What I love about China is its use of evocative names. How can you fail to fall for a tea called Precious Eyebrows? Indeed those perfectly green, perfectly arched leavesâ??each and every one of them painstakingly hand rolledâ??are a thing of beauty. They look like tiny, exquisitely shaped eyebrows that would make any self-respecting Hollywood diva green with envy.

It often amazes me how intricately complex manufacturing processes can produce something as beautifully simple as this tea. It only takes a wrong twist of the hand, or a slightly off temperature to scupper the curve and waste the leaf. And yet Chun Mee, or Zhen Mei, as Precious Eyebrows is called in Chinese, is so easily approachable that it makes an excellent introduction to green teas.

The one I tasted today came from Special Teas and was certified organic. Steeping a teaspoon in steaming water at 180F for two minutes yielded a lovely golden cup. The wet leaves had a sweet herbal scent, which came across a lot more subtly in the brew.

My cup had an ephemeral, sweetish, vegetaley note wafting up, which I thought of as caramelised herbs. In the mouth, it was very smooth and sweet with a decisive finish that I couldnâ??t pin down. Iâ??d like to say it was plummy because thatâ??s what Chun Mee is supposed to taste like and thatâ??s what the vendor promised. But I canâ??t entirely agree on the plumminess. It was sweetish and vaguely fruity but also, in some way, mineraley. As mysterious and indefinable as a Magritte painting. And yes, I am fully aware that I am not making any sense.