Xinglongju · Tea Estate
Xinglongju Tea Estate · Fengqing, Yunnan
Shipped fresh from the mountain to your teapot.
Provenance, in numbers
A short manifesto on the harvest
Most loose-leaf tea you have ever tasted was already three to nine months old before it reached you. It was graded, brokered, warehoused, re-brokered, containerized, shipped, warehoused again, then finally posted in a foil pouch. By the time it arrives, the bright, vegetal, almost honeyed snap of a just-withered leaf has mellowed into something polite and forgettable.
We do not work that way. At Xinglongju — a fourth-generation, family-run estate at 1,950 meters in Fengqing county — every flush is hand-picked by the Shen family and our small team of pickers, sun-withered on bamboo trays over the course of a single Yunnan afternoon, hand-rolled in copper pans over chestnut wood, and shipped within fourteen days of harvest. Nothing sits in a warehouse. Nothing is re-bagged.
Because we sell directly from the estate, cutting five of the usual eight layers of middlemen, our single-origin Yunnan teas land at your door at 38–55% below comparable offerings — and they taste like they were picked the week they were, because they were. That is the only promise worth making about tea.
This season's harvest
First-flush leaves from our own 32-hectare garden, shipped within fourteen days. Each row is a living lot — quantities are limited to what the pickers brought down this week.
No. 01 · Black Tea
Cultivar: Yunnan Da Ye · Picking: March first flush · Process: Sun-withered, hand-rolled, fully oxidized.
A cup of burnt honey, malt biscuit, and a long sweet finish that warms the back of the throat. The tea our family drinks at breakfast.
From $18 · 50g tin
Open the lot →
No. 02 · Raw Pu'er
Cultivar: Ancient Yunnan broad-leaf · Picking: Spring 2019 · Process: Sun-fixed, hand-rolled, stone-pressed.
Bright, vegetal, with camphor and white peach. A living tea — it will keep changing in your cellar for the next twenty years.
From $42 · 100g cake
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No. 03 · Ripe Pu'er
Cultivar: Yunnan Da Ye · Picking: 2018 · Process: Wo-dui fermentation, sun-dried, hand-sorted.
Earthy, smooth, with notes of wet forest floor and dried longan. A tea for late evening and quiet conversation.
From $36 · 100g brick
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No. 04 · Yellow Tea
Cultivar: Yunnan Da Ye (bud-only) · Picking: Early March · Process: Light oxidation, slow yellowing, hand-fired.
A whisper of a tea — sweet pea, fresh apricot, a faint cocoa finish. Brew it short, drink it in porcelain.
From $28 · 30g tin
Open the lot →The lowest-friction way in
Four first-flush varietals from this season's harvest, hand-packed in our estate workshop and shipped to you within fourteen days. If you try one thing from us, try this.
USD $48 · free U.S. shipping over $60 · 14-day ship window · sommelier consult included
A free consultation with every order over $60
Every order over sixty dollars comes with a free, one-on-one brewing session — by video call or by email — with one of our three certified sommeliers. Tell us the water in your city, the kettle you own, and the kind of cup you want to drink from. We will write back with exact leaf weight, water temperature, steeping time, and a method you can repeat on a Tuesday morning at 6:40 a.m. without thinking about it.
Since 2020 we have trained forty-one American tea sommeliers through our free certification program. The same people answer your questions.
Sister of the current proprietor Li Mei was the only Chinese judge at the 2022 Global Tea Cupping Championship — and yes, she still takes consultations on Tuesdays.
Book a brewing session
A consultation at our estate workshop, spring 2024.