Jingmai Pu’erh – Menghai Part V – Last Sips

Posted on June 2, 2012 by JeffFuchs

Few things bring people to concur like trees do. We need more of them everywhere and of every kind, and when the trees happen to be tea trees, there is the added bonus of the ‘sips’ and stimulant-wonder that they will provide. Jingmai provides tea trees in quantities and quality that convinces one that there might just be a corner of the world where one can sit amidst green, sipping the green, in a buzzed state of perpetual tea-high.

The little green gems after they've been plucked ... moments after plucking

Jingmai’s main ‘tea forest’, one of the planet’s largest, hovers between 1100 and 1500 meters and lies just above the little tea-raging town of Jingmai. Our little Nissan screams its way up the winding road and suddenly we are within the tea forests’ grip. Both sides of the road encase us in tea’s landscape. In other tea forests I’ve passed through, the forests are more organic, hiding the tea trees within other green life forces. Here it is as though tea has banished all others while it builds up a pure empire of itself. It staggers. From where my little group of locals lands, a series of paths spread like veins out into the forest, and we can hear the little calls of distant tea pickers. The sun disappears in the shadowed pathways, which are covered in leaves and lead over the rises. Here and there giant trees that aren’t tea, shoot through the tea forest’s canopy of light green. Taking one path with one of our hosts, Mr. Guo we ascend up and over a rise to a depressed valley that sort of hides and the little chirps and laughs of tea pickers pick up in volume.

A simple path to some, an entry into bliss for others ... I would be one of the "others"

Topped with wide brimmed hats against the sun the pickers are in full voice and there is rarely a break in the comments, laughs, screams and taunts. A half dozen women of the Hani group clip leaves at the base of the trees and a few others stand upon tea branches meters off the ground harvesting up higher. Though the forest is almost entirely ‘owned’ by the Dai people, other minorities like the Hani, Lahu, and Pulang have long been tenants on the land able to harvest certain areas at certain times. It is one of the generous points of the indigenous tea peoples that they allow others onto their lands as long as agreements are kept.

As fresh as it gets

All harvesters are careful not to over harvest and these women seem more intent on having fun than stressing too much about the leaves. One of the women higher up is howling up with laughter heaving back and forth trying to catch her breath. Her compatriots and her are all from the same town so for them to be away from family is the time for a little lightness and a lot of gossip. The sun is bludgeoning us from above and the trees appear brighter colored and lighter barked than the duller colored brutes further east. I wonder if the lighter colored taste of the Jingmai is partially related to these more delicate trees. They wander less erratically too, preferring to reach straight up towards the sky. I ask Mr. Guo, long a Jingmai defender in all of its forms about this and his words echo what I’ve so often heard from those who know the leaf intimately, “The sun is important, but the soil is the most important.

Ready for the fingernails to snip

It is the soil and the species which determines 80% percent of the taste. The rest is for the tongue to decide”. I wonder what Mr. Bo’s wife would say to these words. The head teamaker’s wife back in Jingmai would no doubt insist that the producer had a great role to play in the tea’s final quality. When direct sun hits the leaves for too long a period, days in succession, many say that the flavonoids and contributors of taste within and upon the leaves, are developed too quickly.

A Dai picker high above snips and clips. The local Dai have first rights to the best and oldest trees being the 'majority minority' in the area. Lahu, Pulang, and Hani have access to smaller plots

Only mists and shadows allow the slow development of a tea’s real potential. These teas (it is said by many drinkers) give a couple of good servings and that is it. Mr. Guo would say (and has said many times) that every tea has its time, its detractors, and its character. In some ways this trip is not only for me to see the trees, it is a trip for him to convince me that Jingmai tea is worth my devoted (and devout) attentions and love. He is very aware of my tendency to prefer the teas that carry bitter blasts into my mouth and he is also aware that Jingmai teas have never dug an ecstatic “ooooooo!!!” out of me.

The number of the tree will coincide with a log book's info on harvest size, age of tree, health and observations over the years

One of the aspects of regional teas is their character, which when sipping good examples with a tongue that enjoys, can be very diverse and wonderful. Another human and inevitable aspect is that each tea has its proponents and critics who live and die by their preferred teas. These people differ from drinkers of tea who are simply happy to drink any and every tea that is ever served to them. A real drinker will defend, explain, and expostulate about their favorites and never back down from a healthy ‘discussion’. Mr. Guo is one of Jingmai’s great supporters with a temper that at times hinders his ability to communicate his very great knowledge of about Jingmai. Around us in the thousands are the trees that provide the raw product for the tea. Mr. Guo is well aware that he is impossibly bias, but can do nothing to help himself. He waxes eloquent about the statuesque beauty of the trees, the leaves, and the harvesters. His issue with me after two years remains the same. He is infuriated with my admission that while liking Jingmai, I don’t consider it a favorite or classic. At times I’m convinced that he would prefer that I flat out dislike the tea, rather than my ‘in-between’ feelings about it. As we pass by more pickers offer us up greetings with more laughs. One picker hands Mr. Guo and I handfuls of young nubile leaves, with Mr. Guo going on about the “perfection” of the shape and I decide to aggravate him by saying these leaves are no more perfect than those I’ve seen on other of my tea ramblings throughout Asia. Strangely, he doesn’t take the bait and tells me quietly that “Other leaves, from other areas do not produce Jingmai”. Jingmai’s frying, which comes after a picking and withering is done usually at slightly less intense temperatures of heat and often done for slightly less time which allows the more delicate leaf variety not be obliterated.

A tea harvester, metres above plucks shoots from the ends of branches, ignoring nothing

Passing over a rise and deeper still into the two of us start chewing our raw leaf gifts. At one point he looks over and suggests we head back and find the others of our group that we haven’t seen in over an hour. I tell him it might be good to get back to the village for a taste of some of the tea leaves we stand amidst. His eyes soften and I know he – as he always does – hopes that perhaps at long last I’m ready to become a complete convert to the Jingmai, for with tea it is inevitably the sips that will decide.

Posted in Tea | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

Jingmai Pu’erh – The Mild Giant

Posted on May 11, 2012 by JeffFuchs

When one is able to link a cup of tea – its leaves, strengths, and characteristics – to its origins, it creates a link that is irreplaceable. When one can link a tea to ‘its people’ that is one of the pinnacles. Even if it is simply to see the soil, meet the people who harvest and create the tea, this ability to ‘trace’ a tea back makes that tea stand out in the mind, on the palate and in that little bit of the brain that obsesses about such things. The journey to find the ‘home’ of the leaves gives a whole dimensional life to the experience of the final sip. Vitally too, it allows an appreciation of perhaps what it is – the elements – that make a particular tea taste the way it does.

A timeless link - a tea sorting matriarch in Jingmai of the Dai minority

I am trekking another tea mountain when I get the call from a local friend Dan that I am to return to Menghai and get myself to a friend’s teashop. We are going to one of the iconic geographies of the Pu’erh tea world, Jingmai. This of course will only happen though, once a few sips of Jingmai tea are had.

Once installed at the teashop with the usual tea-obsessed suspects: a real estate developer whose addiction to tea somehow manages to supersede his abilities to make money (perhaps even interfering), a small power-package of a man who’s face bares a single scar below the mouth giving the appearance of perpetually smiling, a  local live-wire of a man who delivers tea from the villages to the suppliers, and a local tea buyer who is the local ‘diva’ – done up every single day in garish colors that never quite seem to match. All are regulars and all know tea intricately.

Before any consumption

On the menu in a variety of forms and shapes is Jingmai tea. Known for its slightly sweet and subtle fragrances, its ancient tree tea is one of the most sought-after annually. Far to the west, only kilometers from the Burma border, Jingmai claims the largest ancient tea tree forests on the planet. For those with palates that prefer a more subtle ‘green’ Pu’erh, there are few teas that are more coveted (or more costly). My impressions (which are often pleasantly off-base) is that the Jingmai teas I’ve had, lack the ‘bite’, that for me at least is necessary to stir the senses and play with the enamel on my teeth. Having said that, an intense bout of drinking tea to prove me wrong is always welcome, as sips in these parts are free for as long as one has the power (and the bladder) to withstand the repeated infusions.

Of all of the teas, the one – and only one – that hits my own buds on this morning with aplomb is a month-old spring tea. While it holds with all of Jingmai’s typical and lauded qualities of fragrant and almost sweet tangs, it hits with a fresh bitter blast. Jingmai teas need almost double the amount of leaves and a blatantly long infusion time to get a taste that would be considered ‘bitter’, but the spring tea carries a wicked little punch.

My own taste preferences aside, it is a brilliant tea in that its value and character traditionally hold true, year after year. It also is one of those rare Pu’erh classics that isn’t ‘faked’ very often, making most Jingmai’s, Jingmai’s.

Amidst the tea sorting mayhem in Jingmai ... I not-so-patiently wait for a handout

Today, an invite has been issued by one of Jingmai’s ‘makers’ and in preparation we indulge in some of the area’s finest before our journey west to his home. Such invitations are not necessarily rare, but one has to know someone who knows them personally in order to be ‘granted access’, otherwise the only contact one can have with a master maker is to slurp back one of their wondrous creations. The spring tea that has made my palate hum is his, and it is to his home that we will travel.

As it ends up, the invitation isn’t specific to people or even a time. There is only that vague promise that someone will show up at some point to his home…and to his tea.

While the distance isn’t huge, the windy roads, neurotic traffic habits and our conservative slightly menacing driver make it an almost three hour journey. The dreams of a sip keep the journey interesting with the hint of expectation. Making it up to Jingmai village we cross a bridge and head up a cobbled road where locals fling their motorcycles around with casual competence. Our driver evidently feels no such compulsion or rush – I am almost willing him to press on faster, faster, faster…

Meals in Asia are something of a chaotic necessity and in southern Yunnan the saying goes "if the food isn't spicy and sour" it isn't a meal

Lunch awaits – no formal greetings or anything else. Lunch will be served now! Our host, Mr. Bo, one of the local tea masters is almost a peripheral character, behind his wife, who is cloaked in a traditional Dai dress of bright green. She is a bull of a woman who moves us around, cooks, keeps an eye on the fire and sets the table. Our host and hostesses’ home is huge but the kitchen where we will eat is encased in old smoke-stained wood, unchanged from the traditional days of the past. A fire pit crackles in the corner of the room. The only modern piece of equipment is a rice cooker that looks as if it has been through every war ever fought. Slabs of drying pork hang from the ceiling and gently sway with the breeze that comes through the open window.

We eat and are ushered off to the teahouse by the gentle Mr. Bo, but before leaving we are offered a little sip of some of the local firewater, which is served warm. It scorches down into the digestive tract but leaves little after-taste. It is the kind of heady firewater that could lead one off a cliff, it is so strong.

Mrs. Bo arranges the scales as she takes stock of a shipment ... unfortunately 'not' mine

Sips of the latest spring harvest of tea here are treated with none of the huge words used in the cities. One wouldn’t do well here to peer at the color and make haughty declarations of a tea’s vintage Here it is simply “Spring harvest, Old tea trees”. The rest can be assumed in one word: stunning.

Around the tea sipping station, which is nothing more than some chairs, tea, a table and a supply of water, I can hear the nasally tones of a group of old women who sort through tea leaves. They are removing the last of the unsightly leaves, that have no place in the final product (but that they themselves will happily consume). Wrapped in the traditional coloured garments of their people, there is a kind of slow methodology that comes when people know – and accept – their role and take it to heart. Wrinkled brown fingers paw through the large rattan ‘plates’. Twinkling eyes, little chuckles, and a rare patience makes the venue something comfortable and real. What is also revealed as time passes is how Mr. Bo’s wife is in fact the power-broker in this part of the world. It is to her, that he defers, and her voice which silences the room.

The elder women of Jingmai sit and sort ... and chat. Spring and late summer finds them siting and sorting from dusk until dawn with the occasional bout of song

The tea we sip is rampantly fresh and green tasting and for many tea buyers of the city, would be worth a half-month’s salary. It still has this overriding mildness which leaves me wanting at times, but this is exactly why many deferential takers of tea sip it and none else: this mild, sweet tang.

I am eventually beckoned by the woman of the home. Her hands are the toughened appendages of someone who spends more time working than speaking and I feel a strange sense of trust in her … and maybe a little fear. She is a solid block of person, with no jiggles of excess weight, and limbs that are oak.

A couple of flicks of the arms and dusty residue is blown away from the rest of the tea leaves, after which the tea leaves will be manually and painstakingly sorted by hand

She walks me past the old women – who all coo their little hello’s – into a miniature factory, where massive sacks of tea lie tucked into a corner. The little factory has a view of the town and is casually immaculate. Amounts of tea produced here are not huge, but rather controlled and comfortable. JIngmai is in its entirety, a tea town. Mr. Bo is still the instructor of how and when to fry the leaves, but the woman beside me, his wife, is clearly the overseer of all.

Poking through the sacks of tea I see that the leaves are smaller than the gigantic Pu’erh tea tree leaves of further east that I am so used to. “A different species”, I am told, and a species that creates these more mild notes in the tea. Production is identical to other Pu’erh but the leaves must be carefully monitored that they aren’t over-fried as they are more delicate.

The Little Factory that Could - One of Jingmai's small factories whose teas end up being waited for annually by desperate drinkers

Making our way back out the door, a couple of young shirtless men walk in. Covered in tattoos they hum a gentle tune. What impresses here is that the factory is a casual production facility, that feels the human touch with none of the silent, speed-driven fervor of other factories I’d wandered through. Add to this the fact that this factory is producing some of the most anticipated teas, the whole set-up of the place reinforces the notion that tea here is of people, for people.

My powerfully built hostess tells me that I must now see the source of all of this potent green magic: the actual tea forests which sit another ten minutes by car up the mountain. It is an area of almost spiritual vibrancy with almost 17,000 acres of tea trees that are harvested.

Some nasal sampling of Mrs. Bo's goods

 

Posted in Tea | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

A Time of Talk … of Tea – Xishuangbanna lll

Posted on April 27, 2012 by JeffFuchs

 

There is always a kind of inevitability of events in China. With the rush, the masses, the intensity of purpose, things just MOVE!! There is the sense at times that the speed and lack of warning of when something ‘may’ happen can destroy one’s morale and erode the ever-fragile balance. It can be exasperating at times trying to plan but in my case I’ve simply adapted (not always with success). One saving grace is that here in Yunnan where the speed of things is diluted, if one simply rolls with things that come up and say yes more often than no, things will work out. Saying no, after all, often means that one will miss out on some kind of random little gem of unpredictable fun.

No questions here as to what rules...and that is a tea pot by the way, nothing else

And so it goes. Safely perched sipping tea in Menghai planning another trip into the mountains, a pickup of friends arrive with a crunch of gears and the kind of intention in the eyes that I’ve come to love in the locals – a kind of tea-fed frenzy (of the positive kind). It is in the midst of the Dai people’s annual New Years celebrations, otherwise knows as the ‘Water Festival’. The idea is to spray, shoot, and haul as much water on unsuspecting and suspecting victims as possible. Clothes, vehicles, and animals alike get pasted with water in a spirit of wet joy.

More tipping of the cup goes on here than in most parts of the world

In minutes my vague attempts to say ‘no’ to going out to the Dai villages to celebrate New Years have been wiped out by a good friend who forcibly drags me away from my tea. The heat is intense and the sun sends down a dusty series of shafts.

Tea wrapped in Banana leaf

Watermelon fields with their plastic canopies create a landscape of white bubbles. The villages we head towards are tea villages that I’ve visited before, lining the introductory hills of the Pulang Mountain range – home to some of the Pu’erh world’s classics.

Low grade tea is used to clean chopsticks in a kind of local tea snobbery

Along with the pleasantly inevitable cups of tea, another fluid will be on offer: firewater of the most brutal intensity. Food, in amounts that embarrass will also be on hand. Even within the bastions of the tea world, there is time for other things (which can – I think – be accompanied by tea).

One of the inevitable meals in a Dai village that is kept at bay only by several cups

We arrive in dust and stop in a town I had two years previously enjoyed a similar day of rampant celebrations. Here, during the ‘new year’ there must be time to enjoy talk beyond business, drinks beyond an end game and food beyond limit! But, I wonder how far any conversation here can stray beyond the green leaf.

In these indigenous areas there is that, like in the indigenous culture of N. America’s ‘Six Nations’, a time that is known as ‘Ohen-ton Karihwatehkwen’ (Words Before All Else). Words here mean that there is the time taken to actually speak and listen.

Half of myself and a local friend who makes classic teas near Pulang

Wicker tables have been set up in the huge home with tiny stools surrounding them. Before anything though, tea is served from nearby Pulang Mountain – an astringent teathat takes over the mouth. Quickly beverages of the ‘firewater’ variety are on offer. I stick with tea knowing two essentials: one, that I will not be permitted to drink nothing, and two, that the only beverage besides the local corn whisky I will be permitted to drink is tea. There is a third reason that lingers but is potent is that the local whisky is at every home that I will visit in the coming day. A day of this sharp white whisky will crush my very core.

Streets lined with tea sellers, sniffers, buyers and middlemen

I’m also aware from that great teacher – personal experience – that my taste buds will be obliterated for any tea that might be served. Often, at these informal gatherings around this tea-stained region (we are literally at the base of Pulang Mountain) a tea will be served that potentially stirs interest. A blank stare and stunned palate will not be able to savour any of the goodness.

And when all is said and done, another meal arrives

I don’t have to wait long before a dispute arises as to whether a tea we are served is in fact a Banzhang. One thick-set little power-plug of a man, “Lin”, insists that the supplier of the tea was either a liar or that our host might be exaggerating his claim. It is good-natured fun but it belies the intensity of the subject matter.

 

At another table with the guests in various states of sobriety – and not – another discussion goes on about the high prices of local tea. Still another conversation goes on about a local that everyone knows who has apparently left his wife. Unfortunately for him who left, is that his wife and their tea business has thrived with his departure. This brings chuckles and howls of delight from both the men and women at the table.

Nothing pretentious here...great leaves in a glass

Tea’s higher prices this year come from two main sources say all. Rising labour costs and the droughts are notching the prices ever-higher. Tea’s every line, every characteristic, and economic ripple is commented on in details that would have a lay observer either slack-jawed or bored out their mind.

 

In this region tea is omnipotent. Even on this so-called day of rest. We sip it, discuss it, argue upon it and its effects on the body and mind, but we ultimately adore it.

 

A little bit of subtle selling

Food and still more food appears in every colour, from every corner of this bountiful region where everything in the earth seems to prosper.

 

In the next 7 hours locations change, food is heaped higher on yet more round tables and the talk continues and tea’s continued adoration society continues to fuss about it. Sometime in the early hours, I return to my stale little apartment that is home to flying creatures of all sizes. Walking into the lobby the young tattooed man at the front desk looks up and asks, “Bought any tea”?

Tea and People...always

 

 

 

Posted in Tea | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

National Geographic Traveler: Top 50 Trips of a Lifetime – Ancient Tea Horse Road with Jeff Fuchs

Posted on April 22, 2012 by JeffFuchs

In a little bit of good ‘April’ news (amidst tea swoons and buzzes) National Geographic Traveler has named my Ancient Tea Horse Road trip with Wild China as one of their “Top 50 Trips of a Lifetime”.

Gives us far more excuse to continue engaging with ‘tea and mountains’ and their timeless appeal

Posted in Media | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 6 Comments

Up a Classic with a Classic – Xishuangbanna Continued

Posted on April 16, 2012 by JeffFuchs

Teashops and tea cups have to at some point make way for the tea forests and fields. Fluid must give way to its ‘source’. As much as my entire being loves to be shoved into a tight little shop sipping to the tongue’s contentment, the body needs to move to smell and feel the land that provides the magic fertility that allows the tea plants and trees to grow.

The ever-important 'source' of tea - the forests

The cup of tea with its tastes, strengths (or lack thereof) and hues mean very little without a look at where it comes from and who live alongside it.

Nannuo Mountain and its various villages offer up mountains, tastes, soil types and the full range of making tea. Paths line the mountains, jigging up into ever-higher tea forests, dropping down into valleys and plunging deeper into the mountains. Villages burble along with little interrupting the slow pace and thankfully little interrupting the flow of tea from the mountains into the cups.

No tea discussion can take place without the inclusion of the locals who live with, sip and benefit from the green leaf

I am walking on one particular path near Pa San – an area that produces one of the subtlest of all Pu’erhs. Nannuo has always been known for its ‘lighter’, less astringent Pu’erhs, which is partly to do with the soil and partly the process. I’m in good company as my companion is none other than Mr. Gau, a tea maker of stupendous teas from the famed Banzhang area further west. He is here and is curious about the area and its teas as I am, and there is no one the globe that I would rather have on a tea mission that him. Soft spoken (to the point that I must strain and stop all movement to hear him at all), understated, and entirely into the soil, trees and conditions that give teas their flavour, Gau often stops to point, to prod or to simply stare.

He is at peace in the forests and is as content as I am poking about. Villages of Hani (Akha) dot our path as we wander wherever our feet and urges dictate…and that makes for some interesting turns without warning.

Tea forest near Pa San

The soil in this region is sandy and reddish in tint, and Gau explains how the angled slopes, the bamboo cover and soil type all contribute to ideal conditions. Like the magnanimous tea-god that he is, he is generous with ‘competitors’ and tea regions other than his own. Being of the Hani people himself, he wanders into villages at will, speaking in his soft voice. When discovering where he is from, villagers themselves become silent; his home is the most famous of all Pu’erh towns in Yunnan. Gau pokes about the homes in his ambling gentle way explaining to me what each tea accoutrement is, and why many of the indigenous areas “do better tea”. For Gau, it is simple: an unchanged method of production and doing things by hand keep things predictable and keeps the tea quality high. On one wall hanging casually, two tea baskets with their accompanying wooden harnesses that are fitted around the neck like ancient battle gear.

Tea baskets hang near the front door, waiting for their next inevitable trip

In one home a withered man sits on a stool sorting through tea leaves with a kind of ritualistic slowness that only the people of the land seem to have. Gau speaks to him in the nasally tones of his language and in a touching show of complicity squats with him on the floor sorting through the dry leaves.

A process that needs the human hand

Later, we wander down from the elevated home back to the first floor. Pushing a door in we enter into a darkened tea sanctum. It is where the tea is ‘made’. Two immaculate pans sit next to one another and a tea roller hovers in a corner of shade. Much here rests silent as the last of the spring harvests has just been taken in.

We are eventually pointed up a path from the home into an area where, according to the tea sorter, the locals have been planting the “children of ancient tea trees” in little rows in a bamboo forest. They are the future of the tea forests and as long as the villagers don’t ruin the surrounding and necessary forests, the mountains and its teas will be safe…and by a nice extension the future will be safe.

We find the ‘babes’ just as we were told we would. To get here we head up and up, sliding in the dry sandy soil and leaves, and even getting down on our hands and knees at times. In an endearing bit of rural habit in China, Gau is wearing some dress shoes, which provide no traction whatsoever. It offers up a bit of contrast as Gau has hands of the countryside: big, callused, things that are competent and wide.

Lying within the safe and nutritious realm of the surrounding forest, young tea plants have a secure future

 Reaching the little newbie’s which are lined one by one between a thatch of bamboo. The placement isn’t precise or even neat, but rather casual and intuitive. Gau tells me how this is ideal not only for the shading for the little tea plants but also for the way that each tree will have ample space to grow in the future.

In an impulsive moment as Gau squats over a young tea plant, he looks up suddenly and asks if where I’ll source teas from. I tell him that his teas are too pricey – at which point he cuts in with a smile telling me that there isn’t any more of his tea to source anyways – and that I like the Nannuo region as I feel it has always suffered from being an underrated area. Each village produces teas, and within that village, families with their own little tea operations season-after-season and year-after-year hum along, producing their own version of tea. Many towns and ‘mountains’ within the greater Nannuo area produce teas and it remains one of the classic ‘tea mountains’ in Yunnan lore. A tea simply bearing the name “Nannuo Mountain” means nothing. Nannuo Mountain teas should all be traceable to a village or specific region within the greater area and should carry the designation “old tree tea”, or “young tea tree”. Teas without this information aren’t complete or reliable.

There is nothing from 'without' within the tea forests. Even the 'staircase' is of the earth

Gau is nodding in the mountain heat in apparent agreement. He tells me simply, “Do it”, and with that we go higher. “You don’t need to buy my tea”, he tells me later, and “I’ll share with you”.  I’m wishing that this sharing can happen now as it has been two hours since our last ‘infusion’.

Everything about the area that we are in speaks of simplicity. Steps have been carved into the earth to access small terraces of reckless tea growth. Barely visible paths poke through, the green wall of trees heading deeper still into tea forests. There is a hushed quiet that is cut only by cicadas that whine and grind their tunes into the hot air.

Ready for consumption, the tea leaves are edited one last time so that they 'look good' for the markets

Gau at one point has had enough and turns and tells me that he is “thirsty”. Somewhere below us – though we’re not sure where – a tea awaits.

Like so much in the tea world the tea frying pans wait for the next season's harvest

Posted in Tea | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Up a Classic with a Classic – Xishuangbanna Continued

An Arrival – Xishuangbanna/Sipsongbanna

Posted on April 15, 2012 by JeffFuchs

Heat, Green, Some Characters…and more Green

Somehow it will always come to a bit of fluid that is waiting

There are moments when the senses tell the rest of the body that one has arrived; moments when the body knows something before the mind does.

Stepping out of a plane’s hatch, hot air and a wall of new smells blast into the nose. I have arrived.

 Xishuangbanna and its understated little airport in Jinghong often do this to me, pleasantly but relentlessly assaulting the senses. Jinghong, the capital of the region welcomes me with nothing even close to grandness. The airport is one building of nothing-in-particular and one still walks to the arrival ‘room’ to collect luggage. A different speed, and blasts of colour await everywhere.

Jinghong's understated arrival zone

Pineapples, magnolia, and exotic flavoured night flowers aside, it is the tea that I have come for.

A day later I am stationed on a little green chair surrounded by tea in Menghai, a quick hour from the capital. A tight, two-floor affair, the teahouse I sit in is one of the many I will visit. A kitchen upstairs (and the requisite but suspect toilet) ensure that my tea sessions are uninterrupted by the need to depart the building. Only a little mattress is missing to complete the autonomy. My hostess ‘Dan’ has got tea flowing in a small flood of stimulant happiness. A fire-plug of energy, she is of the Pulang, or Pu people, one of the planet’s original tea cultivating peoples.

Getting from Jinghong to Menghai, a bus (and in this case its lethal and slightly insane driver) is needed...probably wired on tea

Teas from southern Yunnan are pricey this year but the quality is unquestioned. Successive drought years have depleted amounts of tea but in that wonderful ironic way, the tea that ‘is’ available is generally excellent. What it means for tea sellers is that, the ones who sell quality teas will do fine; the ones that try and dupe or have a reputation that is less than scrupulous will struggle. What it means for my own tea sourcing and slurping mission is that I will widen my area of interest to smaller and lesser-known areas that have never really been on the tea map.

This little bit of ‘natural selection’ bodes well. I will only visit the areas I trust and a couple of additional ‘new’ areas that I’ve not been. It never bodes well to only stick to a few places and teas, and there are always those little areas with great tea that exist, without a known ‘name’. I do however try to ensure that the actual tea makers I source from are limited to a select few. The epic Banzhang teas have reached over a thousand dollars a kilogram depending on their maker and origins.

It never takes long once I've arrived to get into what I've come for

Additionally, in the intense world of tea in these tea-crazed regions, many buyers from Guangdong are now moving here and setting up their own production facilities to ensure that they can absolutely control the quality (and price). It will make for some interesting dynamics in the coming years. Where previously these powerful tea mavens would simply buy up entire harvests, they now transport the leaves directly to their factories nearby and control the entire process from there on in. They essentially headhunt the best tea makers in their relentless efforts to secure quality and consistency.

All of the characters that I rejoice in seeing on my visits down here are in fine form…some with new weight on their faces, others with new wealth, but all with that same delighted buzz that I’ve always associated with tea-people. One old friend’s father and mother show up in a casual mess of a tuk-tuk. In their mid-seventies, ‘mother’ is short squat and hosts a formidable appetite, while her husband is a spry man with freshly dyed hair and a smile that seems permanently fixed on his face. When he sips, he sips for the world. He sips with an elegance that belies his upbringing in a small local mountain town, and I cannot help but love him.

A sipper without equal of the tea

The tea action begins immediately with updates, gossip, and the latest regrets. Thankfully, though, there is tea to accompany all of the words and smiles.

Things in this area happen without warning in a kind of tea-fed fury, and this tradition continues when, on the first morning I am whisked off to a little tea factory that is doing great things in smaller quantities.

Steamed tea wafts blow the sinuses open as I peer into a spotless ‘production’ room. Six workers sift, weigh, steam, wrap, and press the tea cakes. Simple and precise, little factory is exactly what interests me as they alone can manage to maintain an attention to detail.

Minutes after an impromptu tour, we are sitting in the little ‘office’ hurling back cups of a local Pulang Shan tea…and this is as good a place as any to finish a tea blog posting.

Competent hands, genuine care and limited quantities ensure a great 'end-cake'.

Posted in Tea | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

A Tea for Departures – Lau Banzhang

Posted on April 6, 2012 by JeffFuchs


Embarking for the south of Yunnan on the tea sourcing mission tomorrow, it seems a perfect time to indulge in a little ‘tea’ farewell from home here in Shangrila. Above, on the wooden slats of my Tibetan home’s roof, ice pellets are pinging down and the sky is heavy and dark – yes, a fitting time for a little farewell slurp. There is even a hint of snow, as Spring once again tries to figure out how to take back its allotted time in the year. So, as Winter is being forced out, I head for the tea mountains of Yunnan.

In all of its muddled, moddy beauty

Sorting through my ‘tea box #1’, I find a tea that I rarely indulge in, but think about often. It is a ten-year-old Lau Banzhang, sheng (unfermented) Pu’er It sits in its thin discoloured wrap with a little note inside, written two years ago describing it as “the tea for departures”. No idea what prompted the idea but, if, I did actually care about dollar amounts of my various cakes, tubes, bricks, and other blunt molds of tea, this tea would be worth more than the all of other tea contents of ‘tea box #1’…or at least close. I will be near the very area where this tea was cultivated, created and stored in less than a week.

Powering, chiselling, and whittling away at the precious cake

True to the little written notation inside, I do keep it as a tea for departures. It has never come on a journey, never been sipped in the morning as the first tea of the day, nor been sipped with a huge group of people; it is an indulgence, pure and simple. When I prepare it I’m aware that I take an almost neurotic amount of time, making sure not one errant leaf goes astray. Preparing the tea becomes a meditation of sorts. One cup, one gai wan – a flared cup to prepare the tea, and the inevitable kettle humming away as it boils water. That is it.

The tea cake was given as a gift by a tea maker from Lau Banzhang years ago on another tea junket into the mountains of southern Yunnan. The cake itself was one of about thirty that he had kept in a box of teas; each tea cake was more than seven years old – in lay terms the equivalent of green gold. The cake was presented casually to me, with only the words catching the breath, as he said “that tea is something most people would give years of their life to acquire”. Words like this from a tea ‘maker’, a grand chief himself of creating masterpieces, are words that carry weight. I had been in the tea town in southern Yunnan for days watching every step of the famed tea-making process…and I had also been up most nights slinging back the local firewater along with the requisite amounts of tea to balance out the liquid intake. In time, my visits there became part of an annual pilgrimage, and that in turn led finally to the gift of the Lau Banzhang tea cake. Though I had in my days purchased, pilfered and begged tea from Lau Banzhang, this aged cake was my little prize in ‘tea box #1’.

Nothing hints at its worth, no opulent wrapping paper, no adjectives lining the edge of the wrap; nothing at all. In fact the only aspect that makes it valuable – before the tasting that is – is the ‘knowledge’ in me of where and who it is coming from. This simple ‘truth’ is all that often separates a fake from a genuine piece of green gold: the all-important ‘source’.

The cake itself was firmly molded all those years ago, and is perhaps too tight in its compression, which prevents oxygen from circulating throughout the leaves and ‘ageing’ it in an ideal way. Witling away at the solid form is work, with the compressed leaves breaking off in bits and chunks only after some force is applied. The leaves in this form will not be ‘whole’ once I’ve massacred them, making it slightly more difficult to ‘see’ what the leaves are and once were.

While production methods have been slightly sanitized for the current tea markets, which are fickle when it comes to cosmetics, a great tea – like a crap one – cannot hide. While this tea’s appearance, and that of the leaves is not ideal, the quality will inevitably reveal itself…or not. The taste, the smell and the site of a tea reveal most to those whose interest and talents lie with tea. Site alone won’t be enough. Good teas need the full engagement of the senses. I’ve got the time, the tea, water and a pending departure – all is set.

Bitterness rises

Upon pouring the first rinse, there is that wonderful bit of ‘bitter’ froth at the surface to skim off with the lid. One of the first tests of any tea is a first sniff once the leaves have tasted some water. The smell is ‘iron-like’ with some vegetal hits and the colour is dark apricot.

Outside the window, the dark sky has cleared and the first proper tasting has me looking at a distant peak, which sometime this morning took snow upon its slopes.

When first picked this ‘new’ tea’s colour would have been a lemon yellow all those years ago; now the colours are deepening and will continue to naturally ‘age’ until one day – maybe another 7 seven years down the road – it will have morphed into a fully ‘black’ Pu’er, while losing much of its astringency. Though I’ve never bought into the fad of ‘aged teas are the only teas to drink’ a great tea will age ‘greatly’, or so the story goes.

The colour of a naturally fermented/fermenting tea differs entirely from a tea that has been artificially fermented. Naturally fermented teas stay clear and retain an almost red colour, whereas many artificially fermented teas go chocolate and almost 'black'

This tea’s power has moderated over time, but it and its depth still have some sharp tangs that cruise into the cheeks and over the teeth. When it goes down into the gullet though, it eases and glides down with all of tastes softening. The mouth afterwards holds onto much of what makes the Lau Banzhangs so revered: strength, an ability to carry all of the tea tree’s vital surroundings onto the palate, and a finish that reminds that not all departures are unwelcome.

Time to move south then.

 

 

Posted in Tea | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

“Hu Kai – A Tea of the Soul” … and one that still stuns the tongue

Posted on March 29, 2012 by JeffFuchs

It remains a tea that I don’t get enough of (which will hopefully be remedied in the coming two weeks). My fierce Lahu contact in Xishuangbanna assures me that this will be the case. Hu Kai’s roots, flavours, and understated home here: “Hu Kai – A Tea of the Soul” – sips to come.

The Pulang and Lahu both have a tradition of boiling raw tea leaves...nothing is wasted

Posted in Tea | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on “Hu Kai – A Tea of the Soul” … and one that still stuns the tongue

“Tea’s Ancient Trees” – Absolute green, absolute heat, and absolute tea

Posted on March 26, 2012 by JeffFuchs

There are few geographies (with their perks) that I would rather be than amidst the ancient tea forests of southern Yunnan, and fewer-still fluids that I’d rather consume than these forest’s ancient teas. The full article here: “Tea’s Ancient Trees”

Thankfully, I will be within the forest’s folds shortly on Jalamteas’ sourcing journey.

Yes, I am snogging an ancient tea tree - few better snogs out there

Posted in Tea | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Six Sips in Beijing – A look back

Posted on March 22, 2012 by JeffFuchs

As a sort of look back – and forward, from a tea perspective.

It must be served to be consumed

I thought I’d include one link every few days to tea blogs that I’ve been doing for Templar Foods since late 2010. First blog was “Six Sips in Beijing” in the big grey of Beijing. To be read with a sip or six…

Beijing isn’t the greatest place to enjoy the leaf, but, in some ways more necessary than here in the mountains or tea forests to take the time to take tea.

Posted in Tea | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments