green oolong (winter '24)

We knew this year was going to be good after 3 seasons of back-to-back premium oolong. This unroasted green oolong tastes like fresh vegetables and has the crispness of a cold morning and dew. The body has a lingering finish with a delicate floral note. We think you'll love this winter harvest!

How we made it: Each day harvest began early, with pickers in the fields by 6am and wrapping up before the midday sun grew too intense. When enough baskets were filled we’d drive the fresh leaves ~30 minutes down the mountain to the processing facility one truckload at a time to begin the withering process. As the longest step of making oolong, withering & oxidation takes roughly 12 hours. It was often past midnight before we could first taste the day’s tea. Finally, the tea leaves would head to their final step to be rolled into balls. Usually this would take another 4-5 hours of intense manual labor and the skilled orchestration of specialized equipment. Workers would roll and then dry, roll and then dry, until the tea achieved ~2% hydration and could be packed into vacuum sealed air-tight bricks. For our unroasted green the process stops here, however for our roasted teas like the red, double red, and black oolongs, they’d head off to the roaster!