Bi Tan Piao Xue

Bi Tan Piao Xue 碧潭飘雪 is the Chinese Sichuan jasmine tea. It is also named as Snow Jasmine. Bi Tan Piao Xue is one of the best quality Chinese Jasmine Tea.

The capital of Sichuan provicne, Chengdu city is one of the very few Chinese Southern cities which has vast consumption of jasmine tea. (In China domestic, most of the jasmine tea are consumed in the Northern cities). The Chengdu people has the tradtion of ‘talking story together’ (Long Men Zhen 龙门阵), meanwhile they would consume a lot of jasmine tea. Genrally the people in the city has time and money, they can appreciate culture and tea. This kind of apprecation has enhanced the quality of the tea. So the premium jasmine tea Bi Tan Piao Xue was created.

The Bi Tan Piao Xue adopts the high quality green tea base (one bud one leaf new open) from the Emeishan 峨眉山 region. And it waits till the beginning of July to scent with jasmine flower, when the jasmine has the best fragrance in the year. The jasmine of Sichuan is moslty planted in Qian Wei County (犍为县). Qian Wei County is short distance to the green tea base. This convenience helps build up the jasmine tea industry, and present fine quality.

Besides the jasmine flower, around 5% of magnoia flower will be added in the scenting of Bi Tan Piao Xue. So the Bi Tan Piao Xue aslo has a a kind of sweet fragrance besides the jasmine fragrance.

The scenting with the jasmine and magnolia of Bi Tan Piao Xue will reapeat 5-7 times to ensure the lingering fragrance. So from the start of jasmine scetning till the end, it takes around three weeks.

After scenting, some dry jasmine flower will be left in the tea to achieve good looks of the tea.

The brewing of Bi Tan Piao Xue has fascinating jasmine fragrance, and the liquor is jade green color. The jasmine flower floating in the liquor looks like flying snow. This is the Chinese name Bi Tan Piao Xue meaning, snow flying in green lake. The taste is very mellow, with deep sweet aftertaste.