Blog
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Making a true, authentic tea is sometimes a question of consciousness. Meng Tong Yin Shan Tea Factory Gǔ Xiāng sheng pu’er 2009
I happened to wake up this morning with a sense of nostalgia, that damned stinging feeling, that melancholic regret of what has passed or gone, or been lost. I headed to my “pharmacy,” that’s what I call the place where I keep that messy pile of leaves and ceramics that should appear to be a…
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Gaoshan, the village between uncertainty and change. Bitterleaf “Vision” Gaoshan sheng 2023
Gaoshan is a village in the Yiwu area, a place where about 100 families live, mostly Yi, more specifically Xiangtang. The first time I saw a photo of Gaoshan it portrayed a child under a table and a woman in her sixties with a basket of fruit in her hand, behind her house, she had…
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Metaphysics of Pu’er blend with Moychay 2022 Melting Reality sheng pu’er
We live in an era where you can potentially know everything about a tea, the garden it comes from, the grower, the exact location of the trees, but the tea market has not always been like this. Blends were so popular in the past that there were few single-origin teas before the 2000s. Some of…
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When Pu’er gone in a single day. Dialogue on the present, the past and rites with a 2006 CNNP “Yellow Mark”
When the fragile walls of the pu’er business were crumbling in the early 2000s, many people stood in front of the screens in the Kunming tea market, crystallizing an evocative image, a shared moment of sadness, like those who see their home demolished, those who see their expectations burned, like smokers outside the doors of…
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Discussing the contradictory essence of tea with a pu’er from the ancient land of elephants. TdC 2014 You Le Ya Nuo village sheng pu
I am of the opinion that tea, good tea I mean, should always be accompanied by a good argument. I also remain firmly convinced that it itself must partly be the reason and urge for the conversation, and partly guide it. If we could reconstruct a sort of symposium evening I often think about which…
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Discovering Y Tý: Comparison of two Viet Sun sheng pu’er from a Dao and a H’Mông village
A place of magnificent waterfalls, azaleas and wild peaches, the mountains background seems to give every gesture an additional majesty, a primordial dignity.The small mud-walled houses of Y Tý stand in the green and golden colors of the rice fields, offering rural nuances to that tranquility typical of the “cloudy” land, located at more than…
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Discussing again about Yiwu and authenticity with a 2003 CNNP “Sheng Tai Gu Shu cha” via Camellia Sinensis
Almost 20 years have passed since the declaration of Yiwu as a “Special tourist village of Yunnan”, the program which aimed to attract more and more people to a city which was growing economically at a spasmodic pace and which was obsessively trying to make its authenticity perceived. Often this intention came into conflict with…
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Viet Sun Giàng Pằng 1 Big Tree sheng pu’er spring 2024
Giàng Pằng, it was the discovery of this village and its history, its culture and the ancestral nature of its landscapes that began what would be the focus of my attention for the last two years. If we were in other parts of the world people would be there taking photos, absorbed, writing farewell poems…
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Unbound by fragrance – The tea of Ba Nuo through a 2022 teng tiao gushu
In recent years I have repeatedly had the pleasure of trying Ba Nuo teas, it is one of the places that perhaps more than others has taught me to free myself from the “aromatic” dimension of tea and to concentrate on the sip, on the tactile sensations, on the physicality of the brew. Ba Nuo…
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Memories of chatting about Mengsong and an old Bameng friend with a 2007 Teasenz gushu
I don’t think there can be any tea, any time, any sip without the people who bring with them the truth of a territory. One of the first tea maker I met was from Bameng, he worked for a factory in Mengsong and was nicknamed 小毛虫 “little caterpillar”. This name was given to him by…
Wild Harvested 