Jin Jun Mei black tea is an extremely famous black tea from the Wuyi Mountains in Fujian Province in eastern China. It typifies how a traditional tea master can transform well-tended, high-quality modern leaf into an elegant, deeply-flavored finished tea that quickly attains world-class status.
Slender and with a slight twist, this medium-sized, bud-only pluck is perfect for yielding a delicious black tea. The careful withering, hand-rolling, and firing of this leaf brings out the wonderful flavors that the terroir of the mountains of eastern China have for the tea bushes that thrive there. Being a bud-only pluck (similar to several premium white and green teas, it requires 50,000 buds to manufacture 500 grams (slightly more than 1 lb). An experienced tea plucker can harvest about 2,000 buds a day, so to make about a pound of this tea requires the full day’s work of 20 pluckers. This is one reason why bud-only teas must be more expensive than other teas.
The smell and taste of tea from the eastern provinces of China are unique, distinct, and particular to this historic tea region of China. All the classes of tea are made in one place or another in this part of China, but the terroir of the remote, protected mountainsides of the Wuyi Mountains provides the depth of flavor in its dark oolongs and black teas that we love.
It has a fragrant, and strong honey taste and aroma, followed with an absolutely smooth, sweet, rosey finish, with no bitterness.