Rare teas, the culmination

Here is one of the house's most singular teas, and it comes from where you would least expect: not from China, home of white tea, but from Ceylon. Its buds are harvested with golden scissors, without the hand touching the leaf, then dried in the sun. In the cup, the tender infusion releases a fragrance of white flowers, truffle and forest floor, of a depth unexpected in so pale a tea. It is presented in a white lacquered box with a double lid, containing four five-gram envelopes.

Maori Blue is an oolong tea of great rarity, whose name evokes the far reaches of the Pacific and the deep blue of the oceans. Semi-oxidised according to the delicate art of the great oolongs, it sits halfway between green and black, rolled to release its aromas slowly. The golden, silky liquor unfolds a floral and fruity palette of rare elegance, with a creamy texture and a long sweet finish. Infuse it several times, each steeping revealing a new facet. An exceptional oolong, exotic and refined, the call of the open sea in a cup.

Gyokuro is the pinnacle of Japanese tea, and Uji, near Kyoto, has grown tea since the 13^th century; gyokuro itself, born of the art of shading around 1835, is much younger than its terroir. Its secret lies in the shade: a few weeks before the harvest, the tea bushes are deprived of light. The leaf then stops producing bitterness and fills with theanine, the amino acid that gives this sweetness and broth-like umami. It is prepared against every convention: many leaves, very little water, barely warm. A tiny cup, dense and silky.

“À la Porte Chinoise” was the sign of a merchant of teas and goods from China, the Indies and the colonies, a whole world of imagination in 19^th-century Paris, enamoured of the Orient. This tea keeps its spirit alive through a blender's feat: it unites the five types of tea, white, green, blue (oolong), black and scented, each with its own character, in a single cup. Bringing together five families that would normally each require their own water and time is quite an achievement; the result, lightly floral and astonishingly balanced, has something unique, almost mystical, about it. It is not rarity that earns it its place here, but this singularity: five teas in a single gesture.