Aged White Tea - Aged Shou Mei cake

Aged Shou Mei Cake — Sun-Dried Aged White Tea

Also known as: Aged Shou Mei, Aged White Tea Cake, Lao Bai Cha Cake, Gong Mei Cake

A pressed aged white tea cake — three years old, wild-grown, and made the traditional sun-dried way.

This is old white tea at its most comforting: smooth, mellow and honey-sweet, in a cake built for slow drinking and long keeping.

What Is a White Tea Cake?

Most white tea is loose. But it's also pressed into cakes — and there's a good reason.

Pressed tight, a white tea cake takes up far less space, and it ages slowly and evenly — the leaves protect each other, so the whole cake matures as one. It's the traditional way to keep white tea for the long haul.

"Store new, drink old," as the saying goes — and a cake is made for exactly that.

Three Years Aged, Sun-Dried

What makes this cake special:

• Age: three years of natural ageing — long enough for the fresh notes to mellow into warm, honeyed depth.
• Leaf: wild-grown Shou Mei leaf, from Yunnan — with a natural floral, honeyed sweetness.
• Craft: traditionally sun-dried, the old way, which keeps the flavour clean and helps it age gracefully.
• Character: smooth and thick in the cup, with dried-plum and honey notes and a long, cosy finish.

Delicious now, and it'll keep deepening for years to come.

Best Simmered

Aged white tea has a trick the fresh grades don't: it's wonderful simmered.

After a few steeps, tip the leaf into a pot and let it simmer gently — the liquor turns thick, sweet and deeply warming, filling the room with a cosy, aged aroma. In cooler months, there are few nicer ways to drink tea.

The Four Types of White Tea

White tea is graded by how much bud and leaf goes into the pick. This cake is made from the leafier, more mature grades — which is exactly what ages so well:

Silver Needle is buds only; White Peony adds a leaf or two; Gong Mei and Shou Mei use more mature leaf. That mature leaf is richest in the compounds that transform with age — which is why the Mei grades, not the delicate buds, are the classic white teas to press and lay down.

The Two Homes of White Tea: Fuding & Yunnan

White tea has two great homes, and they make quite different teas.

• Fuding (Fujian) — the birthplace of white tea and the region regarded as the best in China for it. Small-leaf bushes, bright and delicately sweet.
• Yunnan — big-leaf, ancient-tree country in the south-west. Fuller, deeper, honey-rich white teas. This cake is Yunnan-grown.

See the whole range in our white tea collection, including the fresh Shou Mei if you'd like to taste the young version.

White Tea, Antioxidants & Ageing

White tea is the least processed of all teas — just withered and dried — so it holds on to a lot of what's naturally in the fresh leaf, including its antioxidants. That light touch is a big part of white tea's appeal.

Ageing adds another layer. Over the years a white tea cake grows smoother, mellower and richer — the fresh notes softening into warm honey and gentle depth. It's long been treasured in China for exactly this. We'll leave the bigger health talk to others; we'd rather it earn its place by tasting wonderful.

Brew this Aged Shou Mei Cake the right way

— check out our professional Brewing Guide, Storage Care and The Origins below 👇