Tea: Magic Drought 2023 Spring Bangdong Raw Puer
Type: Raw Puer (生普洱）
Harvest: April 2023
Press Date: April 2023
Region: Bangdong, Lincang, Yunnan
Producer: Meng Family
2023 Tasting Notes: Fruit Juice, Pomelo, Rock Salt, Leather.
This is a thick, mineral rich, raw puer with a lot of power behind it. Grown, picked, and processed in a serious drought year, the leaves are potent and undiluted. As this is a single origin 1 to 1 blend of Gushu and Old-arbor Qiaomu all from the Bangdong village east of Lincang, it's a good opportunity to sample a Chunliao or Pure Material from the Bangdong village terroir.
The broth is immediately rich and meaty, with a mineral and slightly saline undertone that creates a deep huigan. This tea really transforms in later steps from something deeply meaty and mineral rich to sweet juicy fruity notes of pomelo, or Chinese grapefruit. This tea has legs and can be steeped for quite some time.
The bangdong village is famous for its deep mineralogy, in fact the makers call their teas Yancha or Rock Teas, which to those literate in Chinese oolongs is a name that's already taken by the Wuyi Oolongs. This name however is a true reflection of their boulder strewn sandy side of the mountain, and is readily apparent in the taste of the tea itself.
We offer this tea in 25 gram samples (chunks lovingly pried off the cake), whole 200 gram cakes, and a set of 5 cake tongs wrapped in bamboo leaves that total some 1000 grams.
If you're interested in sampling this year's full flight of puer pressings, check out the Yunnan Flight, a set of 6 dragon balls from different regions each pressed in 7 gram balls for convenient brewing.
We recommend brewing this tea gongfu style in a gaiwan or Chinese teapot. We use 6 grams of tea in a 100ml brewing vessel with boiling water, steeping 5 second for the first few infusions and adding 5 seconds after ever subsequent infusion. Most of these puer teas can be re-infused over 15 times, when brewing in this gongfu style.
Curious about these Chinese puer tea terms, check out our growing appendix of Chinese - pinyin - English translated terms here.
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