Crickets? Crikey! April '24 Tea of the Month

Jiminy Cricket! springs into action, but don’t worry: no actual crickets were harmed in the making of this tea, so you can sip with a clean conscience.

This month’s tea is an exploration in form, purity, and the changing of the seasons. Aimee and I lovingly nicknamed this tea “Cricket Tea” due to its interesting shape, and we’re certain that you probably haven’t seen a tea like this before! Jiminy Cricket! comes to us from the tropics of Southwestern Yunnan province, where the newly forming buds of wild tea plants are harvested in February and then sun dried.

As it turns out, dried tea buds have a bit of a chitinous look to them. Whether you think this tea looks like bugs or tiny pinecones is up to your imagination.

This tea is technically a white tea due to how minimally it’s processed, but instead of the apricot and peach fuzz fruity notes you’d typically get in a white tea (see our February 2024 tea, All Yin No Yang), Jiminy Cricket produces an incredibly delicate and sweet cup with resinous notes of pine needles or sap. In this tea, you’ll find the purest form of camellia sinensis var. dehungensis.

What Aimee and I have found is that this tea is virtually impossible to overbrew. While the brewing directions we included lead to a good medium strength cup (as medium strength as you can get with a tea this delicate, anyways), we’ve gone as crazy as doubling both the amount and brew time and still enjoyed the results.

As the weather starts warming up and we start getting into cold brewing season, consider throwing some of these tea buds into your water bottle the night before.

Happy sipping!

— Tea Monk Do

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