Buy Bai Mu Dan (White Peony) White Tea | Loose Leaf Tea

Wild Bai Mu Dan (White Peony) 白牡丹 loose leaf white tea

$62.00

Vintage Dian Tou - 1st Pluck 2025 Dian Tou - Early Spring 2023 Dian Tou - Little Veggie Early Spring 2022 Dian Tou - Early Spring 2021 Tang Yuan - 1st Pluck 2018

Size Box (30 grams) Packet (5 grams)

Tasting notes by vintage

Dian Tou — 1st Pluck 2025: Warm and exuberant, tranquil and sweet, umami and floral — if you ever wonder what a Bai Mu Dan that rivals a Yin Zhen tastes like, this is the one.

Dian Tou — Early Spring Da Hao 2023: Osmanthus flower and napa cabbage soup, with an underlying layer of fresh melon.

Dian Tou — Little Veggie Tea 2022: A viscous, full-bodied white tea made from indigenous heirloom trees. This rare small-leaf tea — adoringly named “Little Veggie Tea” — has notes of rice butter and pea shoots with the freshness of cucumbers.

Dian Tou — Early Spring Da Hao 2021: This batch evokes sunbathing in a field of flowers.

Tang Yuan — 1st Pluck Da Bai 2018: Most high-end white teas are made from Da Hao (China Tea #2), as Tea Drunk’s usually are. Da Bai (China Tea #1) is the earlier clone planted in the region, mostly wiped out in a drought decades ago with a few lots gone feral. This batch was made in 2018 and recently finished in the sun; it has aged beautifully into the classic mead note one desires from an aged white tea, while still showing the umami and outgoingness that distinguish a Da Bai.

Travel into Fu Ding, the birthplace of white tea, and explore White Tea Fundamentals, or compare vintages in the Multi-Vintage Wild Bai Mu Dan Tea Tasting Set.

This tea is also included in the Reserve Tea Sampler.

Tea Drunk ClassicThe best tea of each vintage.

Traditionally crafted using nothing but the sun and the wind, this tea transports us to sunbathing in a field of flowers. This batch is harvested from wild tea trees in the birthplace of white tea, Fu Ding.

The Three Pillars · 白牡丹

Place · terroir

Dian Tou, Fu Ding, Fu Jian Province, China (~500m elevation)

Plant · cultivar

Da Hao, Wild Tea

Craft · type

White Tea

In the cup

This vintage

Dian Tou - 1st Pluck 2025

Warm and exuberant, tranquil and sweet, umami and floral — if you ever wonder what a Bai Mu Dan that rivals a Yin Zhen tastes like, this is the one.

This tea reminds us of sun-soaked cotton, mead, apricot kernel and has a herbaceous note to it. Wildflower notes join the sun-soaked-cotton and apricot character.

The making

The official second grade of white tea, Bai Mu Dan, consists of one fat bud and two leaves. It is not always inferior in terms of picking time to Yin Zhen. The best Bai Mu Dan is harvested simultaneously with Yin Zhen, and it is simply the maker's choice whether or not to go through more steps to make it into Yin Zhen or sell as Bai Mu Dan. In this case, a Bai Mu Dan can be considered an un-de-leaved Yin Zhen, and it is commonly accepted as a preference in taste among professionals to choose Bai Mu Dan over Yin Zhen instead of a fail of expertise. However, even though Bai Mu Dan has overlapping seasons with Bai Hao Yin Zhen, Bai Mu Dan's making continues even when Yin Zhen's making has ended. Thus, the later harvested Bai Mu Dan is indeed more inferior to Yin Zhen. As the season goes into summer, the buds become skinnier, and the leaves become larger than the buds.