Pick and taste Longjing tea in the hills of Hangzhou

Longjing, or Dragon Well, is the most famous green tea in China: a flat, jade-coloured leaf with a taste of chestnut, pan-fired by hand. It comes from a small area of hills to the south-west of West Lake in Hangzhou, a few minutes by car from the lakeshore, and the villages that grow it are among the most pleasant places in the city.

What the experience is

The plantations lie around the villages of Longjing, which gave the tea its name, Meijiawu, Wengjiashan and Shifeng. Terraces of low bushes climb the slopes between woods of bamboo and camphor, and almost every house is a tea farm with a room for tasting. At Hugong Temple, at the foot of Shifeng hill, eighteen bushes enclosed by a stone railing are said to be those picked by the Qianlong emperor on his visit in the 18th century, when he made Longjing an imperial tea.

A visit can be as simple as a glass of tea on a farmer’s terrace, the leaves standing upright in hot water. In season it is possible to go into the fields with the pickers, taking only the bud and the first one or two leaves, and then to watch the firing, in which the fresh leaves are pressed and turned by bare hand in a hot iron pan until they are dry and flat. The skill takes years to learn and decides the quality of the tea.

The China National Tea Museum, set among plantations nearby, explains the history and the varieties of Chinese tea and is free to enter. For walkers, an old path of stone slabs, the Shili Langdang, crosses the ridge between the tea villages in three or four hours.

When to go

The finest tea is Mingqian, picked before the Qingming festival in early April, when the buds are smallest. Yuqian, picked in the following two weeks before the Grain Rain, is the next grade. Late March to mid-April is therefore the time to see the harvest. The villages are green and worth visiting in any season, and far quieter outside it.

Getting there

The tea villages are fifteen to twenty minutes by car from the West Lake hotels. Go in the morning on a weekday; at spring weekends the lanes fill with visitors from Shanghai.

Why OKYTO recommends it

Because it joins a landscape, a craft and a taste in a single morning, and because it explains why Hangzhou has been associated with refinement for a thousand years. Amanfayun stands among the tea fields, and Longjing Manor is the restaurant to book nearby.