Weishan
A mountain in Ningxiang county, Hunan, whose Weishan Maojian is one of the few Chinese green teas finished over smoke. The leaf is fixed and shaped conventionally and then dried over smouldering maple or pine, giving a resinous edge that sits over an otherwise sweet green base — a genuinely different use of smoke from the pine drying applied to Tongmu’s black tea.
Elevation
Recorded at 300–900 metres.
How firm this is: Inferred from general knowledge of the district rather than measured or taken from a source that states it.
When it is picked
A spring pluck for the named tea, with the smoke-drying that distinguishes it applied as a finishing step rather than as a season of its own. Hunan's inland climate gives a clear winter dormancy and a spring premium narrower than the coastal provinces', and the summer and autumn crops go to ordinary green tea.
How firm this is: Inferred from general knowledge of the district rather than measured or taken from a source that states it.
How production is organised
Smallholder gardens and small workshops, with the smoke-drying done at village scale over local wood. It is a technique held by a small number of makers rather than an industrial process, and a method maintained by that few people is one bad decade away from being lost.
How firm this is: Inferred from general knowledge of the district rather than measured or taken from a source that states it.
How the name is written
Also transliterated as wei shan, weishan. Romanisations of a district name vary by system and by vendor, and a packet spelling one way is not describing a different place.
Teas this region is known for
- Weishan Mao Jian — Softly smoky over the grain sweetness that yellowing produces — a combination with no real parallel elsewhere in tea, and the reason the tea is worth seeking despite its scarcity.
Other growing regions in China
The neighbouring districts are the useful comparison: they share a country, a grading convention and often a cultivar, so what differs between them is closer to terroir than anything a cross-border comparison can isolate.
- Ailao Mountains
- Anhua
- Anji
- Anxi
- Bada Mountain
- Bailin
- Beiyuan
- Bingdao
- Bulang
- Changxing (Guzhu)
- Dongting Mountain
- Duyun
- Emei Mountain
- Enshi
- Fengqing
- Fu’an
- Fuding
- Fuzhou
- Gande
- Hekai
- Hengxian
- Huangshan
- Huoshan
- Jinggu
- Jingmai
- Jingyang
- Junshan Island
- Lao Ban Zhang
- Laoshan
- Lincang
- Lingtou
- Lu’an
- Lushan
- Manzhuan
- Meijiawu
- Meitan
- Mengding Mountain
- Menghai
- Mengku
- Mengsong
- Nanjing (Yuhua)
- Nannuo Mountain
- Phoenix Mountain
- Pingshui
- Pu’er (Simao)
- Qimen
- Rizhao
- Shengzhou
- Shifeng (Lion Peak)
- Songyang
- Taiping
- Tanyang
- Tianmu Mountain
- Tongmu Guan
- Tunxi
- Wenzhou
- Wudong Mountain
- Wuyi Mountains
- Wuyuan
- Wuzhou
- Xianghua
- Xigui
- Xihu (West Lake)
- Xinyang
- Xiping
- Xishuangbanna
- Xiushui
- Ya’an
- Yangloudong
- Yibang
- Yibin
- Yichang
- Yingde
- Yiwu
- Yixing
- Yongchun
- Youle
- Yuan’an
- Yueyang (Beigang)
- Yunnan
- Zhangping
- Zheng Yan (Wuyi core)
- Zhenghe
- Zhenjiang
- Ziyang
Sources
- TeaHQ editorial synthesis — TeaHQ
This page is TeaHQ’s own synthesis throughout. No external document stands behind the elevation band, the climate note or the character described above, which is why each carries its confidence in the open.
Written comparisons
Where TeaHQ has set this region against something it is routinely confused with, and argued the differences out in full.
- Weishan vs Tongmu Guan — The two Chinese districts where smoke is applied deliberately, and they apply it to opposite categories over different woods. Weishan finishes a green tea over smouldering maple or pine; Tongmu withers and dries a black tea over pine. Both produce a smoky cup and neither is a defect.