Verdant Tea

Hand Fired Black Tea Dragon Pearls

Hand Fired Black Tea Dragon Pearls

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Modern black tea craft
meets ancient wild tea trees
The Cooperative recently mastered this classic Yunnan Black style, roasting their tea on a wok after sun-oxidizing for a deep, creamy flavor. Notes of honey oat, cinnamon, saffron, and banana.
April 2022 ♦ Mt. Ailao, Yunnan
Modern black tea craft
meets ancient wild tea trees
The Cooperative recently mastered this classic Yunnan Black style, roasting their tea on a wok after sun-oxidizing for a deep, creamy flavor. Notes of honey oat, cinnamon, saffron, and banana.
April 2022 ♦ Mt. Ailao, Yunnan
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Crafted by the Dongsa Cooperative

True zero-intervention wild tea, foraged from ancient tea forests in one of the most remote tea growing regions in the world.
 
The Dongsa Cooperative was founded to promote responsible stewardship of these tea forests and pass on old-school pu’er hand-crafting techniques that yield incredibly complex tea.
    • DATE OF PICKINGApril 2022
    • QianjiazhaiMt. Ailao, Yunnan
    • ELEVATION2140 m
    • Qianjiazhai AssamicaTea Varietal

    While the Li Family uses sun drying to bring out rich texture and spice in their sun dried black tea, they have recently started experimenting with a light roasting process, done entirely by hand over a special wood-fired wok. This brings out much sweeter flavors in the black tea. This Dragon Pearl is made with the Li Family's hand fired black tea, closer to a traditional Dian Hong than their Sun Dried Black tea, with savory notes of honey, walnut, fig and a warming hint of cinnamon and tulsi spice.

    Each 25g bag contains four (4) dragon pearls.

  • true
    85
    honey oat
    true
    60
    cinnamon, star anise
    true
    75
    jasmine, saffron
    true
    70
    papaya, banana
    true
    creamy

    Tasting Profile

    • savory - honey oat
    • spice - cinnamon, star anise
    • floral - jasmine, saffron
    • fruit - papaya, banana
    • texture - creamy


the Dongsa Cooperative also recommends:

  1. 2021 Qianjiazhai Hand Fired Black
    2021 Qianjiazhai Hand Fired Black
    Master Zhou is still experimenting with other farmers in Qianjiazhai to produce new black tea offerings each year. The cooperative started with simple oxidized and sun dried black tea without any processing. Recently they have begun experimenting with wok-roasted hand finished black tea. The application of heat makes this more closely related to other Yunnan Black, and indeed it shares a rich sweet potato thickness similar to our Yunnan Golden Fleece, but with Qianjiazhai’s signature tulsi complexity and touches of citrus, and florals. Anybody who loves black tea will love this wild complex black tea offering from the Dongsa Cooperative.
  2. 2020 Qianjiazhai Sun Dried Black Tea
    2020 Qianjiazhai Sun Dried Black Tea
    This tea is wild-foraged by the Li Family of the Dongsa Cooperative within the Mt Ailao National Forest Preserve. The silvery buds and twisting golden leaves are picked from ancient tea trees between one hundred and eight hundred years old scattered between other evergreens, and wildflowers on the rocky mountainside. This labor-intensive tea to harvest is actually allowed to sun-roast and oxidize without applying heat in a wok. Because more moisture is retained in the leaf, this black tea is a fantastic candidate for aging like traditional sheng pu’er. Only a high-elevation remote place like Qianjiazhai can count on enough sunlight in the spring for this old but rare finishing technique. The result is a tea with the sweet malt of a black tea but the staggering complexity and herbaceous undertones of a sheng pu’er. A true standout!
  3. 2021 Wild Crassicolumna Black Tea
    2021 Wild Crassicolumna Black Tea
    Available both loose leaf and in pressed 100g cakes, this new 2019 tea is picked from the early spring leaves and tender buds of the Camellia Crassicolumna tree, a close relative of the tea plant native to Qianjiazhai. Crassicolumna is naturally caffeine-free and high in antioxidants. Since Crassicolumna is native to the Qianjiazhai region, there are many examples of staggeringly old Crassicolumna trees. Mr. Li of the cooperative is actually employed by the local government as an environmental protection officer to make sure these ancient trees are protected from poaching, where outsiders would sneak in in the cover of darkness to cut the tall trees and quickly harvest their precious leaves. Mr. Li has found that the best way to protect the trees is to allow sustainable wild foraging by the people living in the protected region in exchange for their help watching over remote Crassicolumna groves. This extremely rare and labor-intensive to harvest offering is allowed to slowly sun-roast to oxidize and finished as a unique black tea with a rich fruity but wild flavor, all without the caffeine you’d see in camellia sinensis.
  • 'While Mr. Zhou is a recognized teacher of tea craft (and 4th grade cursive) in Qianjiazhai, we had the privilige to actually meet one of his own teachers, a kind but formidable woman in her mid-nineties who has mastered two distinct techniques for making Qianjiazhai’s uniquely complex and nuanced black tea'

  • 4
    6-8
    208
    20 seconds
    10
    5
    6
    208
    6 seconds
    3
    4
    12
    room temp
    8 hours

    Steeping Instructions

    Western

    4 g.6-8
    oz.
    use 208° watersteep 20 secondsresteep many times
    add 10 sec. each infusion

    Gongfu

    5 g.6 ozuse 208° watersteep 6 seconds
    add 3 sec. per steeping
    enjoy many steepings

    Iced/Cold

    4 g.12
    oz.
    use room temp. waterrefrigerate overnight
    8 hours
    add ice & enjoy

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