Tag: 2024

Pu’er Price Collapse, Are We Heading For A New Crash?

I’ve always loved investigative journalism but I’ve always hated those catastrophic clickbait headlines that always seem to make things bigger than they really are, but there’s a phenomenon in the pu’er world that’s been going on for a little too long to be simply buried like a dog with its bone.

Now, we all, or almost all, remember the bursting of the speculative bubble in 2007, where the pu’er market swelled exponentially overnight that spring only to falter in July and collapse over 70% by the end of the year, basically cutting the legs off an entire industry. Well, we may not be at those levels, but it doesn’t seem like the lesson has been learned, rather it seems like someone just put their shirt on inside out to hide the stain.

What were the causes? Well, to simplify, let’s consider that 70% of purchases were motivated by investment and not by real consumption, production quintupled in 4 years, saturating the market, to which we add fraudulent practices of counterfeiting, manipulation of markets and auctions and crisis of confidence in the product, the source and the quality due to opaque practices dictated by the absence of clear regulation that was convenient for everyone, then we obtain what is a self-destructive economic logic based on artificial growth, completely disconnected from the fundamentals of the product.

In the West we most likely think that Pu’er buyers have broken free from this dimension because we see a large part of them consuming the same tea they bought, which is partly true, but partly not. Many areas of Yunnan that have reached rationally unthinkable numbers, brands or editions that beat crazy prices have behind them a generative structure often of speculative nature that does not always have to do with scarcity, production costs or the quality of the tea.

A while back I found myself tasting old samples or cakes from my collection that I had probably forgotten about. I tasted an old 2005 DaYi 7542, batch 501, along with some more recent production, a 2022 7542 and a 2022 Premium Peacock, both batch 01. I honestly can’t say they were bad teas, they were really good, but to what extent can you justify a crazy price, crazy especially when compared to those before 2015, for a basically “a little more than good” tea. This is not only true for DaYi, but let’s analyze for a moment the price trend of some famous productions. Among the most sought-after cakes in recent years there has been the 2003 Jin No.5 batch 201, in January 2021 its value was 1.45 million RMB/jiàn (84 cakes) while in January 2025 the value amounts to 1.1 million, lower than 5 years ago and above all far from the exorbitant price of 3.2 million in March 2021, same fate for the 2005 7542 (batch 501) which in February 2020 was 230.000 RMB /jiàn (84 cakes), reached 880.000 in February 2021 and then collapsed again at the beginning of this year to 300.000 RMB.

In recent years DaYi has marketed numerous other special and prestigious productions, such as the 2201 Premium Peacock or the 2021 Golden Rhyme to counteract the erosion of the pu’er market prices, but without much success, the first had a value of 118.000 RMB / 42 cakes now collapsed to 61.500 RMB while the second which had reached 152.000 RMB / 28 cakes now touches “only” 33.000 RMB.

So, in China there is a particular and complex economic situation and due to personal and corporate financial difficulties, those who invested in this type of goods have tried to divest from illiquid assets such as Pu’er. The tea market does not guarantee a quick sale (and this can be seen from the huge amount of cakes kept obsessively by those who bought them for this purpose) without even seeing a potential for short-term revaluation, and this has led to a greater supply than demand, which is why many recently produced cakes are and will be available in the future.

Added to this is the real estate crisis triggered by the collapse of Evergrande in 2021, the real estate sector has traditionally absorbed a huge share of savings from Chinese families, who now see the value of their properties deflate, which has caused an erosion of perceived wealth. The liquidation, even at a loss, of pu’er tea to quickly recover liquidity and move a part of immovable money can only worsen the price situation.

Let’s add a piece: in recent years some brands, attracted by demand, have pushed for an increase in production, not limiting themselves to a couple of pressing batches; with the drop in demand, the market is now flooded with a surplus of product and an inability of the market to absorb the supply.

But above all, wage stagnation, a lack of robust welfare for which the capital of families is concentrated more on pension, salary and educational expenses and a slowdown in redistributive policies slow down or cancel the entry of new buyers into the market, a situation that brings us back to the last problem of the analysis: The collapse of the speculative segment.

The cakes of large “investment” brands have suffered a 30-50% drop compared to the 2021-2022 peaks, especially for the post-2010 editions, a sign of the exhaustion of the speculative model, something already seen in 2007, but currently the situation is less dramatic. However, reliance on time is not a reassuring factor in the development of these phenomena, which can see prolonged stagnation as well as a sudden acceleration rather than their dissolution.

Now I get to the point. For years, the “investment” market has functioned with a pseudo-pyramidal scheme: investors bought new and old editions waiting for others to enter after them, driving up prices. When the absence of new players becomes apparent, the system simply collapses, as the first to arrive only gain if new buyers arrive willing to pay higher prices (those who know the world of fine wines are probably not unfamiliar with this game). So prices collapse because there is no longer real demand to support them.

The biggest problem with the collapse of speculative Pu’er is that as it increases in value it sometimes cause the price increase of raw material and “consumer” cakes even from small brands, it can have exactly the opposite impact on the local economy of the region, where many small producers depend on the sector, since the costs for harvesting, processing and storage of Pu’er increase accordingly, especially for the latter who do not benefit from economies of scale.

In addition, many young people seem to give up on this type of purchase and the crisis of confidence due to several allegedly rigged auctions have not helped the image of this sector which in itself is already a niche.

In this article, not all the main problems have been touched upon, for example, I have intentionally left out the problem of fakes (both new and old pu’er, both big brands and, especially currently, smaller brands) and that of fraud on the origin of the leaves, which represents a huge critical point.

As far as pu’er consumers are concerned, the only possible logic is to form and create a personal standard that is totally independent from the logic of price, fashion and advertising of brands and sellers. If it is true that a low price does not bode well, it is also true that a high price does not provide any a priori guarantee on its real quality or on the truthfulness of its origin, and this applies to both Asian retailers and European sellers. Trust in a shop and in the people who run it still remains a fundamental prerequisite, as well as fighting speculative logic through greater criticism and greater detachment from trends that contribute nothing to an authoritative and well-founded personal education, nor do any good to a market that certainly no longer needs speculative logic (also considering the polarity of speculation, which could occur in a unipolar way in the West thanks to some retailers without it actually occurring in Asia). All very familiar advice to those of you who have been out here a while, nothing new from the early 2000s.

To conclude, this trend of continuous increase in prices in a generalized way is not infinitely sustainable, and history unfortunately teaches this, especially in an uncertain global economic context. The future of the market will depend on the ability to balance price, quality and accessibility, avoiding speculative excesses and opening up to new consumers. If the sector is able to adapt, Pu’er will remain a valuable product, but with more balanced and less volatile prices. Companies must become ambassadors of transparency, for example by introducing blockchain certifications or declaring costs and margins so as to show how much is paid to farmers, as happens with some micro-roasteries in the coffee world. Consumers must act as ethical “gatekeepers” avoiding being carried away by the hype without evaluating the quality and institutions must guarantee clear, more stringent rules that absurdly no one seems to ask for (except to limit the use of fertilizers or other superficial environmental restrictions), clarify terms (e.g. gushu) so that they are internationally univocal and measurable as happens with European standards and denominations. All these things seem like utopia, but every now and then it’s good to say things out loud, they don’t even sound bad.

*All prices in the article were taken from donghetea.com

30 January 2025
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 nature can ask a human being to face. For the first time in ten years, tea was not at the center of a significant moment, it was a palliative, something secondary, the translation of the search for a cure.

What had always fascinated me about tea and its aging, its ontological tension between existing in the moment and thriving in a higher dimension, its transitory nature suspended between being and dissolving, the form and its annihilation, from that moment also applied to human life in a cruder and crueler way than I had ever experienced.

This tea, the @sevenessenceofficial Scorsese was a companion, a ferryman between the days that followed one another without apparent sense. Sipping it is like tasting the truth, it is like watching a painting by Francis Bacon come to life, built with one brushstroke of flesh and blood after another.

With that note of Sacher and cinnamon, of burley tobacco, of wenge, of leather and smoke, it initially presents itself as a dark and gloomy shot governed by soft lighting, with a corner set up for a sweet Christmas, all mistletoe and songs, in a untidy apartment plastered with references to art deco in the hallucinatory New York seen through the alienated and feverish gaze of Travis in Taxi Driver.

When the world seems too hard, when losses pile up and the weight becomes unbearable, tea I believe offers a refuge, which is a greater blessing than we are often granted. It is not an escape, but a return to what is essential, and in its cheering sip pervaded by the aromas of condensed milk, apricot, vanilla and chocolate is what this tea embodies, it is like us, it resists, it keeps us standing, it appears in our lives like diegetic music, as that stranger who suddenly puts on a swing piece in a now-dimmed room in the middle of a bad night, convincing us to give life a dance once again.

10 January 2025
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 of Klimt’s Judith, pleased in her languid gaze.
Born from a thirsty summer, now the umpteenth, it reveals notes of cocoa, malt and buckwheat, then grants aromas of grilled beetroot, cherry brownies and maple syrup.

Just like in Judith, in this tea lives that something that seduces but leaves a sense of uneasiness, showing that power, which was once attributed only to art, to evoke ambivalent sensations.
Klimt transformed Judith’s heroic gesture, the killing of the Assyrian general Holofernes to free his people in an act that sublimates partly as a hedonic symbol and partly as a manifesto of an uncertain era and it is in these terms that Ochre places itself.

The spring harvests are now the children of continuous cycles of drought and violent rains, an alternation of moments of climatic inactivity and destructive floods and in front of the intensity of teas like this I ask myself what and how much we risk losing, and the answer is things like these.

The sublime is linked to terror, and terror is all the more terrible when linked to the worst fear for man, that is, loss. It takes us beyond the sensitive abyss and is the intersection between a sense of anguish that manifests itself as a shiver and that Laetitia as Schiller described it, that dazzling sense of bliss.

And in part teas like these bring us back to this condition, to the fear that things like these may one day not be there or exist in such a different proportion that we forget what was there before.

In its softness, in its caramelized, buttery and lactic aromas, this tea is an encounter between pleasure and meaning, between sensorial beauty and contemplative introspection, transforming its aromatic expression into an experience not only of taste, but of eternal beauty.

10 November 2024
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 the abuse of its name, from that condition of dissatisfaction for its unexpressed potential, from the awareness of being able to openly declare itself as one of the best terroirs in the world but that for a commercializing inspiration such a condition was denied.

But to paraphrase Jasper, just as we don’t think of the disease of the shell when admiring its pearl, so when faced with the vital force of the work we don’t think of the cause, the agony that are perhaps the condition of its birth.

Teas like Gossamer are not just a drink, but an expression of the soul of the terroir, the sublimation of a commitment that goes beyond the ordinary concept of “craftsmanship”, each sip is a meditation on the essence of beauty: the struggle between time and the moment, the fleetingness of a pleasure that persists only as a memory, a retro-olfactory photograph of everything that matters in that instant.

Plucked from the B157 cultivar, its perfume is complex, polyhedric, like a work of art that always reveals new details with every attempt to decipher its chromatism. It immediately shows an almost ethereal tone that announces its subtle finesse. The aromas of chamomile blend with those of olive oil, lavender and a mango sorbet, then a bouquet opens up characterized by the scent of Aleppo soap, chrysanthemum, orchard grass, water spinach.

The sip is persuasive, creamy, persistent with an incorruptible freshness and lets a clear return of sweetness emerge, that sweetness that consecrates a Darjeeling tea at the peak of its expression.

1 November 2024
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 has been affected over the centuries by flows of different cultures whose destinies have been inextricably intertwined with those of the aboriginal populations.

Nantou is the county that has perhaps been the home of this intricate cultural fabric more than any other, hosting the tattooed faces of the Tàiyǎ, the Shào zú animal and head hunters, the Bùnóng with their polyvocal music and the Zōu with their hats adorned with eagle and blue pheasants feathers.

In the main village of Dong Ding there is an 80-year-old master still able to work the enchantment, to orchestrate that transformation born of time and tradition, of those invisible threads that bind the present generation to those who have seen the last sunset and those who have not yet been nourished by the first dawn, to create a tea that would have made even Edmund Burke smile more than once.

When I tasted this Mountain Stream Teas roasted QingXin small batch oolong for the first time I found that magic, that alchemical matrix that Oakeshott defined as “practical knowledge”, a form of knowledge that cannot be explained or reduced to explicit rules but that manifests itself in doing, acting and being. Making a tea like this is not only a work of technical mastery but is a delicate art that feeds on habits, abnegation and rites, it is an order that transcends mere human will, an echo of a higher truth.

The sip, which finds its roots in those sedimentary and volcanic soils, has a deeply complex character, with hints of mango, wild honey and light resinous nuances. In those subsoils rich in silicates, feldspars and volcanic clay, the concept of tea as a symbolic substance is shaped, leaves like these are imbued with poetry, they become ceremonies of knowledge, extracts of life, and it is this poetic principle that restores the pleasure of existence to sacrifice.

In its notes of chestnuts, poached pears, cooked lychees the taste shows off a plastic clarity that does not allow itself to be intimidated by any rhetorical exercise, it shows an almost unexpected, vibrant, sharp purity, a sort of historiography of the soul, silent and secret.

1 November 2024
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, the massive and hypertrophic estates, it is hard to believe that there is a world of artists in constant ferment. In Darjeeling, breathing is instead punctuated by two incredibly deep breaths, one is that of tradition, the other is that of an unprecedented contemporaneity, creator of teas that have become a symbol of the new future: bold, powerful, and often, undeniably, modern.

Spring teas like Villanelle hold within them the extraordinary nature of spring, in its scents of dried magnolia, citrus, hydrangea and winter melon they seem to reconstruct the triumph of Rubens and Brueghel the Elder’s Eden, an explosion of renewed vegetation, an aromatic encyclopedia of the natural world accompanied by that body, that powerful carnal plasticity of the baroque season.

While teas like this one consecrate the cup as the theatre of the sublime, they remind us that in these lands it is not easy to emerge, that creative flair and freedom of expression are not common or taken for granted and that spring, despite its splendor, cannot erase the bitter aftertaste of this eternal struggle.

The sip has a good thickness, with an almost watery sweetness typical of melon that supports the weave of elderflower and orange blossom syrup, thickening in the aromas of taro mochi and acacia honey. It proves to be a vertical tea, ascending in its tension between freshness and maturity, it shows to be a path to follow, a turning point by placing a door in front of the past that must never be reopened.

In the past decades Darjeeling has been like a vagabond in the world, a terroir of extraordinary complexity and a potential only minimally explored, but it is as if the truth has continually escaped. But now tea and producers like these are establishing a new route, a new pact with their land, a hymn to the highest genius, to the craziest tea, refuge of perpetual change.

1 November 2024
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 go or what you will do. Boredom is the slow rain that beats on the windshield while you wait for a level crossing to close, waiting for a train that will never pass.

It is with you wherever you go, like an old battered suitcase that you can’t forget anywhere. According to Heidegger and Schopenhauer, boredom is a sign of a more significant absence, that of an authentic connection with reality, the feeling associated with the unsatisfiability of worldly things. But boredom can be seen as a crisis of meaning, which opens up new possibilities of existence, it makes you feel as if time is a trap, a kind of dead end, but things like culture, rituals and traditions provide an antidote through their ability to live time and experience through values that transcend the individual.

Teas like Ennui are authentic expressions of civilization, they not only entertain but give shape to a moment. They are those true teas, shaped by high altitudes, by the hard, merciless soil, those peaks that teach you freedom and coexistence with emptiness.

Its leaves enclose that sense of limit, of transcendence, where boredom has no space. Between the notes of chestnut honey, peach and turmeric, accords of tuberose and Bulgarian rose, jasmine and ylang ylang make their way, accompanied by the scents of birch wood and face powder as in an overlapping of works by Rachael McCampbell exhibited in an old venetian coquetry.

And if the antidote to boredom is culture and tradition, tea, from this perspective, is a sort of Aristotelian mimesis: it imitates and returns, in the form of a sensitive experience, the nature and culture of the place from which it comes. And so in its soft and sweet sip, aromas of grapes, moss, spices and rose weave the memory of a glass of moscato passito in the middle of summer, consecrating a tea of incredible persistence.

5 October 2024
A “cante jondo” between emotions and rationality. Seven Essence FF Darjeeling “Duende”

Duende is the name of this tea, that duende which is a place ex-nihilo where there is no map or exercise, principle of creation, of generative power, it’s the mental dress worn by the restless, of those who renounce deep sleep by remaining in the temporal foil between the traveled path and the dreamed, of those who are willing to put aside the smile to travel the streets of disquietude.

Through this tea in its scents of mango, green melon, among the nuances of cut grass, of late summer rain, Darjeeling rediscovers itself in a new, unique form. There are those who said that this land would not granted anything more than what has already been seen, but there are those who among the mists understood the spirit of time, who become the interpreter of that restlessness, that fertile suffering that fuses the forms, which is the matrix of the extraordinary.

In its tones of roots, bergamot leaf, suede, pumpkin seeds and cocoa butter it translates into liquid that power of primordial vigor, of a subterranean force that destabilizes habit and consecrates itself in the new. “The arrival of the duende always presupposes a radical change of every form with respect to old plans, it gives sensations of freshness that are completely new” and it’s then that are revealed the faces of men and women who support the weight of the uncertainty, in which are configured the struggle of contrasts, the incongruence of thoughts, the refusal of the safe learned geometries to pursue the discovery of tacit truths.

In the mouth it’s soft, buttery, contrasted by a Champagne citrus freshness, the steam brings to mind that morning breeze of Reims before the harvest, surrounded by earthy and humid aromas. They become the foundation of a deep melody of perfumes, a “cante jondo” between emotions and rationality, between ancient ports and new routes.

But it must be tried, there is no way to explain leaves like those of Duende without resorting to a paradoxical language, because their taste, their tactile descending path towards the throat and directed to the soul cannot be adequately articulated by tired descriptors and words, but must be grasped in its sensitive experience

23 September 2024
The Battle of Điện Biên, the retreats, the ancient tea trees. A sip of historical consciousness with Viet Sun Tủa Chùa sheng pu’er 2024

More than 70 years have passed since the battle of Điện Biên, since the retreat, the rice fields dyed red, the pain everywhere. Our men arrived in that area on old Royal Air Cambodia “Caravelle” flown by Taiwanese pilots who shuttled between Bangkok and Phnom Penh. They jumped on with ever more heartpounding, more and more uncertain about the possibility of landing. They often did it at night where the quiet wasn’t interrupted by the clanking of clutches, the noise of the brakes of those metal carcasses or the dull bangs of the firing pins.

It must have been those dense nights, tinged with that frightening absence of chromatism, one of those in which probably a Kerouac character would have screamed at that dark eastern wall or howled at the moon interrupting the silence and the monologue of the wind even though the tension could be cut with a razor. There wasn’t much hope to project into the future, it seemed that things weren’t made to last but simply to survive another day, where folk didn’t have time to become aware of their identity as a people because the land they inhabited was already a foreign land from the very beginning.

Tủa Chùa is less than 100km from that war front, one of those mountain places where thunder strikes a sacred fear, where on humid days you can see nothing but misty trees and dark and wild slopes rising towards the sky. The tea in the photo comes from those peaks, from Xín Chải ancient trees, are leaves that recall that “suspended” of its land, capable of escaping every premonition; every other prefiguration and prediction, if there had been one, becomes irrelevant.

This is a visceral, deep, unexpected sheng. It’s a place where faint hints of white peach, orchid and leather lie contracted, tones of tobacco and forest notes of undergrowth indulge but this is different every time because it seems in continuous change, a plot open in time, like an eternal improvisation. In the mouth it’s soft sweet and with a qi that alone could give meaning to the sip. The huigan takes control of the throat in an instant and every attempt at description from this moment seems a vain attempt by language to exhaust what is worth experiencing.

16 September 2024
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 1700 meters above sea level. Pyramid roofs, stone fences and terraced fields are symbols of the will, minds and hands of many generations in the highlands, created to interact and converse with the nature of the mountains and rivers.

The Y Tý market meets every week and is a cultural place of exchange for Hà Nhì, H’Mông and Red Dao. Most of the stalls are run by Hà Nhì women in black and dark blue dresses, i remember the shy face of a young mother and her little girl, lying obediently in a gray jute sash on her chest. Her hair is tied back and almost glazed due to the effect of the sun on her coal black hair, the vivid gaze with her head tilted to the side as if she were listening to the voices in the wind.

Tourists are busy buying vegetables, red peanuts and Pạ Phì. The road covered in red earth dust is full of rattan baskets, worn enough to indicate actual use of their contents and well enough maintained to suggest respect for the contents themselves.

Higher up in the mountains, the landscape unravels lively between the fog, between the sandy and rocky soils of the Dao villages surrounded by the wild bamboo forest and the more clayey and fertile soils of the H’Mông villages. Those mountains that protected the soldiers on their way to the front, towards the place where the Lũng Pô creek meets the silt-tinged waters of the Hồng River, up to A Mú Sung, where they fought and fell to protect the border.

Here it is as if tea is able to fit in with culture as well as nature and can make use of both as it pleases. The landscape seems like the unconscious of the earth and the teas that derive from it are its liquid consequence.

After a more romantic first part, I will talk in a more technical and boring way about how a territory with an enormous potential now demonstrated like Vietnam can have that complexity of landscapes, that dramatic discrepancy of soil composition that is often associated with great terroirs, such as France and Italy for wine and Yunnan and Taiwan for tea.

Vietnam often is in conditions of high humidity and high temperatures during the year, such as to hypothesize a much faster maturation of the soil than, for example, northern Asia or some areas of northern Yunnan. But in the mountains many things can change, here at over 1800 meters we can have leaching, erosive, frost phenomena and extremely variable contents of the organic fraction from mountain to mountain or even in the same mountain at different elevation levels.

We can also notice typical results of the meteorological conditions of these areas, such as the deeply yellow and yellow-red color of the soil, indicative of a condition of water saturation. The soil environment is reduced and, under these conditions, the iron is reduced to the ferrous state (Fe2+), the color of the soil becomes lighter and yellower, with gleying and mottling sometimes. The iron will be in a more soluble state and therefore more available for chemical reactions.

H’Mông village has very old and tall trees growing on the slopes near the border with China, the climate here is wetter, there is more forest cover, resulting in darker green leaves than in the Dao village. This is due to the shade and the greater capacity of water retention, less leaching and greater content of organic substance, typical conditions of a soil richer in clay and organic elements, the presence of sand and silt in surrounding areas also suggests a clayey but not asphyxiated soil, with a good potential for oxidation of organic matters. The leaves of the H’Mông village express themselves with greater roundness in the cup, with a persuasive softness and with more animal and leathery hints, with less citrusy but warmer and more mature fragrances.

The tea area of Dao village overcomes a wild bamboo forest, there are many old and ancient trees, the climate is sunny and dry, and the soil is rocky-sandy, which will result in a possible slower growth rate of trees, given the possible greater difficulty for the soil to retain water, nutrients, greater leaching of minerals, erosive phenomena and loss of organic substance and this conformation is in line with a lower maturity of the soil given a lower presence of water. The leaves of the Dao village reveal more mineral and rocky accords, more citrus and herbaceous, a less imposing and soft body, more agile despite the medium thickness.

This is an example of how at a short distance, pedogenesis and transformative climate phenomena can change drastically, returning a vastness of results that cannot be found in most other areas of the world and how this complexity does not derive only from the altitude, therefore also translating into extremely different teas in an area of a few kilometers.

Mixing together the leaves of the two villages you get a concert of the unlikely son of Emily Dickinson and Rory Gallagher, the romantic essence with its disciplined lyricism and the annihilating chaos, the sublime that is the basis of great things.

The ambivalent aromatic essence of the leaves is initially dark, bringing back Bruegel’s Flemish nature in the almost primitive woodland scents, with memories of a bonfire extinguished in the rain, undergrowth and slightly animal smells.

Then the texture of tropical fruit and candied hibiscus, tomato leaf, orchard hay begins to emerge, supported by counterpoints of medicinal herbs, wild flowers and saltiness on the skin. On the sip it shows fullness, with notes of white mulberry, linden, apricot and slightly herbaceous hints. It is never prosaic and the thickness is sized and juxtaposed with freshness and minerality and a medium-low bitterness, which make drinking agile and never tiring.

The strong and relaxing and at the same time almost lysergic qi accompanies a persistent and very present huigan from the first cups.

You can find much more information on the Viet Sun website

4 August 2024