Fengqing Golden Buds Ripened Pu-erh Cake Tea 2013

This compressed tea cake is made from fine leaves picked from Fengqing, Yunnan in early spring 2013. This cake is exquisitely made under the pile-fermentation method, resulting in a glossy brown surface and golden tips still visible throughout its body, and it yields a bright yet deep red liquor with a soft, smooth mouthfeel and mellow taste. Because it is harvested in the early spring days, this tea is high in phytochemicals and can thus aid digestion.

	Cup Method		Chinese Gongfu Method
	Teacup: 12oz / 355ml		Gaiwan: 3.8oz / 110ml
	212℉ / 100℃		212℉ / 100℃
	5g Tea		10g Tea
	Brewing time: 5 - 8 mins		10 steeps: rinse, 20s, 20s, 25s, 30s, 40s, 55s, 85s, 120s, 150s, 200s
			Rinse time is 5 seconds

A born-and-bred Yunnan farmer, Mr. Zhou has been avidly contributing to the tea business for more than 20 years. A short chat with him made his passion for using traditional tea crafting processes apparent.

He values the essential quality inside the tea leaves, and says that his experience comes from spending most of his time in the tea gardens along the mountains.

Mr. Zhou is passionate about bringing out that internal quality of the tea to share with tea lovers around the world - and also claims that the best environment for growing the perfect tea is in Fengqing.

At the 14th Chinese Tea Industry Economic Annual Conference in 2021, Mr. Zhou won the honorary title of "National Tea Craftsman -- Tea Master".

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.