Laoshan Lü Cha

In 1954 Mao called for southern tea to be grown in the north. Five years later fifty thousand seedlings went into the ground below the Taiqing Palace on Laoshan, in Shandong, far past where anyone thought tea would live.

Most of them died in the first cold. A few thousand survived, and those became China's far northern frontier of tea.

Everything here happens late. The harvest comes almost a month behind the south, and the chill thickens the leaf before it can be picked. That thickness is what you taste. Brothy and green, chestnut and fresh peas, with a honeyed edge over mild dryness.