This special sampler includes six 25g samples from larger 357g cakes normally unavailable in smaller sizes for 150g total (30 brewing sessions). Get to know both classic and obscure sheng and shu pu'er from workshops all across Yunnan. Exploring the world of pu'er can be difficult if you need to invest in full 357g pressed cakes before getting to try them. This sampler is a chance to try both single origin and blended workshop cakes and get to know what you like most. From cooling, tingling foresty sheng pu'er to cozy rich caramel-spice shu, you'll get to see how much variety there is in pu'er. The cakes sampled are all 'best of their class' examples, some with substantial aging, generally from smaller workshops dedicated to direct farmer partnerships. If you've been looking for a way to get a real deep dive in pu'er, this is it!
This bundle includes five 25g bags of Qianjiazhai tea and a full 100g cake for 225g total (40 sessions). The Zhenyuan Dongsa Cooperative of Qianjiazhai is a loose-knit coalition of families across the remote mountaintops of China’s oldest tea forests dedicated to sustainable stewardship of the wild tea plants, and careful foraging from trees that can be over a thousand years old.
Master Zhou founded the cooperative to refine the finishing craft and picking techniques across Qianjiazhai and bring more well-deserved respect to one of China’s most important but also most unknown tea regions. This tasting kit is an introduction to the incredible diversity of flavor, texture, aroma and aftertaste that wild-foraging in an ancient tea forest can bring.
In this kit you’ll taste the careful heat-free sun dry craft of Qianjiazhai’s sheng pu’er and the fermentation of their shu pu’er, while also tasting the rare near-tea relative camellia crassicolumna, naturally caffeine-free and incredibly intense and aromatic. This kit is an invitation into a little-seen side of tea and its ancient wild origins.
Qianjiazhai Gong Ting Shu Pu'er is still a very new practice, made only by one of Master Zhou's students in the cooperative. Using the giant buds of QIanjiazhai's wild trees between 100 and three hundred years of age, this tea is carefully and slowly pile fermented to bring out a deep rich sweetness.
This new blend of 2014 gong ting shu pu'er and Autumn 2020 tea flowers was pressed in the cooperative's small 100g cake stone mold. This is the first time Master Zhou has pressed tea flowers with Gong Ting Shu in a cake, and the result is a beautiful visual contrast. The floral boost to the textural complexity and nuance of this budset shu pu’er is a welcome addition. The clean natural fermentation preserves the herbaceousness of the tea, and the florals bring it out even further.
The Cooperative's first-ever shu pu’er dragon pearl pressing, this tea is made with beautiful little 2014 buds, allowed to ferment slowly under natural moisture conditions for a sweet and clean flavor profile that shows off the herbaceous side of Qianjaizhai. The loosely pressed. dragon pearls are compact enough for long-term aging and small enough to allow for single brew sessions without having to break apart a bigger cake of tea. The loose hand-twisted compression allows for better and more even aging than anything a machine could achieve.