I drank what..?

December 26, 2010 6:40 AM

I was (happily) re-gifted a beautiful box of Chinese teas which my brother had received years ago but we have no clue about what teas are actually included. I've take a picture of the box and the canisters. Please help me find out what I'm drinking!
posted by jmcgrady to Food & Drink (9 answers total)

Not much help but sign at bottom of tins 1-3 means cha/tea, I believe.
posted by londongeezer at 7:12 AM on December 26, 2010

From left to right:
Longjing, Oolong, Jasmine, Bi Luo Chun.
posted by Sar at 7:27 AM on December 26, 2010

It looks like the characters in red on the box say 四大名茶 (sì dà míng chá), where 四 is 4 and 茶 is tea. 大名 is literally "great name", so something like "classic".
posted by logopetria at 7:33 AM on December 26, 2010

In the row of text on the box, the first few characters look like they might be 杭州 (Hángzhōu) and 西湖区 (Xīhúqū).
posted by logopetria at 8:00 AM on December 26, 2010

Then the remainder appears to be 龙坞茶叶总公司 (lóngwù cháyè zǒnggōngsī), where 龙坞 is something like "dragon dock" (?), 茶叶 is tea leaves, and 总公司 is company. So this is just the name of the tea company, which is based in Xīhú, Hángzhōu.
posted by logopetria at 8:21 AM on December 26, 2010

Oh, and the character in the circle at the left of the label looks like 御 (yù), "Imperial". I can't make out anything in the circle on the right of the box.
posted by logopetria at 8:32 AM on December 26, 2010

In this context, the 四大名茶 means something like 'the four great famous teas', and those are the types Sar gives above - i.e. seems it's a sampler set of the four best-known types of Chinese tea.
posted by Abiezer at 9:16 AM on December 26, 2010

Wow, thanks everyone! Once again the Ask hive-mind comes through.
posted by jmcgrady at 11:58 AM on December 26, 2010

Just out of curiosity, do you intend to drink these teas? You mention that your brother received these years ago, and tea, even when the packages are unopened, tend to have a relatively short best-by date. So I came into this thread expecting a kind of "can I drink this" aside... I don't think you'll get sick from drinking them, but they might not taste very good anymore.
posted by misozaki at 4:14 PM on December 26, 2010