Tag: 2020

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, where every bend concealed stories of exchange, trade and survival.

Pasha seems to have been able to overcome everything, from the destruction that occurred with the Panthay rebellion to the wreck of traditionalism and the collectivization of the Cultural Revolution, to the persecution of the Red Guards.

Hölderlin wrote “where there is danger, what saves also grows,” and so it is here that natural beauty and spiritual aspirations intertwine into a rich and vibrant cultural cloth, and teas like this, with their dense depth of flavors of vanilla, candied fruit, nuts and persimmons, take us into a dimension of time that we cannot easily grasp, a place where tradition is not only preserved, but continually recreated.

With its silky sip, honeyed sweetness, musky and citrus tones, the cup becomes a sort of refuge, a bridge rather than an end.

When we sip a cup of pu’er like this we are entering into a dialogue with the past, it reminds us that not all is lost, that in its slow and patient aging lies both a concession and a resistance to time.

A great pu’er becomes an elegy, not only a lyric of sadness for what is lost but a celebration of the intrinsic value of what has been. In its leaves pervaded by scents of red dates, walnuts and toasted pumpkin seeds, of withered broom flowers, its elegiac essence revived through a call to the earth, to history, to the culture, every sip becomes an existential plan, a way of inhabiting time with consciousness.

It offers us a key to a further, more saturated dimension of time, in which loss is not an obstacle to overcome but nourishment for our being. Both, the elegy and the pu’er make memory a cure, an antidote to oblivion, reminding us that the past is not a wound to be closed, but a legacy to draw from.

8 October 2024
When Mahei was called Lù biān. Journey through the history of the village in the company of a 2020 Mahei dashu sheng pu

Travel 25 kilometers west of Guafengzhai, you will arrive in Mahei. This was the first stage of the ancient tea road on the journey from Laos to China. It is said that one of the original names of Mahei 麻黑 was “路边” Lù biān, “Roadside”, because Maheizhai is near the road leading to Laos. In the past, one could start from Laos towards Yiwu and settle the night at the “roadside”, the old Mahei.

Although it is one of the areas that dictates the highest price in Yiwu, only in recent years has there been an incessant attention to the restoration of natural conditions with low interventionism in the tea forests, remedying the tough pruning approach of the 80s-90s in order to increase the yield of ancient trees. Many trees still exceed 300 years but today the mixed and indistinct collection of gushu, young trees and ancient pruned trees is very common and have a clear organoleptic distinction is very complicated. Old trees Mahei pu is much sought after and expensive and its taste embodies part of the soul of Yiwu.

Roughly speaking, it can be said that Mahei tea from ancient wild trees has a softer sip, with a greater opening sweetness and a bitterness that acts as a splendid counterweight. The astringency orchestrates a balanced, lingering and memorable melody, the huigan is intense, powerful and comes quickly, the body is silky and refreshing in which the typical honeyed character is enriched by a complexity unrecoverable in some non-wild or shengtai material.

This sheng pu by Thés terre de ciel comes from dashu trees, from material collected in the spring of 2020. In the wet leaves vegetal and wild hints of leather are combined with notes of honey, flowers and caramel, woody fragrances like those of raw mushrooms are the prelude to a sweet opera adorned with a bouquet of aromatic herbs, in which the background smells of petricore and wet vegetation.

The sip has an excellent structure, the pleasant and indulgent bitterness typical of Mahei does not overshadow or obscure the other sensations but instead enhances the tea by contrasting with sweetness and a graceful astringency. The huigan is immediate, minerality makes the mouth water refreshing the palate in which progressively appear aromas of myrtle leaf, dried and candied apple, mango and mulberry. A good roundness accompanied by notes of acacia honey and manuka continue in a very lingering finish at the end of an antithetical taste experience, elegant and wild at the same time, still enlivened by a freshness and a vegetal nuance that herald its evolutionary intent.

19 August 2023
Eastern Leaves Nannuo wild forest sheng pu’er 2020

Nannuoshan is located halfway between two large cities of Xishuangbanna, Menghai and Jinghong, and has long been a destination for tourists and enthusiasts who crave the cakes of this mountain, who hike the summit in the day and return home with tea bought for be given to family and friends. Now it’s always good to remember that in areas where teas are sold by themselves, those intended almost for Eucharistic acts, there’s an obligation to search for the truth in those leaves, which are translated into a corresponding liquid that doesn’t tell of simple poeticisms, but which as a disembodied voice tells of who is there and who has been there, of millenary soils, extreme climates and plants that seem to keep time.

This Eastern Leaves Pu’er sheng comes from wild trees at 1800 meters above sea level, in a tremendously difficult year characterized by a long drought. Here we find not only the floral notes that distinguish Nannuo pu’er, but an olfactory complexity that develops right from the wet leaves an evanescent smoky suggestion as a background for hints of wet rock, citrus of green oranges and vegetal like cut grass, to evolve towards hints of exotic fruit and apple compote. The sip is full, round and at the same time agile, with medium bitterness and minerality, as an excellent Nannuo tea should be.
Aromas of persimmon and chinchona, bitter orange and medicinal herbs appear and continue in the aftertaste, counteracting sweeter memories of strawberry custard, creating a tasting stratification, in which infusion after infusion a typical and satisfying huigan emerges.

18 August 2023