What is Blooming (Flowering) Tea?

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Blooming tea, also called Flowering tea (工艺造型茶 ，开花茶， 花形茶 等), refers to teas which are crafted with tea leaves and dried flowers in various shapes and unfold in water like a flower when brewing. From processing perspective, it requires double processing: the first step is to process green tea; second step is to sew green tea leaves with freshly dried flowers.

There are roughly two types of blooming teas. Type one is made with tea leaves only. It refers to Huang Mountains Green Peony, which was invented by a tea farmer in mid 80s in AnHui, China.

Type two is made with tea leaves and freshly dried flowers. This tea was invented by a Chinese woman from FuJian, China. It was inspired by a complaint at tea house. In tradition, Chinese women like herbal teas, such as rose buds, jasmine flowers, etc, while men enjoy loose tea leaves. When both men and women go to tea house, they can not share one pot of tea. The idea is to combine the loose tea leaves with the freshly dried flowers. Blooming tea is born! She filed 4-6 patents in the beginning of 21st century.

Ingredient

• Silver Needle Green Tea: blooming teas, by original design and best results, are made with silver needle green teas from Ning De city and freshly dried flowers sourced from the best locations. Ning De is the origin of silver needle white tea (refers to tea leave specie, not processing), such as FuDing White and ZhengHe White. These are special tea plants only found in Fu Jian province. Their tea buds and leaves are strong, thick, juicy, and full of baby hair. Tea tips are long enough to make blooming tea. Baby hair adds nice visual element to blooming tea. For health, taste, display purposes, blooming tea use silver needle green tea, instead of silver needle white tea. The best tea used for blooming tea are silver needle green single tea buds(or tips) from high mountains in Ning De area.
• Freshly dried flowers: Because all agricultural products are subject to factors such as geographic locations, climate, etc, each kind of flower is sourced directly from well known locations to ensure the highest quality.

Processing

The first step is to pluck the leaves.

• Different from regular leave plucking, blooming tea require the leaves come with a short stem. This means only specially trained people can do this.
• There are roughly 2-3 kinds of leaves, single bud, one leave one bud, and two leaves one bud. Single buds are the best grade, one leave one bud second, and the last grade is two leaves one bud.
• Only the healthiest and strongest leaves and buds are plucked for quality purposes.
• Only pluck leaves when sunny, not cloudy, not rainy, because leaves are required being processed right after plucked. Otherwise, the leaves will go through fermentation process and cannot be used for blooming teas.
• There are only few hours a day and roughly 2 weeks a year for high quality leaf- plucking.

Step two is to make silver needle green teas. This step is to get the leaves ready for hand crafting.

Step three is to hand tie leaves with flowers and make the shapes.

• Selecting: some tea leaves are damaged, such as broken, during processing. Because blooming tea requires perfect visual display, only whole leaves and buds can be used for this step. Same thing with flowers. Only whole flowers can be used for blooming tea.
• Measuring: Each bloom needs roughly 150 single tea buds selected by hands. This has been accurately measured both by weight and length to ensure the best results from both the taste and display perspectives.
• Sewing: This step ensures that blooming tea will open perfectly and flowers stay as designed in hot water. The bloom will eventually be able to sink at the bottom of teapot. Tea leaves and flowers are highly fragile, get oxidized very quickly and change colors and aroma, especially flowers. Once materials are ready, well-trained skilled labors are required use cotton threads to sew everything together in less than 2 hours to ensure the perfect quality of final blooms, which should have bright colors in water and clean, nice aroma.
• Shaping: This step is to use cotton gauze to wrap the final blooms tightly to make various artful shapes then dry them under high temperature. Because this step requires high temperature, only cotton materials are used, such as cotton threads and cotton gauze to make sure no toxic materials released in the whole processing.

Today, there are big varieties of blooming teas available in the market, that are made of different kind of leaves, such as white tea, black teas, etc. But the authentic blooming teas made with silver needle green teas from high mountains in NingDe city are believed to have the best quality, because they are truly Certified Origin products. We source directly from NingDe, FuJian. Our Tea Fame collection is EXCLUSIVE, manufactured as per our instruction.