea grows alongside wild bamboo, evergreens, and flowers.

Part of that biodiversity is about encouraging not just the widely known varietals like Rou Gui or Qilan to grow, but also making space for rare and difficult to find varietals not often seen or known outside of Wuyishan. Li Xiangxi believes that each varietal bring its own unique style to the pure expression of Wuyi minerality, and this sampler is a testament to those unique perspectives. Taste through five Wuyi oolong teas - including famous cultivars and less-well-known varietals.

Mei Zhan varietal is famous for its rich and focused fruit-forward oolong made from long skinny spring leaves. Recently, Mr. Li has been experimenting with a stand of his family’s iconic Mei Zhan in early spring when the plant puts out huge buds that are too delicate to withstand oolong processing. He personally leads the hand-picking of the Li Family Mei Zhan buds and brings them to the family home and workshop in Tongmu for Jin Jun Mei meticulous black tea hand-finishing. The slow oxidation in bamboo baskets brings out big savory notes and sweet rich honey and cream.

Li Xiangxi works with her brother and cousins in the Wuyi Ecological Preserve to harvest this propagated-from-seed Xiaozhong varietal leaf and process it using traditional heap oxidization techniques and curling to bring out the tea’s natural complexity. Grown on a hillside in a ravine that collects a pocket of natural mist all morning, the tea buds slowly, yielding an incredibly sweet brew. The tea picks up mineral texture from the rocky volcanic soil and the natural spring water running through the Li Family’s plot. Deeper complexity comes from the natural genetic variation of allowing their Xiaozhong tea to grow from seed instead of cuttings, creating a rich multi-layered taste experience.

Tall, bold, angular and geometric, this celadon set features a hand-finished gaiwan, two tall cups that could easily double as aroma cups, and a hexagonal celadon pitcher. Traditional high-fired Longquan kiln celadon is fully-vitrified, non-reactive and perfect for amplifying the aromatics and texture of your tea. Embrace the beautiful jade celadon inspired by the Song Dynasty pottery tradition!

Tall, bold, angular and geometric, this celadon set features a hand-finished gaiwan, two tall cups that could easily double as aroma cups, and a hexagonal celadon pitcher. Traditional high-fired Longquan kiln celadon is fully-vitrified, non-reactive and perfect for amplifying the aromatics and texture of your tea. Embrace the beautiful jade celadon inspired by the Song Dynasty pottery tradition!

This beautiful hand-finished celadon tea set is a celebration of the abundance of nature featuring two flower-adorned tea goblets, a gaiwan with peonies in relief, and an elegant, modern hexagonal celadon pitcher. Traditional high-fired Longquan kiln celadon is fully-vitrified, non-reactive and perfect for amplifying the aromatics and texture of your tea. Embrace the beautiful jade celadon inspired by the Song Dynasty pottery tradition!

This fully hand-thrown, hand shaped tea pitcher highlights Master lin Xi’s research into ancient Song Dynasty style glazing techniques, particularly the famous and sought after Hare’s Fur style of long brown lines against black- an effect Lin Xi is able to capture because he personally excavates his glaze materials from the same sites used by Song Dynasty kilns, and blends the glaze from raw natural minerals. This pitcher's unique shape is meant to be as close as possible to the classic Jian Zhan tea bowl shape, both for the heat reflection in the kiln and to show off the glazing at the widest angles of light.

The evocative dragon and phoenix relief across this monumental celadon tea storage jar shows off the depth and luster of the glaze. Hand-finished and fired at a traditional Longquan celadon kiln, this tea storage jar is large enough for over a pound of most teas or several broken-up pu’er cakes - perfect for keeping your absolute favorite tea in easy reach, and lovely enough to make a permanent fixture on your tea table.

If you have beautiful, hand-picked and hand finished tea, why not take a moment to show off the beauty of the leaves? This elegant scoop sets the tone, both playful and gorgeous, letting you pass around a perfectly-twisted Wuyi oolong or rolled Tieguanyin before brewing.

This saucer is perfect as a tea boat for modern gongfu brewing where you skip a full tea board. The saucer will catch any small drips from your teapot or pitcher and act as a beautiful understated backdrop while you brew. The saucer also works beautifully as a paring with any saucerless celadon gaiwans in the collection if you prefer the look and feel of a saucer set-up, but is equally at home with an yixing pot.

Sleek, modern and perfectly elegant, this is the ideal mug for da bei brewing. Simply add your favorite tea leaves directly into the cup and top off water throughout the day, letting the leaves sink to the bottom. There is a beautiful lid to keep your tea warm between sips so you can enjoy it while you are reading or relaxing, which also doubles as a rest for your favorite permanent tea filter. Hand-finished and fired in a traditional Longquan kiln, this celadon is highly vitrified like glass, making it a non-reactive material that helps bring out incredible aromatic depth in your tea.

This goblet teacup is inspired by Song Dynasty wine cups, showing off the skill of the workshop and the depth of the celadon glazing in the intricate detail work of the flower motif around the cup. Hand-finished and fired in a traditional Longquan kiln, this celadon is highly vitrified like glass, making it a non-reactive material that helps bring out incredible aromatic depth in your tea.

The unique scalloped style of this tea cup evokes ocean waves or the classic auspicious Ruyi pattern. The scalloped edges also highlight the depth, color and luster of the fine Longquan celadon glazing. Hand-finished and fired in a traditional Longquan kiln, this celadon is highly vitrified like glass, making it a non-reactive material that helps bring out incredible aromatic depth in your tea.

This beautifully detailed art-deco inspired relief was meticulously crafted to show off the beauty of the celadon glazing and bring a sense of elegance to your tea. Hand-finished and fired in a traditional Longquan kiln, this celadon is highly vitrified like glass, making it a non-reactive material that helps bring out incredible aromatic depth in your tea.

This unique shape is wide enough to use as a traditional tea cup, but tall enough to double as a perfect aroma cup. To use an aroma cup, you pour into the tall cup first, then pour from that cup into a wider cup for drinking. Before tasting the tea you take in the beautiful wafting steam from the tall cup that traps the tea’s aroma and primes your pallet for the first sips. Hand-finished and fired in a traditional Longquan kiln, this celadon is highly vitrified like glass, making it a non-reactive material that helps bring out incredible aromatic depth in your tea.

This faceted hexagonal pitcher is the perfect pairing with a celadon gaiwan or tea pot. The facets show off the beautiful glazing work, while the modern picture style works in almost any set-up, even making a great color contrast paired with yixing clay teapots. Hand-finished and fired in a traditional Longquan kiln, this celadon is highly vitrified like glass, making it a non-reactive material that helps bring out incredible aromatic depth in your tea.

The ewer is a traditional implement originally used for pouring rice wine at banquets and later adopted to tea ceremony. By pouring your boiling water in an ewer first, you can bring the temperature down to a perfect level for delicate green tea, white tea, or even buddy black teas. Plus, pouring from the ewer makes for a stunningly elegant presentation for deliberate gongfu tea ritual.

The dramatic and tall looping handle on this celadon teapot is notoriously difficult to form and fire, but the effect is gorgeous, like a little kettle or a picnic basket. Hand-finished and fired in a traditional Longquan kiln, this celadon is highly vitrified like glass, making it a non-reactive material that helps bring out incredible aromatic depth in your tea.

Sample our most popular teas with this special tasting kit for first time customers. Each box ships with five 5g samples of tea, plus a bonus $5 coupon code to use on your next order.

Our Tea of the Month Club Subscription box is full of hyper-seasonal teas and fresh, limited harvests. Teas are selected each month by a single farmer to highlight their family’s work, including club-exclusives and first looks, rush-shipped in for club members.

Shopping for someone else but not sure what to give them? Give them the gift of choice with a Verdant Tea gift card. Tea lovers can use the Verdant Tea Gift Card to purchase loose leaf tea, teaware, bulk Tea Club subscriptions, and more! Gift cards are delivered by email and contain instructions to redeem them at checkout. Our gift cards have no additional processing fees.

Our friends at the Peng Yuan Qing Hua studio in Dehua have produced this stunning set of gilded porcelain tea ware with a beautiful blue green tint to the porcelain, highlighted by bands of gold. This elegant collection includes everything you need to brew fine tea- a gaiwan, two cups, a strainer and a pitcher. The whole set is crafted from highly vitrified non-reactive porcelain to give your teas a clear, focused and true aroma and flavor.

This tea set is inspired by the professional tea setups used at fine teahouses in Xiamen, one of the biggest cultural centers for oolong tea in the world, and central to all of Fujian’s abundant tea- from Tieguanyin to white tea and Big Red Robe. A high-fired, hand-painted porcelain gaiwan brings out deep and true aromatics in your tea, while aroma cups allow you to enjoy those aromatics to the fullest. A beautiful, carved, hardwood draining tea board is there to catch any drips or rinses during long tea sessions, and provides a beautiful contrast with the glowing and nearly translucent porcelain.

This full gongfu tea set features a gaiwan, pitcher, and six cups all showing off the implements of an ancient scholar’s studio, complete with tea tools and natural objects of contemplation. The scenes are a reminder of tea culture’s long–spanning history and the roots of modern gongfu. The red-orange accents show off the lovely bright-white porcelain, perfect for amplifying the color and aromatics of your tea.

Tall, bold, angular and geometric, this celadon set features a hand-finished gaiwan, two tall cups that could easily double as aroma cups, and a hexagonal celadon pitcher. Traditional high-fired Longquan kiln celadon is fully-vitrified, non-reactive and perfect for amplifying the aromatics and texture of your tea. Embrace the beautiful jade celadon inspired by the Song Dynasty pottery tradition!

This full set is a celebration of Pengyuan Qinghua studio’s incredible work with hand painting and fine thin porcelain, including a gaiwan, a pitcher and two cups. The striking motif features a hand-painted motif of delicate bamboo swaying in the wind. Pengyuan Qinghua Studio turns all of their own ultra-thin porcelain, vitrified at an extremely high firing temperature for teaware fine enough to amplify tea’s aromatics and allow light to pass through, giving each piece a glowing quality. The red brushwork is an elegant contrast to the white, and an evocative reference to the bamboo groves that grow alongside tea in the mountains of Fujian.

Tall, bold, angular and geometric, this celadon set features a hand-finished gaiwan, two tall cups that could easily double as aroma cups, and a hexagonal celadon pitcher. Traditional high-fired Longquan kiln celadon is fully-vitrified, non-reactive and perfect for amplifying the aromatics and texture of your tea. Embrace the beautiful jade celadon inspired by the Song Dynasty pottery tradition!

This beautiful hand-finished celadon tea set is a celebration of the abundance of nature featuring two flower-adorned tea goblets, a gaiwan with peonies in relief, and an elegant, modern hexagonal celadon pitcher. Traditional high-fired Longquan kiln celadon is fully-vitrified, non-reactive and perfect for amplifying the aromatics and texture of your tea. Embrace the beautiful jade celadon inspired by the Song Dynasty pottery tradition!

Jingdezhen is the ultimate in professional-level tea tasting. This high-fired porcelain is unparalleled, and used at the competition level for the way it shows a tea's truest “highest resolution” flavor, texture and aroma. We are lucky to work with the talented Yong Jing Tang Workshop, where they hand-throw every Jingdezhen piece for perfect precision and hand paint each beautiful adornment. The result is a level of teaware that is hard to even capture in photos, pieces that glow in the light and are a true pleasure to hold and sip from. This set features a hand painted gaiwan, two hand-painted cups and a hand-painted pitcher for an elegant tea set ready to show off the finest teas.

This convenient Xiang Fu ( 祥福 / Stone Leaf Tea Set ) travel mug combines glass, natural bamboo and porcelain for a beautiful self-contained brewing solution for at home and on the go. Bamboo protects you from the heat while the glass helps show off the beautiful color of your tea, while a rubber ring insulates and protects your tables from heat. Everything comes apart for easy cleaning, then packs back up into the sturdy travel case.

This stunning, vibrant tea set includes a gaiwan and four tasting cups, all meticulously hand-thrown, carefully air-dried, carved down exquisitely thin, high-fired, glazed and re-fired for an exquisite, fully non-reactive tea set ready for professional tasting. The whole set comes in a travel case so you can take your gallery-level Jingdezhen porcelain on the go!

This is Xiangfu’s absolute smallest gongfu travel kit. This simple kit includes a gaiwan with removable strainer and three cups that stack and nest in the gaiwan, all bundled together in a padded green drawstring bag. It’s everything you need to enjoy your favorite tea with the smallest footprint possible, and a great intro to gongfu-style brewing for anyone looking to dive in and get the most out of their tea.

Xiangfu delivers full-on gongfu brewing in the smallest, most portable form factor with this new set. Three cups nest inside a stylish glass and bamboo brewer with a removable porcelain strainer and top. You can control brew time by removing the strainer, and pour from the pitcher into each cup for multi-infusion gongfu. When you are done, pack it up in the durable carbon-fiber case and take it on the go.

This special bundle includes six 25g loose leaf teas for 150g total (about 30 quarts of iced tea). Make Tea Fun and Easy this summer with our special Iced Tea Tasting Kit! Enjoy our Top Picks for making cold brew iced tea in the summer time. This special tasting kit includes our top picks for making cold brew iced tea in the summer time, along with easy brewing instructions. The tasting kit also includes a FREE GIFT of a sealable glass jar for making easy cold brew iced tea!

This black tea sampler includes six 25g loose leaf black tea bags picked, finished and packed on small family farms that make some of the best teas in the world, run with the sustainability and beyond-organic practices that can only come from one generation tending land that they will pass down to their children. The rich deep complexity of the finest black teas comes from stringent picking standards for the ideal tender bud and leaf mix, and from slow careful oxidation to bring out more nuance in small batches. This tasting kit is an introduction to the incredible diversity of flavor that our partners offer with their black teas from malty chocolate-driven Laoshan Black from the north of China to traditional and complex Wuyi black teas. Through craft, varietal, and microclimate, our farmer-partners are proud to represent the best that China has to offer.

This special sampler features five 25g bags of golden buddy looseleaf tea. There is nothing like tender downy tea buds, hand-picked in cool early-season weather and hand finished by passionate small family growers. Buds have a unique flavor, and an intense sweetness from the stored sugars and the extremely limited sun exposure. In traditionally crafted black tea this flavor translates to honey, sweet potato, toasty bread, and other rich deep caramelized notes with a thick commanding texture. This tasting kit is an exploration of all the ways buds bring flavor and texture to tea from three different regions and three different farmers dedicated to sustainable farming and meticulous craft.

This bundle includes six 25g bags of Wuyi tea for 150g total (30 sessions). This special limited-offering tasting kit is a chance to do a unique taste-off showdown of three of Wuyishan’s most sought after varietals, crafted by the Li family as both oolong and black tea for six unique offerings. The purpose of this kit is to show off the intense influence of craft on finished tea, even when that tea is the same varietal grown by the same family in the same place. Mei Zhan, Bai Rui Xiang and Rou Gui are all famous Wuyi teas traditionally finished as oolongs. Indeed, all three have brought the Li Family best in show awards year after year. Recently, the Li Family has begun to apply their masterful traditional black tea craft to famous "oolong" varietals at the family workshop in Tongmu, yielding exciting new ways to taste and feel the terroir of the region. This kit will let you compare oolong and black tea finishes on the same varietals while these unique limited harvest offerings are available.

This Bundle includes spring reserve-level fresh-picked green teas - 8 different pickings to try in total for 200g of tea or about 40 brewing sessions. There is nothing out there like stunningly-fresh hyper-seasonal green tea. When Laoshan Pine Needle Green or 1st Picking Dragonwell are finished, they are at their absolute peak of aromatic complexity, textural nuance and sweet aftertaste. This tasting kit sampler is a celebration of that stunning beauty- a once-a-year chance to dive deep into what makes the spring harvest so magical- especially coming from some of the most renowned and award-winning tea farmers in their respective villages. All winter long the He Family’s tea bushes in Laoshan and Li Xiaoping’s tea bushes in Dragonwell are storing up nutrients and sugars to burst forth in vibrant buds come spring. In the early season, these first delicate buds are packed with months worth of the plant’s flavor and intensity. To share this special powerful experience, we reserve all harvests ahead of picking, pack up every bag fresh the moment it is ready in its final packaging to seal in all it's aromatic beauty, and book the fastest (and most expensive) overnight air shipping to get the teas here within weeks of picking. By contrast, typical green tea on the shelves worldwide can be years old. Teas this fresh are something else entirely, and worth tasting at this time of year. All nine teas are equally beautiful brewed hot and cold brewed or flash-chilled for incredible iced tea this summer, and with 225g to taste, you’ll have plenty of tea to explore what makes Laoshan and Shi Feng Dragonwell so incredibly special.

This bundle includes five 25g bags of aged oolong tea for 125 total (20 sessions). Master Zhang Rongde has been making oolongs for over fifty years. Over the course of his career he has championed sustainable farming, taught finishing techniques to all of Daping Village, and researched ancient and nearly lost fishing techniques. He has also set aside some of his favorite harvests over the years for long term aging- taking out these precious Tieguanyin reserves and re-roasting them yearly to meticulously control for moisture.

This tasting kit is a chance to truly taste Zhang Rongde’s life work- Tieguanyin aged from the 90's all the way through the early 2000’s. His oldest teas have picked up deep complex cooling herbaceous complexity and deep sweet aftertaste. Taste them back to back to see how extra years transform Tieguanyin- and to see how Master Zhang has preserved their deep aromatic floral core through over 30 years. Thanks to a long friendship and partnership with Master Zhang Rongde, he continues to open his precious reserves to us so that he can share true Tieguanyin with the world.

Expect deep, complex, evocative oolongs that are profoundly settling, with long aftertastes and powerful aromas.

This bundle includes fsix 25g bags of oolong tea for 150g total (30 sessions). Zhang Rongde has devoted his life to creating a sustainable biodiverse future for Daping Village, travelling the world to study with master of every tea region and returning to Daping with a vision to bring Tieguanyin and other local varietals to a new level. His tea fields benefit from sweet mountain spring water, ample natural forest cover, rich wildlife and perpetual high mountain mist protecting delicate leaves from the sun.

This collection has been put together as the ultimate introduction to Master Zhang’s craft and the natural beauty of tea from the Daping microclimate. You’ll be able to taste Master Zhang’s award-winning and standard-setting Tieguanyin, as well as unusual cultivars and experimental new finishing styles like Original Wulong Revival, researched from ancient techniques. While Master Zhang brings out different aromatics in every tiny hand-finished batch, this collection will give you a full sense of the regions deep sweet minerality, thick intense backbone, and lingering sweetness.

This bundle includes five 25g bags of Laoshan tea for 125g total (25 sessions). The He Family were some of the first to plant tea in Laoshan, one of China’s newest and northernmost tea growing regions. Laoshan is a mountain village on the ocean, subject to cold winters that give the tea a flavor unlike any other on earth. Mr. He has established a cooperative to promote his award-winning vision for sustainable beyond-organic agriculture and rigorous technically demanding craft.

This collection represents the most classic and iconically representative teas the He Family produces. It is an invitation from Mr. he, Qingqing and the whole family to get to know their passion and their unwavering commitment to make Laoshan one of the most famous tea regions in China. You’ll get to taste Laoshan Green, the first tea they ever mastered, along with newer styles such as the wildly-popular Laoshan Black, the new and exciting Laoshan Green Oolong and Laoshan Roasted Oolong, and even an experimental herbal tea.

While every tea in the collection represents a tremendous diversity of flavor, the whole collection circles around the iconic rich malty soybean profile of the region and the rocky texture of the mountain soil.

This bundle includes six 25g bags of Anxi oolong tea for 150g total (30 sessions). With one of the highest elevation, most pristine perfectly-situated plots for Tieguanyin in the world, it would make perfect sense for Master Zhang to devote every inch of land to this famous and in-demand varietal. Yet, Master Zhang does the opposite. Over the last decade, he has reclaimed the majority of his Daping mountainside for bamboo, evergreens and wildflowers. The precious rocky terraces he has left, carved into steep hills, he devotes not just to the famous Tieguanyin, but to dozens of rare, unknown varietals.

Master Zhang fosters these tiny groves of rare tea to preserve biodiversity and have a local “seed bank” of sorts, allowing hearty individual tea bushes to grow and thrive in Daping so that other farmers and colleagues could grow new plants from cuttings, and study the way their famous terroir changes with each varietal.

The benefit for all of us is getting to dive deep and experience rare out there flavors, textures and aromas- all unique expressions of Master Zhang’s craft and terroir. Every tea in this kit expresses the "core" sweet minerality of Daping, but from unique and incredible perspectives not often tasted in a region so dedicated to Tieguanyin.

This bundle includes four 25g bags of Qianjiazhai tea and a full 100g cake for 200g total (40 sessions). The Zhenyuan Dongsa Cooperative of Qianjiazhai is a loose-knit coalition of families across the remote mountaintops of China’s oldest tea forests dedicated to sustainable stewardship of the wild tea plants, and careful foraging from trees that can be over a thousand years old.

Master Zhou founded the cooperative to refine the finishing craft and picking techniques across Qianjiazhai and bring more well-deserved respect to one of China’s most important but also most unknown tea regions. This tasting kit is an introduction to the incredible diversity of flavor, texture, aroma and aftertaste that wild-foraging in an ancient tea forest can bring.

In this kit you’ll taste the careful heat-free sun dry craft of Qianjiazhai’s sheng pu’er and the fermentation of their shu pu’er, while also tasting the rare near-tea relative camellia crassicolumna, naturally caffeine-free and incredibly intense and aromatic. This kit is an invitation into a little-seen side of tea and its ancient wild origins.

This bundle includes five 25g bags of oolong tea for 125g total (25 sessions). This special tea sampler highlights Master Zhang’s work to bring back an ancient oolong finishing technique- the Revival Style. This technique comes from years of research, travel and cultural exchange with other oolong communities, and extensive interviews tapping into the oral tradition to uncover the way that oolong was finished long before the modern rolled style that Tieguanyin is famous for. In this kit, you’ll get to explore light roast, dark roast, aged, and varietal comparisons to see how the Revival Style bring oolong to life with deeper aromatics and more powerful texture and aftertaste, all while connecting with a rich tradition of craft that nearly died out over the last few hundred years. The Revival Style takes more than twice as long to make as classic Tieguanyin thanks to the extended yaoqing process of turning and fluffing the leaves and the fact that so much has to be done entirely by hand, but the results are stunning- a half-twisted half-rolled style that Master Zhang describes as a Dragonfly shape.

This special bundle includes four 25g offerings and a 27g cake of white tea from across China for 127g total (about 25 sessions). China is going through a white tea renaissance of sorts - a pivotal moment in the history of an incredibly unique kind of tea thanks to surging popularity and innovators across the country bringing new techniques together with ancient tradition. On the one hand, old-school white tea craft is all about locking in the freshest most aromatic flavor possible from buddy da bai varietal leaf. On the other hand, modern white tea pioneers are taking that fresh flavor and aging it, pressing it into cakes, and even scenting it or blending it with other ingredients. This tasting kit is a chance to explore both traditional white tea and modern explorations from all across China. You’ll taste the delicate young spring buds of the Wu Family’s wild-arbor groves all the way to Yunnan white tea cakes and white tea jasmine.

This bundle includes five 25g bags of Wuyi tea for 125g total (25 sessions). Wuyishan is one of the most famous tea growing regions in the world, and true hand-crafted tea from within the Wuyi Ecological Preserve is incredibly elusive with a proliferation of imitations out there. That is why we are so lucky to be working with the dynamic award-winning Li Family, who have been visionaries in restoring biodiversity and forest cover within the preserve and leaders in oolong craft.

Li Xiangxi, founder of the Yangxian Institute of Tea Culture, works with her brother and cousin to finish deep aromatic and wildly complex oolongs, as well as traditional old-school black teas from their ancestral home in Tongmu.

This collection represents a classic tasting curriculum, spanning the most important flavors, textures and aromas to be familiar with in beginning to understand what makes Wuyishan so special. This kit has been put together to provide a foundation to explore the wider Li Family collection with a deep tasting vocabulary, and of course, to come out with a true sense of the Wuyi microclimate.

This bundle includes five 25g bags of Shi Feng Dragonwell tea for 125g total (25 sessions). Li Xiaoping is an award-winning multi-generational farmer dedicated to sharing true Shi Feng Dragonwell. Her high-elevation Shi Feng plot is one of the most coveted micro-climates for tea in China due to the cool misty weather, the rocky quartz-laden soil, the sweet mountain spring water and the ecological protected park designation. She and her husband Shui Huamin hand pick and hand wok-finish every leaf, producing incredibly small annual batches, picking only before Qingming festival and allowing the plants the rest of the year undisturbed to grow deeper roots.

This bundle includes 25g each of five different Wuyi oolong teas for 125g total (25 sessions). Wuyishan is perhaps the most famous tea growing region in the world, and our partner Li Xiangxi and her family cultivate their award-winning oolongs in a perfectly-situated gorge along the Longchuan river within the Wuyishan Ecological Preserve, a pristine environmentally-protected region where biodiversity is key, and tea grows alongside wild bamboo, evergreens, and flowers.

Part of that biodiversity is about encouraging not just the widely known varietals like Rou Gui or Qilan to grow, but also making space for rare and difficult to find varietals not often seen or known outside of Wuyishan. Li Xiangxi believes that each varietal bring its own unique style to the pure expression of Wuyi minerality, and this sampler is a testament to those unique perspectives. Taste through five Wuyi oolong teas - including famous cultivars and less-well-known varietals.

This bundle includes six 25g offerings of single-origin tea for 150g total (30 sessions). Six kinds of tea & six passionate growers - these are the iconic classics that represent what we and our partner growers stand for: true sustainability, transparency, and the taste and aroma that come from the impeccable terroir and craft of the best growers in China.

This tasting kit combines teas from six of our partners, spanning growing regions across China and representing five different styles of tea including one green tea, one Wuyi tea, one Anxi oolong tea, one Dancong tea, and one pu'er. Each tea is sourced directly from the people who grow and finish the teas themselves, for a representative and unblended taste of each family and craftperson's terroir and unique point of view.

Thank you for supporting Verdant Tea's project to connect tea lovers with the real people behind the teas we all love!

This green tea sampler is an intro to hand-picked, organic cultivation tea from small family farms, including 4 unique fresh seasonal picks. We believe that green tea should be as fresh as possible. That is why we work Mrs. Li in Dragonwell and the He Family in Laoshan to buy before the harvest, seal tea in their final bags within days of picking and rush ship each small batch as they are finished. Our partners work hard to manage biodiverse beyond-organic farms, hand pick their tea and carefully hand-finish in small batches to lock in the rich sweet complexity that fine green tea is known for.

This bundle includes five 25g bags of oolong tea for 125g total (25 sessions). Oolong is the most technically-demanding and time-consuming tea in the world to produce, and our partners take on the challenge relying on their own hands and their senses, not machinery, meaning sleepless nights and 20 hour days in the workshop to finish their tiny micro-batches of varietal-driven oolongs that honor their specific microclimates, from Wudongshan to Daping Village.

This sampler brings together iconic oolong teas from our partners across China to share a glimpse at the magic and complexity that comes out in the long turning and fluffing process that defines oolong teas and gives you a sense of how many styles can exist within this single category, from dark roasts and aged oolong to fresh floral vibrant green oolong.

This bundle includes four 25g bags of scented + blended floral tea for 100g total (about 20 sessions). This special tasting kit includes hand picked white, black, and green teas scented traditionally with beautiful jasmine and osmanthus flowers. Each tea is scented traditionally - without artifical or added aromas or flavorings - using simply the natural fragrance of the blended jasmine or osmanthus flowers. These traditional methods produce teas that are full and rich,  with brews that hold their intense sweetness and natural potency over many steepings. 

This bundle includes three 25g bags of aged oolong tea and one 90 gram cake for 165g total (33 sessions).

Taste through the decades with this selection of hand-picked and hand fired oolongs from Master Zhang in Daping Village and the Li Family in Wuyishan. Our partners have opened their reserves of aged oolongs, including selections decades-old. Fine aged oolongs are carefully re-roasted yearly to control for moisture and maintain optimal conditions for flavor texture and aroma to keep building complexity over time. As Zhang Rongde explains, "Tea may be dried, but it is still living inside. In roasting, you need to have experience. You need to understand the tea, the leaves, the fire. Only then can you make good tea."

This sampler shows off how differently teas can age. You can expect a diverse range of flavors, united by an inexplicable depth and commanding texture only possible through perfect finishing and patient aging.

This bundle includes four 25g bags of Crassicolumna tea for 100g total (20 sessions). Crassicolumna is an ancient, wild near-tea relative to the modern camellia sinensis plant, native to the tea forests of Qianjiazhai deep in the mountains. Naturally caffeine-free, Crassicolumna is packed with captivating deep spiced flavor and texture. It has the complexity of pu’er, but a wild flavor all its own.

This bundle includes five 25g bags of dancong tea for 125g total (25 sessions). Huang Ruiguang is respected across China as one of the fathers of modern Dancong, written about in every text on the region, recognized as a cultural treasure by the local government, and awarded top medals for every tea he produces. Having spent his life improving Dancong craft across Wudongshan, he has now turned the workshop over to his sons. He works with us because of his retirement goal to share true Wudongshan Dancong beyond China, and build worldwide respect not just for his family but for the whole region he helped put on the map. This tasting kit represents the intense aromatics and wild powerful textural experience that is Dancong. Every tea in the collection is juicy, voluptuously aromatic and focused with a sweet lingering aftertaste. The perfect aromatics that Huang Ruiguang is famous for come from his meticulous hand turning and fluffing process that lasts up to 18 hours to coax out everything the leaf has to offer.

This bundle includes two 25g offerings and one 100g cake of white tea for 150g total (about 30 sessions). The Wu Family has been growing tea for generations, with bushes scattered across the mountainside between groves of bamboo and evergreens. With white tea’s recent surge in popularity, the family is rediscovering groves planted generations ago left for years untended, and picking them without introducing pruning or intervention. The Wu Family's white tea craft is all about non-intervention. There is no firing process, no heat applied at any stage. The fresh buds are rushed into a special drying room with continuous circulation to lock in the fresh vegetal floral complexity you'd get tasting a fresh leaf picked in the field. Mr. Wu combines this commitment to non-intervention with a meticulous background in engineering, crafting special fans to control air circulation and get the freshest most aromatic tea without heat or sun exposure.

This bundle includes three 90g mini cakes and one 100g mini cake of Wuyi tea for 370g total (72+ sessions). The Li Family makes some of the most sought-after oolongs in China, grown within the pristine Wuyishan Ecological Preserve, hand-picked  and hand-finished by the Li Family and meticulously had-fired multiple times over several months for deep complexity. The biodiversity and rocky geography of their plot contributes to deep forest-evoking teas with a strong mineral texture.

Take all this exquisite circumstance and add aging into the process and you get some stunningly nuanced powerful teas unlike anything else out there. This tasting kit is a chance to build your own Wuyi tea aging program, and see why pu’er isn’t the only tea that gets better with age. This collection spans twelve years and four unique varietals.

Most years, Li Xiangxi doesn’t do any pressing at all, only selecting harvests that she has had the chance to taste over several months when she determines whether they’d be suitable for aging. When she makes her selection, the family gives these teas even deeper hand-firing before finally pressing these mini-cakes. See for yourself what makes aged Wuyi tea so special.

This bundled "make your own" chai tea kit includes one 25g bag of chai spice and one 25g bag of loose leaf Laoshan Black tea base. 

To make chai concentrate for quick and easy chai at home, boil 2 cups of filtered water and add 3 tablespoons of chai spice. Simmer for 30 minutes uncovered to reduce the liquid. Add 2 tablespoons of base tea and simmer for 4 minutes. Remove from heat, and allow to sit for eight minutes. Strain, and stir in two and a half tablespoons of honey.

Use immediately, or chill in the refrigerator. You can even freeze ice cubes of chai for spiced cocktails and mocktails!

These flexible compact tea trays are being offered at a steep 30% discount to reflect light cosmetic scratches on their surface. These minor surface scratches do not impact the daily performance of these affordable tea trays, but please be sure to review these example detail shots. 

This flexible tea tray is a perfect foundation for your gongfu tea, perfectly sized for a gaiwan or teapot, a pitcher and several cups. The board will catch any tea you pour over it and the lid is removable for draining. A timeless bamboo tea tray elevates your gongfu brewing and frames off your tasting while containing leaves, water etc so you can focus on the tea.