Jin Xuan
金萱
The Jin Xuan cultivar was developed in Taiwan by professor Wu Zhenduo who announced the tea in 1981, naming it after his grandmother. Most tea drinkers have likely had this tea in some form or another; it is the second most planted tea in Taiwan and is popular in tea based drinks.
This tea is from a close friend’s family who has a bit of a collection of uncommon teas in their gardens. They planted a garden of Jin Xuan around 1993, making the trees now about 29 years old. They got the Jin Xuan bushes from some people growing the tea in Zhangzhou who brought the cultivar over from Taiwan. In 2020 we tried to order some of this tea, but my friend didn’t process the tea separately, and mixed the unprocessed leaves in with some other small batches. In 2021 we asked again and were able to get the tea and feature it a year ago in the February 2022 issue of our tea club. It was a success, and I made sure to get the tea again this year.