Bai Ji Guan

Bai Ji Guan is the odd one among the four famous bushes. The leaf comes off the plant pale, yellow-green rather than the dark green everything else in Wuyi gives you, curved and stiff enough that somebody a few centuries ago thought it looked like a rooster's crest and the name stuck. It buds late, into the back half of May.

The pale leaf gives you a different tea from the other three: light floral over a sweetness that reads as lychee, then peach behind it, and a soft green herb note that's easy to miss if you brew it hard. The liquor is bright gold, the body silky and finely built rather than broad. There's a brief flick of bitterness at the front that turns sweet almost immediately. Dry leaf carries visible red speckles from the fire.