TeaHQ

Longjing

China’s best-known green tea and the reference case for pan-firing, pressed flat against a hot wok into distinctive smooth blades. The character is chestnut-sweet and toasty rather than marine, which is most of what separates Chinese green tea from Japanese.

Green teaModerate intensityAccessible to appreciateForgiving to brew龍井
Brew at 75–85 °CUse 1.5–2.5 g per 100 mlFirst steep 120sWestern brewing (teapot or mug)Full schedule and equipment →

Character

Nutty and sweet with a soft body and very little grip. Where Japanese greens go marine and savoury, Longjing goes toasted and sweet — the clearest single illustration of what pan-firing does that steaming does not.

Flavour
Nutty, Sweet, Vegetal
Aroma
Toasted, Orchid
Mouthfeel
Light, Smooth
Complexity
Moderate
Notes
roasted chestnut, toasted rice, orchid, fresh beans
Aftertaste
Sweet, nutty and notably clean.

Moderate intensity: noticeable weight or grip, but neither dominates the cup.

Provenance and production

Origin
China
Region
Meijiawu, Shifeng (Lion Peak), Xihu (West Lake)
Cultivar
Longjing 43, Qun Ti Zhong, Longjing Changye, Zhongcha 108
Oxidation
Unoxidised
Harvest
First flush
Processing
Withering → Kill-green (fixation) → Drying

Authenticity: Far more tea is sold as West Lake Longjing than that small protected area could produce. Longjing made elsewhere in Zhejiang is legitimate tea under a broader name, and is frequently very good; the price difference between it and the protected designation is very large.

Where it grows

The districts recorded against this tea, all of them in China. Elevation is given as the band the district is recorded at, not a measurement of the garden this leaf came from.

  • Meijiawu — 50–350 metres

    How firm this is: Inferred from general knowledge of the district rather than measured or taken from a source that states it.

  • Shifeng (Lion Peak) — 100–400 metres

    How firm this is: Inferred from general knowledge of the district rather than measured or taken from a source that states it. A hill, not a mountain. The relevant differences within West Lake are aspect, soil depth and drainage over a range of a couple of hundred metres.

  • Xihu (West Lake) — 30–400 metres

    How firm this is: Inferred from general knowledge of the district rather than measured or taken from a source that states it. The gardens are low hills rather than mountains; Longjing’s reputation rests on soil, aspect and processing rather than altitude.

The plants it is made from

Cultivar is the level below the variety group: a named selection of the tea plant, propagated as clones from one parent. Most consumer writing stops at the country and the category, which leaves out the layer that decides how the leaf behaves before anyone picks it.

  • Longjing 43 — Camellia sinensis var. sinensis

    Early budding, uniform, high-yielding and well suited to the flat pressed shape. Its aroma is cleaner and more immediate than the older Qun Ti Zhong population, which is richer but later and far less uniform.

  • Qun Ti Zhong — Camellia sinensis var. sinensis

    Deep roots, late budding, variable leaf. In Longjing and in Wuyi it commands a premium over selected clones despite yielding less, because the mixture of plants gives a layered cup no single clone matches.

  • Longjing Changye — Camellia sinensis var. sinensis

    Longer leaf and later budding than Longjing 43. The later budding is the commercial problem: in a market that pays most for pre-Qingming tea, a few days of lateness is enough to keep a cultivar marginal.

  • Zhongcha 108 — Camellia sinensis var. sinensis

    Close enough to Longjing 43 in the cup that most drinkers will not separate them; the difference matters to growers rather than to readers.

How it is made, in order

Read top to bottom: the list is the production sequence, and the sequence is what makes this tea its category rather than a neighbouring one. The same leaf from the same bush becomes a green tea or a black tea depending on where the heat falls relative to the bruising, so reordering these steps would not vary the tea — it would produce a different one.

  1. 1. Withering — Reduces water content, softens the leaf for later handling, and permits early enzymatic and aromatic development.
  2. 2. Kill-green (fixation) — Denatures polyphenol oxidase and related enzymes, arresting enzymatic oxidation.
  3. 3. Drying — Reduces residual moisture to a level at which enzymatic, microbial and oxidative change effectively stops, stabilising the leaf for storage.

The route it is made by

The steps above are what happens; this is the named production route they belong to, with the other teas made the same way.

  • Chinese pan-fired green tea — Heat first, shape second. The route puts fixation at position three, before the leaf has been ruptured at all, and everything that follows happens to a leaf that has stopped changing colour.

    Where it is practised: Practised across almost every Chinese producing province, and in Korea, Vietnam and increasingly in Japanese kamairicha production, where it is the minority method.

What its chemistry turns on

Every true tea contains caffeine, catechins and amino acids, so listing them would say nothing about this one. What differs is what the processing above does to them — and that is the same list of steps, read for its chemistry instead of its craft.

The compounds that substantially decide what this tea is: Catechins, EGC (epigallocatechin), EGCG (epigallocatechin gallate), Epicatechin, Free amino acids, Leaf lipids, Theogallin.

These are statements about the leaf and the cup. What any of these compounds does in a body is a different kind of question and is not answered here or on the pages linked from it.

History

Associated with the Qianlong emperor, who is said to have designated eighteen bushes at Hugong Temple as imperial tribute in the eighteenth century. The bushes are a tourist site and the story is traditional; what is verifiable is that Longjing has been a named tribute tea for several centuries.

Widely repeated legend — Repeated very widely and not evidenced. Recorded because the story is itself part of the culture, not because it happened.

Brewing

No caffeine estimate is authored for this tea. TeaHQ does not infer one from its category, because category predicts caffeine poorly — matcha and gyokuro carry more than many black teas.

Vessels this tea suits

Recorded against the tea rather than against a brewing style, because the vessel does not always follow from the method — a whisk needs lateral room whatever the schedule says, and compressed leaf needs a pick before any method applies at all.

  • Glass teapot — Traditionally brewed in a tall glass so the flat blades can be watched standing and sinking — the vessel is part of how the tea is appreciated.
  • Vacuum canister — Less air against the leaf is a real and modest gain; a domestic pump lid does not produce anything close to a true vacuum.
  • Pewter tea caddy — Pewter is soft enough to be turned to a close tolerance, so a well-made caddy seals against air far better than a snap-on tin — which matters most for a delicate spring green.

Common mistakes

  • Boiling water, which turns the sweetness sharp
  • Buying on the West Lake name at a price that could not be genuine

When the cup goes wrong

Written against green tea as a category rather than against this tea in particular, and worked back from the symptom to the likely causes in order. 37 apply to the category; the first 6 are shown.

Every diagnosed brewing problem

If you like this

Grouped by why they were suggested, strongest reason first. Nothing here is a blended score — a suggestion appears under the best reason that exists for it, and never under a weaker one as well.

Editorially linked

Someone wrote down why these two belong together. The note below is theirs.

  • Korean green tea

    Both are pan-fired rather than steamed, giving the chestnut-and-toast profile that separates them from Japanese green tea.

  • Ujeon

    Pan-fired, chestnut-sweet and delicate. The Korean tea is the closer analogue to Longjing than any Japanese green.

  • Bi Luo Chun

    Both pan-fired Chinese greens. Bi Luo Chun is more fragile and more fruity, and wants leaf dropped onto poured water rather than the reverse.

  • Duyun Mao Jian

    If West Lake Longjing is out of budget, a Guizhou green gives comparable pan-fired character without the protected-origin premium.

  • Kamairicha

    Japan’s pan-fired exception, then China’s benchmark for the same technique. The resemblance is the point and it surprises most people.

  • Wu Niu Zao

    The imitation, then the tea. Both are flat-shaped Zhejiang greens; only one has the chestnut aroma, and knowing that is worth money each spring.

Similar sensory profile

Shares controlled flavour, aroma and mouthfeel descriptors. A looser match — two teas can share descriptors and still taste nothing alike.

  • Bai Ji Guan

    Shares 5 descriptors with Longjing: sweet, nutty, light, smooth and orchid.

  • Hojicha

    Shares 5 descriptors with Longjing: nutty, sweet, light, smooth and toasted.

Compare this tea with another

Written comparisons

Where TeaHQ has set this tea against another in full, rather than deriving the comparison. Each one is a written page with the points of difference argued out.

Where this tea is drunk

Documented practices that name this tea. Each page describes what is done and by whom, and separates what is recorded from what is repeated.

  • Chinese tea house culture — The tea house as a social space rather than a place to drink tea — somewhere to conduct business, settle disputes, hear opera, play mahjong and pass an afternoon, with the tea as the ticket rather than the point.
  • Everyday Chinese tea: the flask, the jar and the leaf left in — How most tea in China is actually drunk — loose leaf dropped into a lidded glass or a vacuum flask, topped up with hot water all day, never decanted and never timed.
  • Imperial tribute tea — The system under which designated gardens supplied tea to the Chinese imperial court, and the long shadow it casts over how Chinese teas are ranked and marketed today.
  • Jing cha — serving tea as an act of respect — The Chinese family ritual in which tea is served kneeling or with both hands to elders and parents-in-law — at a wedding, at a new year, at an apology — and the cup is accepted or not accepted in front of everybody.
  • Longjing and the spring tea season — The cultural weight attached to China's most famous green tea, and to the narrow spring window in which the most prized picking happens — a seasonal event with its own economics and its own anxieties.
  • Tea as a gift in China — A very large share of expensive Chinese tea is bought to be given rather than drunk — which means the packaging carries the message, the price has to be legible without opening the box, and the manufacture has been pulled toward what a gift needs rather than toward what a cup needs.
  • The Ming loose-leaf reform — An imperial decision at the end of the fourteenth century to stop accepting compressed cake tea as tribute — after which Chinese tea became loose leaf steeped in a vessel, and almost every category and utensil now in use began to take its modern shape.

Journeys featuring this tea

Guides covering this tea