Blog
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Echoes of Tea Lyricism Part 1: “Bay Meng Yu and The Rise and Fall of the Nannuo Shan Tea Factory”
The Instagram story from a few days ago about Bai Meng Yu and the radical mid-century shift in the mechanization of tea production in Nannuo has gotten more attention than I thought, and I thank you so much for that. So on this chilly morning, drinking a 2003 Nannuo sheng, it seems conceivable that I…
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Seven Essence Darjeeling Scorsese red
This was the last tea of 2024 and the first of the new year. It was a tough, exhausting year. Dealing with the pain of loss, with the sense of emptiness, of being unmoored from the warmth of everyday life and the luxury of the habit of affection, I believe is the greatest thing that…
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Climate crisis, Darjeeling and Sublime. Seven Essence Darjeeling summer Ochre
Despite the climate crises, landslides and hydrogeological disasters that have brought the Himalayas to their knees in the last decade, some corners of this land continue to surprise, returning results beyond the imagination, overcoming difficulties and uncertainties. Ochre is a Darjeeling tea, created using the AV2 cultivar, with golden leaves, twisted like the enigmatic smile…
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Beyond the ordinary concept of craftsmanship. Seven Essence Darjeeling Gossamer
There are teas that are indifferent, inexpressive, flat, that simply fill a cup and others that nourish the soul, an expression of the genius loci, resistant, a symbol of those who bear witness to a story, to a place, to bring tea to its highest expression. Darjeeling has suffered in the last twenty years from…
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An echo of a higher truth. MST old master Dong Ding spring 2024
Taiwan is a mountainous land, rich in those peaks that seem to incessantly support the weight of the world, they are the vertebrae of the backbone of a country, the reflection of a collective history written on the skin of the earth.The island has a completely autonomous historical path compared to what is thought and…
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Darjeeling, a refuge of perpetual change. Seven Essence Darjeeling Villanelle
Among those mountains where even the fogs seem to recognize themselves, always the same, the sun makes its way over the peaks of Darjeeling in that way that only northern India can do, with those sunsets stained with scarlet red as if a cup of tea had spilled in the skies. Among the big brands,…
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When a great pu’er become an elegy. Eastern Leaves Lunan Mountain ancient trees 2020
For generations, caravans laden with pu’er have traversed the steep paths of Lunan, eluding the harsh karst landscape, leaving it behind them, slowly advancing towards Tibet. The muleteers, with their faces hollowed by frost and fatigue, relied on themselves, on their companions, on the tenacity of their horses, following the paths traced by their ancestors,…
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An Antidote to Boredom. Seven Essence Darjeeling Ennui
Ennui, boredom, the name of this tea, the strange sensation that overwhelms you when nothing happens, when everything forces you to remain still, like an old wreck of a bus stopped in the middle of nowhere, and you there, with an empty gaze, with a half-extinguished cigarette between your fingers, without knowing where you will…
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Tea as a contrast to immediacy and as an aid to living time. Viet Sun Thương Sơn sheng pu’er 2016
I think there is immense value in dwelling on the traditions that tie us to the past. We live in an age that has forgotten the importance of living time, of the slow maturation of ideas and things. Rather than living, we grope in a era that tends at times to reduce life to mere…
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A mystical, primordial village that gave refuge to outlaws, tea merchants, heroic loggers and ghosts. Huang Cao Ba told with a 2023 old trees sheng pu’er
Huang Cao Ba is a village of less than 800 souls, a respectable number considering the average of the nearby ones. Although it lives on a simple economy, based mostly on the production of food to be consumed on site, on livestock and agriculture, it can boast a certain basic well-being and the historical prestige…
Wild Harvested 