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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. 2023 Qianjiazhai Sun Dried Black Tea
    2023 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!
  2. Qianjiazhai Gu Hua Sun Dried Black
    Qianjiazhai Gu Hua Sun Dried Black

    This is just the second year this tea has been made. The Gu Hua harvest is an early autumn picking possible only in the cool high elevation mountaintops of Qianjiazhai, favored by Master Zhou for its fruity, rich flavor. In years past, this has been used exclusively for sheng pu’er. This year, a small portion was set aside to sun-oxidize as a black tea. The results are stunning! It has all the juicy flavor of the sheng pu’er but with creamy nutty depth only possible in a black tea.
  3. 2023 Qianjiazhai Hand Fired Black
    2023 Qianjiazhai Hand Fired Black
    The Dongsa cooperative wild-forages the leaves for their hand-fired black tea from trees well over one hundred years old, growing on the cool high elevation slopes of the Ailao National Forest Preserve. The biodiversity and well established root stock makes for deeply nuanced and complex tea, normally reserve for pressing and aging as sheng pu’er. This experimental offering is a new project by the cooperative to hand fire over low heat in a wok for a more classic Dian Hong style. 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.

  • '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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