Gougunao's top grade names use the words for "tribute" and "presented" as official standard terminology — that is not, by itself, documented evidence of a specific imperial tribute history.
Gougunao Tea (狗牯脑茶) is a protected green tea from Suichuan County, Jiangxi, grown at elevations above 450 meters under China’s national standard, GB/T 19691-2008.
Its grading system is unusual among Chinese green teas in how directly it ties grade to harvest date around the traditional solar terms: 特供特级 (“special tribute,” pre-Qingming, single bud only), 贡品特级 (“tribute item,” pre-Grain Rain, single bud only), 珍品特级 (“prized item,” pre-Lixia, one bud with one just-opening leaf), 特级 (pre-Lixia, one bud with one opened leaf), and 壹级/统级 (Qingming through the end of summer heat, one bud with two leaves).
Worth being precise about: 特贡 and 贡品 translate to “special tribute” and “tribute item,” which can read like a claim about imperial history. In the standard itself, they’re simply the names of the top two grades — the document does not document a specific tribute-to-the-court history to go with the name, so this page treats them as grade terminology, not as historical fact.
Processing runs through two full kill-green-and-rolling cycles — kill-green, first rolling, a second kill-green, a second rolling — before shaping, pekoe-lifting and a final full drying. Top grade (特供特级) is described as fine, tender, slightly curled, uniform and slender, tender-green with visible pekoe, giving a floral, sharp aroma; a fresh, mellow, sweet taste; and a bright, apricot-green liquor.
Quality limits under the standard include moisture at or below 6.5%, total ash at or below 6.5%, water extract at or above 38.0%, and an 18-month shelf life.
See the Green Tea guide for where Gougunao Tea sits among China’s other protected green teas, and Lushan Yunwu Tea for another Jiangxi green tea under its own national GI standard.
Look · Dry leaf
Top grade (特供特级) is described in the standard as fine, tender, slightly curled, uniform and slender, tender-green with visible pekoe.
Smell & taste
Typical aroma: floral, sharp, high. Flavor tendencies: fresh, mellow, sweet. Body: light-medium. These vary by batch, storage and brewing.
Brew · A starting point
Try 3 g in 150 ml water at 80–85°C for 60–90 seconds. Fully decant before tasting.
Read the wet leaves
Descriptive tasting notes in the standard focus on the fine, curled shape and tender-green color carrying through to the infused leaf. Appearance alone does not confirm the protected origin or grade.
Sources & review status
- 21份标准提炼.md — Gougunao Tea material card (citing GB/T 19691-2008) — ChinaTea101 owner-supplied Source Library. Used for the full national GI standard profile: protected area (Suichuan County, Jiangxi, above 450m), harvest-date-based raw-material grading, process sequence, sensory grading by tier, physicochemical limits (moisture ≤6.5%, powder ≤1.0%, total ash ≤6.5%, water extract ≥38.0%, crude fiber ≤14.0%), and an 18-month shelf life. No imperial-tribute history is documented in this source — the grade names 特贡/贡品 are standard terminology, not historical evidence, and the page is explicit about that distinction rather than implying a tribute legend.
- SCNet (DeepSeek-V4.1-Flash-Event) extraction pass over the same material card, used to draft initial English prose from the raw standard citations — SCNet API (DeepSeek-V4.1-Flash-Event). SCNet's draft explicitly flagged "Imperial-tribute history is not confirmed by GB/T 19691-2008; 特贡/贡品 are standard grade names, not historical evidence" without being asked to make that distinction — Claude verified this against the source card directly and kept the same hedge in the final page. No fabricated claims were found in SCNet's output.
Imported from 21份标准提炼.md. Updated 2026-09-25. Last reviewed 2026-09-25
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