Bai Mao Hou

Bai Mao Hou — white-haired monkey — is a curious green tea from Zhenghe county in northern Fujian, created in 1910 by a tea merchant named Fan Changyi. Its raw material is the Zhenghe Da Bai bush — the very “big white” cultivar that gives Fujian its silver-needle and white-peony whites — so the leaf is thick with white down.

What sets it apart is the making. A long sixteen-hour wither, unusual for a green, is followed by the kill-green fixing and a rolling that gathers the downy leaf into voluminous little tufts, the “monkeys” of the name. The long wither nudges it toward the white-tea side: the cup is soft and velvety, honey-milk over a clean green base, with almost no edge and a gentle returning sweetness. Old hands describe it as sitting “between red and green”.

In the cup

Brew it cool — around 75 °C — in a tall glass or a gaiwan, so you can watch the furry monkeys uncurl. Drink it young, in the season of its picking, when the down and the soft sweetness are at their best.