Menghai Raw Pu-erh Cake Tea 2024 – Year of Dragon

The raw materials for this cake were picked in the spring of 2023 and pressed into cakes in January 2024. Even through the double-layer packaging, we can smell the faint aroma of the dry leaves, and the warmed tea leaves have a rich nectar fragrance, very refreshing. In terms of taste, it is still a young raw puerh, the bitter and stringent notes are still there, but the sweetness returns quickly with a strong feeling of body fluid producing. It can also brew many steeps. We look forward to its change during aging.

	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, 15s, 10s, 10s, 10s, 20s, 30s, 40s, 60s, 80s, 100s
			Rinse time is 5 seconds

Man Xin Long stockaded village is located in Bulang Shan entirely surrounded by forests and at an elevation of 1800 meters. The Bulang nationality here migrated over two hundred years ago, and planted the original tea trees along the nearby 150 mu of hillsides during that time.

In the tea grove, tea farmers are picking tea leaves on the high tea tree.

Bulang Mountain sits in Menghai County of Xishuangbanna, Yunnan, and is a famous area of pu-erh production. This mountain houses the largest concentration of ancient tea trees within a 100,000-hectare area.

The mountain rolls and stretches across Menghai, with deep valleys cutting through hills that can reach up to 1216 meters on average, with the highest point, Sanduo Peak, rising almost 2100m above sea level. Bulang Mountain experiences a subtropical monsoon climate, with abundant sunlight and rainfall of about 1374mm per year, and the average temperature between 18 and 21℃. There is little risk of frost here, and the season for it is also short; during the spring and winter a heavy fog blankets the mountain, while the summer and autumn months are often overcast and rainy.

Native to Menghai County in Xishuangbanna, the Menghai large-leaf tea species was rated as the most improved national variety in 1984. It grows up to 7m tall in the wild with bold green leaves noticeably larger than more common varieties, and the buds of this species are yellowish-green and coated in fuzz. The leaves are high in phytochemicals, with one bud and two leaves containing 2.3% amino acids, 32.8% polyphenolic compounds, 4.1% caffeine, and 18.2% catechinic acid. Because of this, pu-erh tea made from this species is high in quality, rich yet soft in taste, and maintains a full-bodied essence.

Pu-erh is one of the oldest types of tea in China with a history stretching back over 1700 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 originally the early trading center for this tea. In early history pu-erh was used as a bartering currency in southwest China, with the famed Cha Ma Gu Dao, the Tea Horse Road, being built for the purpose of transporting this tea through the Himalayas to other countries and areas in Tibet.