At a daily drinker price, meet the grade of tea that too often gets passed off as gushu.

With the ghost of each sip quickly coming back on the after-breath providing dimensionality found almost exclusively in old arbor tea, it's not surprising that excellent 大树 Dà shù "big tree" grade sheng pu'er can often be passed off as or blended in 古树 Gǔ shù "ancient tree" teas.  With a bit more sass and spunk than ancient tree tea right out of the gate, what this Dashu tea lacks in mellowness, patience + longevity, as well as depth of responsiveness in the mid session, it makes up for in personality in spades; a spritely delivery of the Nannuo terroir characteristics it represents.

In the late 1930s a project was undertaken to seed-propagate over 300 acres of new tea plantations in the Nannuo Mountains.  While much of it was eventually replaced with other crops over the decades, a few of these original tracts remain outside of 向阳 Xiàngyáng Village right down the road to Dá É's factory that she built in 2019.

photo taken on the vista connecting to Dá É dashu gardens

During their younger years, these tea gardens were annually pruned in the late spring to manage their height at a more harvestable level, the treatment that typical "tabletop" 台地茶 táidì chá plantation bushes get.  Since then they have been left to grow, unpruned and unmanaged by conventional agrochemicals.  This has become a common treatment that we see implemented in recent years that is known as 生态 shēngtài or ecological tea farming.  At almost 90 years old, this is a mature Shengtai garden.

Dá É only owns less than two acres of these gardens (10 亩).  It doesn't produce much per season, and therefore she treats this garden as a source for experimental materials.  Fortunately for us, she has expressed a willingness to be open to suggestions, and we will begin commissioning special projects soon.  First, let's start with this solid, first spring harvest, raw pu'er as a good standard to see what this micro-arbor has to offer.

this dashu tea revealed some surprising girth on the stems during the brewed out leaf test

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 all of the tea from Nannuo this year features the fish the Giant Devil Catfish Bagarius yarrelli “The Goonch”