White Tea and High Mountains Around Anji

A nice thing about living in Shanghai is, that you have many famous tea growing areas such as in Anhui, Jiangsu and Zhejiang around the corner, at least for Chinese standards that is.

This time our tea journey took us to the mountainous tea growing area around Anji, Zhejiang province, where we spent 3 days at the 800 - 1000 meter-high Dongling mountain for visiting tea farmers, hiking and getting sunburnt. The region around Anji (安吉) is a 3-hour car ride from Shanghai and well-known for its white tea (Anji White tea / 安吉白茶).

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The region's mountains are not just known for tea plantations, but also for their dense bamboo forests, which offer a great retreat from the high temperatures these days.

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Shanghai is full of people, loud, smelly, muggy and really hot these days! It is definitely worth it to go for a hike and enjoy not just some tea, but also some good views and great air in an area that is quite laid-back for Chinese standards.

Mt. Dongling is surrounded by countless small villages with guest houses. Many farms and guest houses here do have their own small private tea gardens for their own use and the production of a limited amount of Anji White Tea and that's exactly what we were looking for!

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The white tea coming from these small gardens has the advantage that it is often produced without pesticides. (Yes, really!) Due to the higher elevation of 800 to 1000 m there are less vermin that affect the crop. For small tea gardens farmers often do not use pesticides as they are used on bigger plantations and lower altitudes.

We went to visit some farmers and there tea gardens around Mt. Dongling to have a direct look at how the tea is being grown there.

Anji White Tea comes from the small-leaf Camelia Sinensis Sinensis bush, which is typical for the northern tea growing areas in China. However, these leafs here at this time of the year are already a way too mature and big to make some proper tea out of it. We would not suggest to try tea from these bigger leafs.

Just the first 3 tea leafs from the very top of the plant are picked for processing Anji White Tea. One bud and two young tea leafs deliver a great taste.

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That is what the end product looks like! We got many different samples from different farmers.

There are also some small stores that directly sell the tea they produce at home. The quality and taste can vary widely. However, after two days of hiking and getting sunburnt by the mountain sun, we found a really nice white tea!

Check it out:

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The taste: Anji White Tea is a lightly processed tea. After picking the leafs, they are sun dried and slightly rolled. That's it basically. Infused with 80 °C hot water, the tea reveals a very fresh and bright grassy taste and a light fragrance quite similar to freshly cut grass. We managed to infuse it up to 6 times with 3 grams of leafs on 100ml of water. It's a great refreshing tea for the summer and also very suitable for cold brewing as we found.

We are looking forward to bring you more stories and reviews of different Chinese teas in the future.

Cheers!