Bamboo Ridge | Raw Puer Bamboo Tube

Before the hydraulic tea cake pressing machinery used to press 99% of Puer tea cakes, farmers used to press tea in their own way, with their own tools and with their own hands.  While these bamboo-tube pressed teas fell out of fashion with the rise and accessibility of less-labor intensive machinery, the art was never lost.  Today this pressing process is preserved as a National Intangible Cultural Heritage craft, and the bamboos used are a special type called Fragrant Bamboo (香竹 Xiangzhu) that come from the very mountain upon which the tea grew.

Huazhu Liangzi (滑竹梁子 Slippery Bamboo Ridgepole) is the tallest mountain in Xishuang Banna, and it’s name is a reference to the fragrant bamboos that grow upon the slopes.  We first came across this curious tea pressing method down across the Chinese border in Northern Laos.  The pressing process here in Yunnan is slightly different, and involves lightly roasting the tea in the bamboo tubes before drying the leaves, this allows the juices and aromatic oils of the bamboo to blend with the fragrances of the tea, creating a new gestalt that doesn’t exist in the more modern tea pressing methods.

The resultant tea feels like something from the past: more complexity in the cup, more power, a bit of flame from the roasting, a bit of mountain from the bamboo, and we went with an aged maocha to give a little more depth to the mouthfeel.  While it is still a little raw after just being produced this summer, if allowed to age in its bamboo tube, these teas can change and mature in marvelous ways.

Each tube contains around 200 grams of raw puer, and we had the farmer Tan press them loose, so once the bamboo tube is split in two, the tea is easy to pry apart with a tea pick or even with fingers.