滑竹梁子 Huázhúliángzi in the greater Mengsong Mountains of northern Menghai County is the highest peak in Xishuangbanna prefecture, topping out at an astounding 2430 meters (7972 feet), earning the tea arbors on its slope as some of the highest tea gardens in the world, alongside select world-famous areas in Taiwan and Darjeeling.

This Huazhuliangzi may be the delightful oddball of this year's collection of sheng pu'er in terms of overall delivery and expression.   As the aromatic vapors rise from the leaves off the first steep, notes of raspberry reduction and wet dog find the nose; a clear oily amber broth lazes around the fair cup. True to its original environment, 青苔qīngtái a distinct "mossy character" is present even on the first rip.  The remarkable thing about this tea is there is no astringency; it's pure, ultra slippery-smooth liquid from start to sustained finish.

The body-mind state a session of this tea yields is noticeably clear and calming.  For a Mengsong tea, bitterness is low.  The mouthfeel isn't pursed up and tight in its structure, it lazes around the jowls, oily, sweet, and silky smooth.  It doesn't bottleneck and get too heavy mid-session, it stays even-keeled and sails smoothly into the seemingly never-ending later-steeps territory.

In spring 2024, our long-time collaborator from Nannuo Mountain Dá É introduced us to her friend Xian Da from 坝檬 Bàméng, the village directly below Huazhuliangzi.  Xian Da's family ancient arbors are just above 2000 meters, between the slopes from his home in Bameng up to the peak.

While some old folks around Bameng say these gardens date back as much as 400-500 years, it seems next to impossible to determine any truly ancient tea garden's age, and Xian Da's arbors are no different.  This much is evident: mature, ecologically-pristine, moss-laden trees with thick trunks root deep into these steep slopes, their shapes and size gnarled and stunted by the decelerated growth that adapting to loftier, cloudier, and chillier elements forces.

Xian Da's ancient tree arbors are at 2060 meters

Tea gardens this high of any kind are rare enough, but high tea gardens this old?  Topping out at 2100 meters, there are only a handful of arbor tracts above Xian Da's; the highest tea in Xishuangbanna, and definitely some of the highest ancient tea gardens in the world.  I flew a drone and took some footage above these gardens and up to the peak -- the winds were so high during this flight that the drone was knocked into a free fall before thankfully catching itself upright!

On April 10th, we returned to Xian Da's to bring fresh gushu material back home to Nannuo to be processed at Dá É's factory; barely a trunk full during this drought, enough to make a few kilos in dry weight.  As Xian Da's high elevation tea at this point basically sells itself, his default processing is all by machine.

Dá É and the team processed this tea on April 11th all by hand back in Nannuo.  This alpine primeval forest drought-year tea, already silky like a fine aged scotch, will no doubt transform into something special with more age.   We're proud to share this small and exquisite production with you.

This year's cake wrapper artwork theme, Water Creatures of the Mekong, feature fish and mammals that call the Mekong River (the part that runs through Yunnan is referred to as the Lancang River) home.  A hand-inked drawing by Rosy Kirby of Lost Mountain Prints of one of these creatures grace the front of each cake, and this year's Huazhuliangzi tea features the fish the Red Mahseer Tor sinensis.