Once the Hé family tweaked the wok processing of their heritage "661 garden" ancient arbor material to a style more to our liking last year, and after trying the newest batch with them back in April, we had no choice but to carry this tea.

The mission with this one is simple.  To not only offer a pure gushu from Yiwu Town proper for folks to get a good taste of the flagship mountain of the 六大茶山 Six Great Tea Mountains, but to simply offer a greater Yiwu area ancient tree sheng pu'er for under 50¢/gram.  Not easy.

This is a family plot that's been in the Hé family possession since anyone can remember; there's no partnering, going through a cooperative, or leasing — just paying the tea pickers and factory hands, keeping the price reasonable.  The garden is as 易武正山 Yìwǔ zhèngshān "from the core mountain region" as you can get, growing on a hillside sloping up from the outdoor farmer's market road off of the main strip in Yiwu town, at around 1300 meters elevation.

As expected, this tea offers classic Yiwu smoothbody-sugarcane-stonefruit-mineral viscous delight that will get smolderingly sweet with age, and delivers the dimensionality of throat and breath aftereffects + powerful chaqi ancient tree teas are known for.  Grab a few cakes to get your palate acquainted with a high quality Yiwu Zhengshan style, sip a great daily gushu, and to store a terroir so famous for its age-ability that it originally helped put aged raw pu'er in a genre all its own.

this still was taken from our drone about to lift off from the 661 garden

Xinping in his family's 661 garden

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 Yiwu Town tea features the critically endangered Irrawaddy Dolphin Orcaella brevirostris.