Tea Guides

Most of the good white peony tea sold in China comes from a few towns in northern Fujian — Fuding, Zhenghe, and our home county, Shouning (寿宁). All three sit at the kind of elevation where morning fog rolls off the ridges and the buds grow slowly, leaf by leaf. That’s what gives the silvery…

I wrote the first draft of this guide on a rainy Saturday. I had been drinking cheap green tea all week and wanted something softer. A friend handed me a small tin of White Peony — Bai Mu Dan in Chinese — and said: “Try this. Just don’t mess it up.” Here’s the thing: White…

Within the white tea family, Silver Needle is the aloof eldest son, Shou Mei the plain-spoken youngest, and White Peony sits comfortably between them. It doesn’t take only single buds the way Silver Needle does, nor does it use the thick, coarse leaves of Shou Mei. One bud, one or two leaves — green leaves…

Why does one white tea flatten with age while another deepens into something richer and more complex? The answer lies less in what the leaf keeps and more in what it gives up. Shoumei, the often-overlooked cousin of Silver Needle, is the clearest example of that transformation — and the easiest place to begin understanding…

It’s the dog days of summer. The AC is blasting at 16°C. A steaming cup of tea sits by your side—sounds odd? Ask any seasoned tea drinker. They’ll tell you: white tea is the summer connoisseur’s choice. Shou Mei is the most underrated of the bunch. With its thick stems and broad leaves, it looks…

Baihao Yinzhen gets the top shelf. Bai Mudan sits beside it. And Shou Mei, the leafy white tea with the visible stem, often gets pushed to the back. In tea market conversations across Fujian, it gets talked about least and priced lowest. That hierarchy may deserve a second look. A 2024 study in Food Chemistry…

About our source: Min Tea Shop sources the white teas featured in this article from Shouning, a mountainous county in northern Fujian with more than a thousand years of tea cultivation. Official provincial information reports more than 600,000 mu of mountainous land at elevations of 500–1,200 metres, with nearly two-thirds of the county above 800…

If you’ve ever stood in a tea shop staring at 30 different packages, all labeled things like “Silver Needle,” “White Peony,” “Gongmei,” “Shoumei,” wondering which one to take home — this guide is for you. You’re in the right place. We’re Minteashop, a small white tea house in Fuzhou, Fujian — the birthplace of Chinese…