Tea Adventures

A beautiful chilly morning in Anxi. A newly paved road goes to Da…

A beautiful chilly morning in Anxi. A newly paved road goes to Da Bao Shan, Treasure Mountain, the highest point here. Some of the wild teas are being harvested now, can’t wait to try wild Tieguanyin! But boy, my body is not moving this morning. The late night crazy drive in the fog and numerous tastings of teas and some home made rice wine (part of the customary ritual of this culture here) is the midnight Shao Ye( burning the night away) meal. Last night it was chicken feet and some other kinds of fatty meats. So my default polite thing to do was to drink the rice wine. Now, I defy anyone else to top my sacrifices on behalf of tea! For Chinese alcohol, especially the homemade ones, in my most humble opinion, is in direct polar opposite in excellence to their tea…..I think I have alcohol poisoning already from just a tiny shot glass amount.

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Wow! An excellent year for the Red Guanyin. Mr. Lin, ex-physician…

Wow! An excellent year for the Red Guanyin. Mr. Lin, ex-physician and village doctor, made this one batch of Red Guanyin all by hand through a 15 hour oxidation. I am a sucker for the handmade stuff especially when it’s this good. Beautiful almost ruby color, lots of sweets and a bit of citrus, and a spicey top note like candied tangerine. Sold! He had very little left anyway. Each day it was made someone would come buy it all.

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Tea Adventures

Anxi, a typical rural small city that serves the great Anxi…

Anxi, a typical rural small city that serves the great Anxi mountain range, home of many Oolongs, particularly, the legendary Tieguanyin. Arrived into a misty, very cold night. This year, as it happens every 30 years or so, is the phenomenon of the winter spring. Some winter days roared back into the middle of the spring, killing quite a few tea sprouts. This was reported so far in Fuding, Phoenix,Hangzhou, here in Anxi, and also in Yunnan. Well, it also happened in the Bay Area so it must have been global.

Arrived into a night of blinding white fog. Let’s see if I make it up the steep, blind turns up the tea mountain.

If I do, will be up all night tonight tasting through hundreds of teas since flight delays set me back almost a half day.

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A beautiful pheasant hung at the door of the AiNi ethnic who owns…

A beautiful pheasant hung at the door of the AiNi ethnic who owns the wild trees at NanNuo Shan. Sad, strangely poignant. It displays the ignorance that all of us are subject to in one area or another.

It’s been many years since I’ve embarked on this tea journey. To be sure, it is a specialty business, and a specialized skill set. Who could endure through these strenuous conditions of traveling in rural China, enjoying nonstop clouds of second hand smoke, staying at farms and living with the farmers in various levels of cultural differences, in order to really spend time to get to know each producer and area? Without truly understanding the context and culture of each region, how can one become a discerning buyer? To assume that one can expertly judge some tea leaves through sniffing at samples would be quite a little bit presumptuous, if not arrogant. No tea buyer can know a region better than the ones who live in that land, tended the tea bushes, cleared the soil to let in nutrient, covered the bushes with hay to keep them warm. Do you think you can waltz in and tell them you know better? Well, for every unknowledgeable tea buyer, there is someone in China buying Merlot and adding Red Bull, or chucking down the wine in shot glasses with loud ‘ganbei’! Ignorance is decidedly not bliss.

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Tea Adventures

Killing time at Kunming airport, leaving Yunnan today for more…

Killing time at Kunming airport, leaving Yunnan today for more fun adventures elsewhere. The sign says: noodle. China is the land of noodles and green tea in reality, not rice and Pu-erh as people think. Pu-erh and oolong, though popular, are grown in one province only, each, whereas green tea is everywhere. I heard the Taiping Houkui is going to cost, wholesale to us, at $1000 USD a kg, which, in the land of artificial inflation roulette, is still ridiculous. Green teas do not last much more than its freshness period of 6 months, one year if lucky, and skillsets required in most cases are minor compared to Oolongs. We will fortunately have Nanjing Rainflower again this year, the most difficult and refined of green teas, and the new fabulous Fujian green, ahead of the curve at peak quality, yet no demand yet due to newness, and reasonable prices still. I guess that’s the job of a tea curator, vs buyer. A buyer buys for the customer. A curator leads the way. Personally speaking, tea curation is more fun and challenging than mere commodity buying. Which means you, dear aficionados and friends, have to rely on us doing a good job on your behalf, beyond what you ask for!

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Tea Adventures

We are going to have a limited batch of Wild Ancient Pu-erh…

We are going to have a limited batch of Wild Ancient Pu-erh Bingcha from the early spring harvest, I made my commission. Tasted the raw materials last night and it is superb, drinkable now but encouraging the wait- age for at least 5 years. I tasted one aged in Yunnan for 5 years and it was deep. Deep, in a way that it is not readily accessible, but those with complex and nuanced palates, or fans of Pu-erh, will fall over for. Yunnan weather is similar to Bay Area, so 5 years aged was very encouraging. If you live in a humid part of the world, it would just mean that much deeper in 5 years.
It will be up on the pre-order section soon online. I am also hatching a plan to age more of these precious wild mountain stuff in Guangdong, where the humidity and heat will get it aging fast. The plan is to have everyone claim a spot. More news on the plan soon.

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