Green Tea - Bi Luo Chun

Origin: China, Jiangsu Province
Year: 2023

For centuries this very famous aromatic light green tea was known by the name 'Xia Sha Ren Xiang' (Astounding Fragrance). A legend explains why. Once in the distant past, some pickers of a particularly good crop filled their baskets before they were ready to go home. Wanting to carry more leaves, they stuffed the excess inside their tunics. By another version they were stealing the tea. Warmed by body heat, the leaves began to give off a rich aroma. "I was astounded," many pickers said, and the name stuck. Sometime in the late seventeenth or early eighteenth century while on an inspection of his realm, Emperor Kang Xi visited the Lake Taihu area in Zhejiang province and his host, the governor of Jiangsu, presented him with this tea. Striking the Emperor as a tea of purity he asked the name. "Astounding Fragrance" was his host's reply. The Emperor, with disdain, replied that such a name for this treasure was vulgar and an insult. Ordering the unused leaves brought for his examination, the Emperor declared that a more fitting name would be Green Snail Spring because the rolled shape looked like a snail shell. The original name is most popular, however.