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Exploring Pu’er from China’s Oldest Tea ForestThis bundle includes three 25g bags of Qianjiazhai tea and a full 100g cake for 125g total (25 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.
Regular Price $39.50 $35.55 - Qianjiazhai Crassicolumna Tasting Kit
This bundle includes four 25g bags of Crassicolumna tea for 100g total (20 sessions). Crassicolumna is an ancient, wild near-tea relative to the modern camellia sinensis plant, native to the tea forests of Qianjiazhai deep in the mountains. Naturally caffeine-free, Crassicolumna is packed with captivating deep spiced flavor and texture. It has the complexity of pu’er, but a wild flavor all its own.
Regular Price $46.15 $41.54 - Sample Pu'er Cakes from Workshops Across Yunnan
This special sampler includes four 25g samples from larger cakes normally unavailable in smaller sizes for 100g total (20 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!
Regular Price $26.30 $23.67 - Xingyang Pu'er + More Discovery Kit
This bundle includes six tea-stuffed mandarins and five 25g bags of pu'er for 150g total (about 30 sessions). This kit is a chance to taste Xingyang's award-winning clean fermentation style and meticulous blending craft, including aged sheng pu'er, mini tuocha, loose leaf gong ting shu, Yue Guang Bai white tea and tea stuffed mandarins.
Regular Price $51.98 $46.78
- 2014 Shu Pu'er NuggetsThis tea is a new experiment from one of Master Zhou's former students, another member of the cooperative. Qianjiazhai one hundred to three hundred year wild-picked leaves and buds are pile-fermented until they clump together in tight balls in the heat. The balls ferment and age differently than loose tea and yield a rich vanilla-heavy flavor that is impossible to steep out.
- 2014 Qianjiazhai Yi Ji Shu Pu'erMaster Zhou works with his students in the Qianjiazhai Dongsa Cooperative to start introducing shu pu’er fermentation and crafting techniques more widely across the mountain. This stunningly clean, rich and foresty example is crafted from pre-Qingming harvest maocha picked from one hundred to five hundred year trees. Even with only three years of aging, it displays the clean rich complexity normally only seen on shu pu’er a decade old or older.
- 2018 Qianjiazhai Tea Flower Gong Ting ShuFor a few extraordinary weeks at the beginning of autumn, every wild tea tree in Qianjiazhai puts out deeply aromatic golden blossoms. In recent years the Dongsa Cooperative, led by Master Zhou, has experimented with picking small amounts of the rich evocative tea flowers to blend with their wild-picked ancient-tree teas. 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 unlike any other shu pu'er out there. Master Zhou was so excited by this experiment he is sharing the technique across the cooperative and encourage more members to keep developing the craft. This is the first time Master Zhou has blended tea flowers with Gong Ting Shu, and the result is a beautiful visual contrast, along with a floral boost to the textural complexity and nuance of this budset shu pu’er. The clean natural fermentation preserves the herbaceousness of the tea, and the florals bring it out even further.
- 2014 Yi Ji Shu Pu’er Tea Flower Cake
The cooperative’s sweet, dessert like Yi Ji Shu is given even more sweet rich complexity with the addition of tea flowers. Yi Ji or “top grade” is a buddy harvest from 2014 that the cooperative has been carefully aging for almost a decade now. The 2014 harvest was their first experiment with shu pu’er, done completely naturally without the addition of moisture beyond what was in the fresh tea leaves. The warmth and moisture kickstarted the aging while preserving an incredibly clean flavor that has room to get even deeper now that it is pressed with tea flowers.
$17.50 - Gong Ting Shu Dragon Pearls
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.
- 2014 Loose Gong Ting Shu
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 unlike any other shu pu'er out there. Master Zhou was so excited by this experiment he is sharing the technique across the cooperative and encourage more members to keep developing the craft.
- Qianjiazhai Gong Ting Shu + Tea Flower Cake
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.
$17.50 - Qianjiazhai 2014 Shu BrickMaster Zhou works with his students in the Qianjiazhai Dongsa Cooperative to start introducing shu pu’er fermentation and crafting techniques more widely across the mountain. This stunningly clean, rich and foresty example is crafted from pre-Qingming harvest maocha picked from one hundred to five hundred year trees, and wrapped in bamboo leaf cut fresh from the native bamboo growing across the mountainside. After only two years of aging, it displays the clean rich complexity normally only seen on shu pu’er a decade old or older.
- 2014 Gong Ting Shu CakeMaster Zhou and his students in the Qianjiazhai Dongsa Cooperative hand-carved a 100g cake stone mold for their collaboration with Verdant and selected a beautiful 2014 looseleaf Gong Ting harvest to hand-press. This Gong Ting cake is made from only small buds picked from trees around one hundred years of age in the early spring before Qingming festival. This tea was allowed to age loose for two years, giving it a sweet and extremely clean profile. The bud material yields a thick rich mouthfeel.
- 2014 Qiao Mu Shu Pu'er Mini-Brick
These 5g mini-bricks from Xingyang workshop utilize "Qiao Mu" or wild arbor leaf. This designation refers to groves that have been untended long enough to reach a natural state, including deeper biodiversity and larger plants with deeper roots (and lower yields). This mini-brick provides a great contrast other shu pu'er teas in Xingyang's collection, brewing up with bright fruit and fresh mint. Hibiscus is prominent, with an underlying sticky rice and buckwheat honey note. This is a great testament to the range that Xingyang can achieve through their careful blending and slow fermentation process.
- Shu Pu'er Stuffed MandarinXingyang has painstakingly removed the pulp from green mandarin oranges and stuffed them with a beautiful budset shu pu’er to infuse with the citrus aroma over time. These little manadarin oranges are great in a big pot that you can keep refilling all day. The densely stuffed orange takes so long to open up that you can easily get a dozen infusions. The mandarin flavor is bright and tropical with notes of honeysuckle, jasmine and cream to compliment the superbly sweet and clean brown sugar flavor of the shu pu’er.$3.00
- 2006 Hong Fu #6676 Shu Pu'er
The #6676 blend shu pu'er from Hongfu Workshop is about sweetness and balance, with notes of grains and sugars supported by vanilla and a hint of cedar and nutmeg. Over ten years of age have mellowed this classic tasting profile for beautiful sipping now. The decade of careful storage in relatively dry northern China lifts the sweetness with spiced depth, and adds a thick rich texture that can only continue to age into even more complexity over time.
- Ba Jiao Ting 2008 Qiao Mu Shu Pu'er
This organic-certified pu'er cake from Li Ming Chen Workshop carries their Ba Jiao Ting mark, a designation of their finest pressings. The old tree leaf material combined with over a decade of aging makes this a deeply complex, richly-spiced tea, packed with minerality and depth.
- Langhe 2018 Shu Pu'er
This aged pu'er cake from Langhe Workshop is an iconic example of one of our favorite shu pu'er flavor profiles - packed with notes of blackberry, red velvet cake and allspice. Such a clean and dessert-like profile takes skillful slow aging and a balance of fine buddy leaf material, growing even deeper and more spiced with age.
- Lincang Fengjie 2012 Shu Pu'er
This unique and powerful shu pu'er from Lincang Fenjie Workshop is particularly deep and dark, with spicy ginger, cooling mint, and a big dessert-like undertone. The buddy leaf material gives this cake depth and texture, while nearly a decade of aging adds beautiful complexity.
- Yongming Workshop Bulangshan 2018 Shu Pu'er
Yongming Workshop makes elegant and supremely drinkable Pu'er. This Bulangshan offering is unusually floral with notes of violet and tropical jasmine balancing out the dark molasses and thick lingering texture. Expect a cooling aftertaste and complex spice profile that will get deeper with age.
- 2005 Tiandiren Reserve Mengzhe Shu
Tiandiren Workshop blends beautiful shu pu’er. They are known for their deep fruity spiced profile and the sweet clean balanced aftertaste they bring to every cake. This offering is as smooth as any of Tiandiren’s best work, but goes off in an incredible unique direction with notes of basil, ginger and rose along with classic cooling qualities and sweet vanilla.
- 2011 Nuomi Xiang Shu TuochaWang Yanxin has just released this rich and incredibly clean shu pu’er after a generous eight years of aging to deepen its complexity. When brewed, this tea has a striking aroma of sweet sticky rice. This aroma comes from the unique blend of Nuomixiang or Semnostachya menglaensis leaf with Wan Yuan workshop’s high grade shu pu’er. As the yunnan native Nuomixiang leaf ages with the pu’er they come together in a uniquely clean mineral-forward tea.
- 2019 Sui Yin Zi Shu Pu’erSui Yin Zi (also called "Broken Silver") has swept China in the last few years as a new craze, thanks to the fact that good Sui Yin Zi is impossible to over steep and can be brewed all day without exhausting the leaves. The flavor is sweet, clean, and cozy. Sui Yin Zi is not that different from Lao Cha Tou (shu pu'er nuggets), formed of individual leaf clusters that clump together during fermentation. This Sui Yin Zi is from Wang Yanxin’s longtime partners at Longyuanhao workshop, ready for further aging or drinking now.
- 2018 Yiwu Hongjun Workshop Yuanshengtai Shu Pu'er
Yiwu is famous for its cooling foresty Pu'er, and this cake is no exception. Notes of fresh mint and cardamom show the best of classic Yiwu with extra nuance and complexity of tulsi, juicy muscat grape and a deep rye flavor. This depth comes from the "yuanshengtai" designation which means that the tea was harvested in a balanced ecosystem with forest cover and wild plants left intact.
- 2010 Menghai Gong Ting Shu
Gong Ting shu pu’er is pressed from delicate downy buds for a uniquely sweet profile. This Menghai pressing is unique among gong ting style for its incredibly clean light and floral qualities. Often buddy material means a certain heaviness on the palate, but not here. This is a beautiful fruity cake with spice and vanilla aftertaste that stays light on its feet.
- Yang Ji Tian Yuan 2005 Qiaomu Gao Shan Shu Pu'er
Yang Ji Tian Yuan Workshop has selected wild arbor high elevation tea from old-growth trees for this deeply complex and generously-aged offering. Sweet cinnamon, cooling tingling mint and floral aromatic rose and vanilla come together for a classic juicy tingling Shu Pu'er packed with nuance and textural depth
- Bada Mountain 2015 Zhi Chun Feng Workshop Shu Pu'er
This refreshingly crisp Shu Pu'er from the smaller Zhi Chun Feng Workshop was picked in 2015 and pressed in 2019. The beautiful mix of golden downy buds and deep dark tender leaves makes for a perfect balance of deep fruity undertones, foresty sweet spice, and savory biscuit bread qualities. The aftertaste has a slightly cooling quality that is sure to get deeper with age.
- 2008 KT952 Loose Leaf ShuThis tea is made from tiny spring buds from old growth tea trees and fermented for a clean and smooth flavor. Xingyang is proud that ten years of age on this tea will taste more like a twenty year pu’er because of the quality leaf material and slow meticulous fermentation process. The result is deep, herbaceous and cooling with a lingering aftertaste.
