Take Advantage of Tea to Celebrate the Year of the Wood Snake!
Happy New Year!
Chinese New Year, also called Lunar New Year, began yesterday. The celebration lasts for two weeks. During this extremely festive time, people who honor the lunar calendar engage in myriad practices and rituals, feasts and gatherings.
We adore it. Just when winter’s grip tightens and it seems we may be stuck in cold and dark and ice forever, along comes Chinese New Year to deliver color, excitement and warmth—through family, friends and community.
People have been celebrating what is also known as Spring Festival for 3,500 years! The long, rooted history, too, informs its power and allure. Partaking in these customs puts us in touch with ancestors from thousands of years ago. It’s awfully special.
Chinese New Year involves all sorts of activities. People first clean their homes—to sweep away bad luck—and hang red lanterns and cards adorned with phrases. They hold dinners, watch the Spring Festival Gala and set off fireworks. Elders give to children red envelopes filled with money, for good luck.
They wear new clothes, avoid taboos like using sharp tools and saying unlucky words, eat lucky foods and so much more. It all takes over! Everybody becomes completely absorbed in Chinese New Year for these two weeks every year.
A range of qualities also receive a lot of attention during the New Year. Among them, longevity, luck, happiness, health, fertility and more.
The Year of the Wood Snake
For people turning 60 this year—we know at least one!—it’s an especially important year. Turning 60 in 2025 means they were born in 1965, the Year of the Wood Snake. And this year, 2025, marks the only other time in their lives that will be the Year of the Wood Snake (unless they live to 120).
This is a big deal, for people turning 60. If that means you, read up on the Wood Snake and research things you might do this year to fully embrace your big year, Chinese New Year-style!
As we just now begin the two-week dance across Chinese New Year, let’s think about sipping teas that reflect some of these themes, like longevity and health!
Teas for Chinese New Year: Tie Guan Yin
Prosperity always stands as an important theme during Chinese New Year—after all, one of the most widely known practices is the passing of money-filled red envelopes to kids!
To nod toward Chinese New Year’s reverence for abundance, sip Tie Guan Yin, named after the bodhisattva Guanyin (Goddess of Mercy). This tea’s tightly rolled leaves unfurl upon the introduction of hot water, yielding an especially full-bodied, lush brew. The process of transforming from so many hard, bound wands of leaves into a decadent pot of tea symbolizes the accumulation of wealth and abundance.
In addition, in traditional Chinese culture, drinking superb tea often gets associated with status and good fortune. As such, this is a perfect tea to sip for Chinese New Year!
Teas for Chinese New Year: Sui Yue Liu Xiang
This grand puerh, a style of fermented and aged tea, perfectly aligns with Chinese New Year’s reverence for ancestors. By sipping this aged tea, celebrants pay tribute to those who came before. At the same time, they also can establish intentions for the next generation.
We think sharing this tea with family helps connects generations across time, inviting them to embrace past, present and future one fragrant sip at a time.
Teas for Chinese New Year: Da Hong Pao
Strength and vitality rank as key attributes to embrace during Chinese New Year. Honoring strength during the two weeks helps to set up a year ahead full of power and potency.
The appreciation of strength makes Da Hong Pao, one of our celebrated rock oolongs, an especially good Chinese New Year tea.
Rock oolongs grow on the craggy cliffs of the Wuyi Mountains, in China’s beautiful Fujian Province. The rocky soil doesn’t offer bounties of nutrients, so the tea plants dig deep for sustenance. Their stout roots find what they need, and the resulting tea offers deep, mineral flavors. For us, these wonderful teas symbolize stability, endurance, perseverance—and yes, strength. The tea’s bold, roasted flavors, too, suggest puissance. Savor every drop of your Da Hong Pao—and let it help fill the year ahead with vigor!
Teas for Chinese New Year: Immortal Tea
With peppermint, ginseng and jiao gu lan, our Immortal Tea perfectly aligns with the Chinese New Year fondness for longevity. One of the celebration’s better known customs, slurping long noodles, symbolizes longevity.
The tea’s peppermint lends a pleasing zing to the brew. But the other ingredients speak more directly to the longevity angle. Both ginseng and jiao gu lan are adaptogens, meaning they are botanicals that can help manage things like stress and energy, while also helping the body fight antioxidants and plenty more. Ginseng is the more familiar of these ingredients—it’s found in supplements in nearly any health or natural grocery store, as well as in Asian markets. Jiao gu lan is lesser known. In China, however, it is widely championed for its ability to improve health and boost chances for longevity. Sip this tea with abandon during Chinese New Year—you’ll be stoking longevity vibes with every drop.
Teas for Chinese New Year: Shou Mei White
Translated from Chinese, this tea means “Longevity Eyebrow.” How’s that for leaning into those longevity vibes! This white tea is traditionally believed to have cooling and detoxifying properties, which support internal balance and overall well-being. Bolstering them does wonders for ripening lives that age with health. In addition, Chinese medicine turns to Shou Mei and other aged white teas to improve digestion, boost immunity and enhance circulation—and to help the body age gracefully.
