For more than a thousand years, one city on the Min River has practised a craft that adds no flavouring, no oil, no essence to tea. It lends the leaf nothing but the breath of a flower that opens only after dark — repeated across four nights, or six, or nine, until the fragrance belongs to the tea itself.
口感 · 福州茉莉 · 冰糖回甘 — Fuzhou jasmine · a rock-sugar sweetness
Why Teamaster May recommends · 茶人之選
Teamaster May is exacting about tea. After tasting Fuzhou's authentic, intangible-heritage jasmine tea — scented seven to nine times over — she came to deeply admire and respect this century-old house's culture, integrity and craft, and chose to bring it to you.
The national first-grade standard for jasmine tea is four scentings; Teamaster May selects seven- to nine-scenting treasures — finer, more layered, a cut above what is commonly found. She shares it out of a wish to educate and to carry this living tea culture to Hong Kong and the world.
Few really know · 很少人真正知道
Scented tea (窨花茶) uses the leaf's gift for absorbing aroma: fresh fragrant blossoms and new tea are laid together so the tea drinks in the scent, then the spent flowers are sieved away. What remains is tea — carrying a fragrance it did not have before.
Jasmine tea, also called "jasmine xiangpian", is praised as the tea "in which you can smell spring". Its base leaf (the 茶胚) is most often green tea — occasionally white, black or oolong.
"窨" is the two-way exchange of flower and leaf — the jasmine gives its scent, the tea receives it. The highest art is "you smell the flower but see none": the more scenting rounds, the richer the aroma. The national first grade is four; we select seven to nine.
Why it matters · 為什麼重要
Not just good tea — a craft recognised by the United Nations and China as living cultural heritage.
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations designated the Jasmine and Tea Culture System of Fuzhou City as globally important — recognising a landscape where jasmine grows on the riverbanks and tea on the mountains above, farmed together for centuries.
FAO · United NationsThe Fuzhou jasmine tea scenting technique entered China's national list of intangible cultural heritage in the fourth batch, under traditional craftsmanship — protecting the method itself, not merely the product it makes.
People's Republic of ChinaTraditional tea processing techniques and their associated social practices in China were inscribed by UNESCO. Jasmine scenting sits within that wider body of craft knowledge as one of its re-processing traditions.
UNESCO · Intangible Cultural Heritage
大經茶莊出自專注福州茉莉花茶的茶業世家閩榕——福建百年老字號，承傳國家級非物質文化遺產「福州茉莉花茶窨製工藝」，並獲國際茶業委員會「世界茉莉花茶傳承人」級認證。
2009–2024 福州茉莉花茶茶王賽
The Craft · 窨製
A flavoured tea has something added to it. A scented tea has something lent to it. In Fuzhou, fresh jasmine buds are laid in among dried green tea leaves and left together through the night. The leaf is porous and thirsty; it draws in the fragrance the living flower releases as it opens.
By morning the spent flowers are screened out and thrown away. What remains is tea — only tea — carrying an aroma it did not have the day before. Then the tea is dried, and the whole night begins again with a fresh harvest. Each repetition is one 窨. The number of repetitions is the grade.
“見茶不見花” You see the tea, not the flower — the classical standard for the finest grades
Terroir · 閩江兩岸
Jasmine wants heat, sand and moving water; tea wants mist, acidity and height. Fuzhou has both within sight of each other — jasmine on the warm sandy flats of the Min River, tea on the hills that rise behind them. The UN cited exactly this stacked landscape when it recognised the system.
One Round · 一窨一夜
Jasmine will not be hurried. The buds are picked in the day's greatest heat and open only after dusk, which means the entire craft is nocturnal. This is one round — a single 窨 — and the highest grades repeat it nine times.
Buds are gathered in the hottest part of the afternoon, when they are swollen and white but still closed. A flower picked too early will never open properly; one picked too late has already spent its fragrance on the field.
The harvest is spread out and kept cool, waiting. As the light goes, the buds begin to split. The maker judges by scent and by sound when the field is ready.
The flowers set the schedule, not the clockTea and opening flowers are folded together and banked into a pile. Nothing is added. The dried leaf is porous and dry; the flower is alive and wet with perfume. For the next several hours, one gives and the other takes.
The pile warms itself — thousands of flowers respiring generate real heat. Left alone it would stew and sour. The maker opens the bank, spreads it, lets the heat escape, then gathers it back. This is the moment that separates a master from a novice.
Judged by hand temperature, not by thermometerThe spent flowers are sieved out and discarded. They have nothing left to give, and left in place they would turn the tea grassy and dull. Every round uses a completely fresh harvest.
The tea, now damp from the flowers, is dried back down so it will keep — and so it is thirsty again, ready to receive more. Over-dry it and the aroma is scorched away; under-dry it and the tea will not survive the year.
Then it begins again. A new day's flowers, a new night, the same tea. Four times for an everyday cup. Nine times for the master grades — nine harvests and nine sleepless nights invested in a single batch of leaves.
The Grading · 窨製九重
There is no clearer grading system in Chinese tea. The number in the name is the number of times the leaf was scented — and each repetition costs another harvest, another night, another chance to ruin the batch. Select a level to see what it becomes.
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The Collection · 大經茶莊
A single house range read as a ladder: the same Fuzhou craft carried from four rounds of scenting up to nine, from an everyday 100g bag to a 48g box of master grade.
款式與數量視乎每季供應；價格、供貨及由福州來港的順豐速運費用，請 WhatsApp 查詢報價。
Tasting & Culture Class · 茶藝活動
Two ways to join — the regular class you can book anytime, or an occasional special session by invitation. Choose whichever suits you.
Our regular Jasmine Tea Culture & Appreciation class — the Fuzhou scenting craft, reading the grades from four to nine, hands-on brewing and a guided tasting.
A one-off special session, by invitation for our tea friends — quite different from the regular class. Limited places.
Jasmine Tea · Your Questions · 常見問題
There are many sayings about jasmine tea. Here we clear up the most common — and the truest way to tell and appreciate it is to taste it yourself.
The Ritual · 沖泡方法
Jasmine tea is built on a green tea base, so boiling water is the one real mistake — it scalds the leaf, turns the cup bitter and drives off the aroma the maker spent nine nights building. Keep the water below the boil and the fragrance stays in the cup.
Lift the lid and smell it before you drink. In a high-scented tea the aroma arrives before the liquor does.
The everyday Fuzhou way, and the honest one — you watch the leaves open and judge them yourself.
Cold water takes the fragrance and leaves the tannin behind. Unfashionable among purists; excellent in a Hong Kong summer.
Judging Quality · 品鑑
The aroma should arrive bright and immediate, like a flower in the room — not sweet and heavy like perfume. Heaviness usually means additive, not scenting.
Fragrance should have body and stay through several infusions. A tea that smells wonderful dry and vanishes by the second cup was scented too few times.
Jasmine and nothing else. No hay, no smoke, no sourness from a pile that overheated during 通花.
Swallow, then wait. A well-made scented tea leaves a cool sweetness rising at the back of the throat well after the cup is down.
Every jasmine blossom used in a Fuzhou scenting is thrown away. Nothing decorative survives into the tin — no petals, no colour, no proof. All that is left is a dried green leaf that smells impossibly of a summer night, and a craft that only works because generations of makers agreed to stay awake.
Content describing the designations was rephrased for compliance with licensing restrictions. Craft descriptions reflect the traditional 窨製 process; brewing parameters are general guidance and should be adjusted to each tea.
