Properties
| Type | Oolong |
| Chinese | 肉桂 |
| Origin | Wuyishan, China |
| Harvest | Spring |
| Year | 2023 |
| Pinyin | ròuguì |
| Mandarin | |
| Local Dialect |
New Tree Rou Gui
肉桂
Featured in a past tea club.
An exercise in showing the value of processing. We took some leaves from a basic location and gave them to an expert tea master. The tea master who processed this tea has been making tea for more than forty years, and makes most of our zuhuo roast teas.
We are calling the tea “New Tree” rou gui since it is the first harvest of these trees from my parent’s farm. For various reasons, tea from this farm doesn’t usually end up in our shop; we usually sell all the leaves during harvest season. Unfortunately there was a mudslide last year and most of the new rou gui field was destroyed, leaving a fairly small amount. I went to the mountain after lunch on April 30th, 2023 to cut the leaves with my parents and my sister’s husband. By 2:30 PM we filled two large sacks and left for the factory. When we got to the factory at 3:15 PM the leaves weighed in at 140 pounds. We dumped the leaves out inside and spent some time removing trash (weeds, sticks) and “chicken legs”; the term for bunches of leaves that are stuck together with old stems and sprouted out in a tight cluster. Tea master Chen decided that the tea needed to spend some time in the sun. We laid out tarps and spread the tea out for 20 minutes before turning the leaves over at 3:50 PM. Although I planned to stay the night with this tea, there was an opportunity to go on a hike early the next day. I left the factory, and when I returned at 6 AM the next morning the tea was already finished and on the rack.
Thick, quite clear rou gui fragrance. If the gaiwan lid streams it might get a little stinky, that is this area’s character showing. This effect is reduced by keeping the time between steeps shorter. I found this to be a fairly high energy tea and a lot of fun to drink.