Wild Harvested

Tag: 2016

  • Tea as a contrast to immediacy and as an aid to living time. Viet Sun Thương Sơn sheng pu’er 2016

    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 mechanisms of action and compensation, to power relations, to a set of derivations and summary assumptions. And yet, our daily experience recalls something much deeper: the desire for meaning, the search for truth, the will to give meaning to time and to recognize the sacred.

    This morning I reached back into my pharmacy, getting a 2016 sheng cake out of that mess, it comes from Thương Sơn, one of those places where the past intertwines with a vibrant and complex present, which seems to hold the secret to eternity. Here, ethnic and cultural plurality merge into a living mosaic, the rice paddies wrap the mountains like an emerald scarf, contrasted by the pink-purple waves of autumn buckwheat flowers, those flowers that are said to have been sent by the gods as a sign of recognition.


    Each leaf is a fragment of a narrative that has developed over centuries, Thương Sơn is rich in ancient trees that produce teas like this, whose aromas recall the cold winter with the spirit of an austere old father wrapped in his leather armchair, immersed in the cloud of an evening cigar.

    The sip is enveloping, deep, mineral with hints of Montecristo cigar, leather, dried Moroccan plum, camphor and cloves, it is a constant reminder that true pleasure requires patience. The aromas then sublimate into a dimension of labdanum accords, apricot in alcohol, gentian liqueur and incense. The intense huigan and strong qi revive the image of the crazy and primordial harmony of places like this, so typical of traditional places, a cup we could define as an “accumulated wisdom”.

    Teas like these, places like Thương Sơn, through understanding the bond with their own tradition, with their own history, teach that there is an order, a truth that transcends human contingency, and a tea like this that ages is a trace of that truth, a witness, a collector of past eras, a contract between generations.

  • Drunk soliloquies about Nannuo in the shadow of a gushu

    Drunk soliloquies about Nannuo in the shadow of a gushu

    On a day when the cold morning breach seemed to have taken away even the most weak semblance of chromatism, and with this the already remote desire to conclude something at the end of a dull sunrise, I decided to make a tea session with this 2016 Sheng Pu from Nannuo in the hope of rejoin me with the part of the brain that welcomes the tactile sensations.

    It was a greener puer in the past while today we can also found leaves processed with a longer period of withering, a shorter steaming, or a lower shaqing temperature but for a longer time, all factors that bring back to a more amber color than the pale yellow one to which history has accustomed us. But what does not change is its complexity wrapped in an introverted blanket, destricable only through the patience of the infusions, where the essence of tea seems to rest on one’s being, curled up in an aromatic profile that is shown in its becoming, revealing itself sip after sip in a sort of amniotic tranquility.

    In the 1950s, while the country was raised from the rubble of the Republic of China and the families looked to the future with the losses of the civil war behind them, at the same time on Mount Nannuo the foundations were laid for one of the most important tea research centers in Banna.
    Researchers such as Zhou Pengju, Cai Xitao and the team of the Nannuo Mountain Tea Research Institute contributed to identifying the area as one of the oldest in the tea cultivation panorama and to classify varieties such as the Nannuo Daye (Yunkang 10).

    Through the fog, above the red earth and below the blue sky, the history of an entire territory is consecrated through the infused leaves that in those years of reconstruction appeared as balconies of the heart, as disenchanting voices of each of those 30 villages that live in the mountain.

    This @zhaozhoutea tea is the sheng pu “No.833” from the spring of 2016 from Nannuo gushu trees. It is not only a very representative sheng of Nannuoshan, but it is an example of an evolution of the way to make tea in this area, a historical and mnemonic study from a tasting point of view.

    The wet leaves are extremely evocative, report the hints of a mountain caravan, with herbaceous perfumes, moss, wet rock, wild flowers and gooseberry. Inside it are perceived scent of bakery, lemon tarte, leather, white peach and thai mango. During the infusions, shades of tamarind, walnuts and quatre quarte cake appear while the tostated seeds crack on the wok.
    The golden liqueur highlights nuances of evolution and a contemporary conception of leaf processing, with medium astringency and bitterness. On the palate there is a coexistence between the herbaceous flavors and the fruity- citrousy ones of peach and orange zest. Huigan is pleasant and balanced, integrated with other taste sensations, not predominant as a Naka sheng to bring a comparison. The finish is persistent and articulated on notes of gardenia, persimmons, apple and creamy aromas, closing a session that becomes proportionally sweeter to its prolonging.