Seasoning your first Yixing teapot
A clay pot remembers every tea you brew in it. How to choose one, wake it up, and look after it for decades.
· 5 min read
Yixing pots are made from zisha, “purple sand” clay from Jiangsu. They’re left unglazed, so the clay stays slightly porous: it softens the water, holds heat, and over years takes on a little of every tea brewed in it. That’s why tea people keep one pot for one kind of tea.
Choose its tea first
Before seasoning, decide what the pot is for. Dense, high-fired clay suits aromatic teas like oolong; looser, thicker-walled pots suit pu’er and dark tea. A small pot, 100–150 ml, is the most useful for gongfu brewing.
Waking it up
- Rinse inside and out with hot water. Never use soap or detergent, now or ever.
- Soak it in a clean pan of water and bring that slowly to a simmer, so the clay never meets a sudden temperature change. Simmer for 20 minutes.
- Add a handful of the tea you’ve chosen for the pot and simmer for another 20 minutes, then let everything cool together.
- Rinse, dry with the lid off, and brew your first real session.
Living with it
After each session, empty the leaves, rinse with hot water and leave the lid off until dry. Pour leftover tea over the outside now and then and wipe it with a soft cloth. The slow shine that builds up, the patina, is the pot’s own record of your tea.
Browse our teaware for pots matched to oolong and pu’er.
