Green tea · Jiangsu
Biluochun
bìluóchūn · 碧螺春
“Green snail spring” — a downy, tightly spiralled green from the Dongting hills by Lake Tai. Grown among peach and plum trees, it carries a fruity-floral sweetness found in no other green, and is picked impossibly small.
- Region
- Dongting hills, Lake Tai, Suzhou, Jiangsu
- Harvest
- Earliest spring — tiny bud-and-leaf, before Qingming
- Oxidation
- Unoxidised
- Cultivar
- Local Dongting bushes, grown among fruit trees
In the cup
Floral and fruity over a sweet, delicate body — apricot and orchid from the orchard, with a fine clean finish and no harshness.
What it gives
One of the most delicate greens — tiny early buds, rich in the amino acids that give a soft, smooth, clear-headed lift.
Biluochun — green snail spring — is, with Longjing, one of the two most famous greens of China. It comes from the Dongting hills on islands and shores of Lake Tai near Suzhou in Jiangsu, and its name describes the leaf: tightly rolled into a downy spiral that looks like a tiny snail shell, silvered all over with fine white hairs.
What makes it singular is where it grows. The bushes are interplanted among peach, plum and apricot trees, and the leaf takes up a fruity-floral fragrance found in no other green — an orchard sweetness layered over the usual fresh-green notes. The pluck is famously small and early, tender bud-and-leaf gathered before Qīngmíng; it takes an enormous number of these to make a little tea.
In the cup
Biluochun is delicate, so brew it cool — around 75–80 °C — and, unusually, pour the water first and drop the leaf onto it, so the fine downy spirals are not scorched. The liquor is pale and bright, the aroma fruit-and-flower, the body sweet and soft. Drink it young, in the weeks after the spring harvest, while the orchard note is at its fullest.
How to brew
Biluochun
Water
75–80 °C — cool
Leaf
5 g per 100 ml
Steep
1–2 min, water poured over leaf
Vessel
Glass — pour water first, then leaf
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