Procured on a cold March morning in Xingcun
Sandry Law took the early train from Kunming to Wuyishan in late February, right before the spring bud break. The brief was simple: find a young, technically sharp roaster whose charcoal-fired Shui Xian could hold its own next to the big-name factories — and whose batch size could fit inside a 15g sample pouch tucked into a tour cap.
Xingcun sits on the quieter side of the reserve, where family workshops still dry-tea over bamboo trays under open sheds. After tasting twelve lots in a single afternoon, Sandry settled on a small-batch roast from a third-generation roaster named Master You. “It had the clarity I look for in a broiling-grade Shui Xian,” he said. “Not too heavy on the caramel, but enough fire to open up later into apricot and flint. You can tell the roast was guided by someone who knows what the leaf did last autumn.”
The tea was finished over longan charcoal in January and rested until March — exactly when the tour group will start ascending the Nine-Bend creek paths. The cap itself is a salt-washed canvas with a stiffened front panel, meant to breathe on the trail. The embroidered ‘Yancha 2026’ mark sits low above the brim, nearly invisible when worn, but a quiet signal to anyone who knows what it means.