On top of Bulang Shan. People are not too sure but these Pu-Erh trees are over 1500 years old, and who’s counting? Maybe 1800 years or more. The leaves are palm size, and the tops are 25 or 30 feet tall. How long do these trees live? Camellia Sinensis, an incredible plant of longevity, also gives longevity to those of us who can’t live without it.
How can this be called anything but Camellia Sinensis Pu-Erh? The original tea of the world, a world treasure.
Sudden and fierce torrential downpour= no going up the mountain today, no harvesting, no production. Loudest thunder and biggest lightening bolts ever seen. Yunnan is a land of extremes.
For Pu-Erh, ugly is the new pretty. The conventionally pretty white tippy buds(right) of the Spring Pu-Erh, are relatively useless for aged Pu-Erh. After a period of aging, these white tips will have no taste. Aging the tea requires the more mature hardy leaves (left). In the Spring, many of these large arbor type tea plants will produce some enormous silver buds. Uneducated consumers will prefer these….
What machines can not replace: hand sorting tea. Here, sorting through Sheng Cha, and Shu Cha on the right. Ensuring that every piece of leaf that goes into a compressed Bing is the right quality- Machines can never replace the discerning hand eye sorting such brittle large leaves. For many consumers, buying Pu-Erh compressed cakes blind means not only not knowing what the leaf quality inside the middle of the cakes are, or whether it is the right fermentation, but that if the hand sorting wasn’t done, miscellaneous items aside from reject leaves will certainly be included. Even good quality Bingcha will include several different grades, the prettier leaves on the outside, nevermind unreliable factories. Pu-Erh is the Wild Wild South of tea.
西定章朗Xiding Zhanglang area old tree Maocha. Parsing down to specialized and micro terroir is super important to Yunnan Pu-Erh. After all, processing is not as skill involved as Oolongs, so terroir, tree stock, age….all make the big differences. I am getting to know the taste of Bulang Mountain, with its dance of intricate, complex tastes of BITTER. The bitter note is what is crucial for aging Pu-Erh!
That said, there is a lot of latitude in terms of blending raw materials from sub and micro terroir. Different areas will contribute nuances and qualities that the tea masters want to achieve. There is no end to the subtleties with even just this one mountain!
New Year’s for the Dai ethnics. Luckily I wasn’t here for the Water Splashing Day on the 15th. Today, one can’t tell if this was Thailand, Burma, or Yunnan as everyone of all different tribes pile onto the streets to continue the celebrations. The ethnics here handle mostly agriculture: rubber trees, fruits, and tea,of course. Business handling goes to the enterprising Han people, the majority tribe. Actually, we are all descendants of tribal people, though nowadays Mandarins and Cantonese alike are considered the Hans.The Cantonese used to be called the Southern Barbarians! Though with a love for food, business, and an utmost colorful language, and never had an army nor gone to war, I don’t see how the Cantonese were ever less than super civilized. Here in the Deep South of China in Yunnan, cultural differences are even more pronounced.