Fengqing Ancient Tree Raw Pu-erh Cake 2014

This is a unique raw pu-erh cake, made of leaves from the Fengqing large-leaf species in Yunnan. Pu-erh of this type has a strong flavor and gentle aftertaste, and while drinking it, its taste and fragrance linger on your tongue and fill your throat with their sweetness.

This cake is made from trees between 300 and 600 years old grown at 2000m elevation, raised in favorable weather conditions and in an excellent natural environment for unmatched quality. After the leaves are rolled, they are compressed into this tidy cake-shape; when you unseal the tissue paper you can see that the leaves are large and strong, and interspersed with many thick buds.

Good tea is not only attractive to look at, but also worth collecting. After breaking this pu-erh cake you will see that the leaves on the inside bear the same quality as those on the outside, ensuring the tea’s high quality and rich flavor. This Fengqing ancient tree raw pu-erh has a pleasant, natural aroma, with the fragrance of the fresh leaves bringing your mind to Yunnan tea gardens. Its flavor shows the pure beauty of nature.

	Cup Method		Chinese Gongfu Method
	Teacup: 12oz / 355ml		Gaiwan: 3.8oz / 110ml
	203℉ / 95℃		203℉ / 95℃℃
	5g Tea		8g Tea
	Brewing time: 3 - 5 mins		10 steeps: rinse,10s,15s,20s,25s,30s,40s,50s,60s,80s,100s
			Rinse time is 3 seconds

There are fifteen towns and villages in Fengqing that harbor wild and cultivated tea trees, including Xiang Zhu, Xinyuan, Dashi Village, Mengyou Village, Yongxin, and others, covering in total around 31,000 mu.

Mengyou in Yunnan is a prominent tea production region, for its industry of half wild and half cultivated trees. In this area there are many old tea trees that are a few hundred years old, and some reach up to a thousand or more. The ancient tea plantations here make a special cultural landscape, granting vitality to this place.

Alihou Village is located in the south of Mengyou, about 20 kilometers to the government center of Mengyou and about 60 miles out of downtown Fengqing County. The roads are made of stone and soil, making traffic here inconvenient, and the entire village covers about 20.6 square kilometers. The village sits at 1870 meters in elevation with an average annual temperature of 16℃ and an average annual rainfall of around 1300mm.

This pu-erh tea is produced in Fengqing, located south of Dianxi Longitudinal Valley. Fengqing is a country in the northwest of Lincang, one of the four famous pu-erh production areas (along with Xishuangbanna, Pu’er, and Baoshan), and is one of the original birthplaces of tea in the world. It is also famous for being the hometown of Yunnan black tea. Fengqing has a long history of planting, producing, and drinking tea, and contains a beautiful throng of mountains webbed with rivers.

This pu-erh tea is made from the Fengqing large-leaf subspecies of the Yunnan large-leaf. It propagates sexually and takes the form of an arbour tree, meaning that it can grow to over six meters tall. 1984, the Fengqing large-leaf species was certified by the Chinese government as a national grade. It contains an abundance of tea polyphenols (30.2%) and catechins (13.4%), as well as 2.9% amino acids and 3.2% caffeine.

Pu-erh tea is one of the oldest types of Chinese tea, with a history stretching back over 1,700 years to the Eastern Han Dynasty, when the tea was called Jing Cha. It is named after the town of Pu’er in Yunnan province, which was the earliest trading center for this tea. In its early history pu-erh was used as a bartering currency throughout southwest China, and there the famed Cha Ma Gu Dao - or Tea Horse Road - was built especially to transport this tea through the Himalayas to other countries and areas in Tibet.