Essence of Tea - Teas - China

Produced in the mid-late 1980's, these cakes were stored for the first 10-15 years of their life in Hong Kong in traditional, fairly humid storage. They were then bought by a tea merchant in Malaysia and have been stored there since. Their time in Hong Kong has allowed the tightly pressed cakes to age well, with their subsequent storage and ageing in Malaysia allowing the tea to become more refined and much of the traditional storage flavour to dissipate. The end result is a...

This tea is a blend of a few single tree teas from Bangwei and Bulang. These trees stand out from their neighbours as some of the biggest and oldest trees in their gardens. This is a very special tea. It is composed of a large proportion of buds, from the first flush of Spring. The taste is very pure, thick and with plenty of strength. There is a hint of taste from the wok, perhaps it wasn't cleaned properly between batches during hand-processing, but this should settle over the...

This tea was a bit of an experiment for us. We'd found 2 different maochas from Bulang mountain, which were each excellent, but in different ways. One was old trees from around Manmu village, while the other was old trees from a few km away. We went back and forth, trying to choose one of them to press into cakes, and in the end decided to blend the two teas. The Manmu was very pure in flavour with a strong qi and strong ku (pleasant bitterness), the other was thicker in the mouth and more...

This tea is collected from ancient, wild trees on Wuliang mountain. These are truely wild trees, that haven't been planted by humans and average around 800-1000 years old. The leaves naturally have honey like characteristics in the taste and aroma, which lends them very well to being made into hongcha (Red/Black tea). I find it difficult to get excited by many hongcha - the oxidisation often seems to mute many of the characteristics of teas that I find most enjoyable. This one...