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

Tea Adventures

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…

Tea Adventures

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

Tea Adventures

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

Tea Adventures

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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Protecting this unknown wild forest of ancient Pu-erh trees is…

Tea Adventures

Protecting this unknown wild forest of ancient Pu-erh trees is paramount, both to prevent too much demand, too many buyers or tourists, and oppression on the local ethnics. Too many buyers and tourists, once word gets out, means certain destruction of the trees and its habitat. It struck me that most Pu-erh books have not recorded this section of the mountain and all these extremely old and interesting trees, not to mention the complex tasting leaves. This might be the final frontier.
We may, definitely, want to commission some Sheng Pu-Erh from these trees and these villagers…..

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Being Indiana Jones, even for a tea version, is rather strenuous….

Tea Adventures

Being Indiana Jones, even for a tea version, is rather strenuous. This morning, at Nannuo Shan, visiting with the ancient tea trees. It’s hard to keep track after a few hundred years, particularly for the ethnic minorities who often don’t even have a written language. These trees are likely thousands of years old, based on the circumference of the trunk at base. High elevation means slow growth, so based on growth rate vs trunk size, they can estimate the age. Here in the woods full of old tea trees, the steep hills without a road, I began my full day of trekking.

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