Border Bound: Laos Tea Sampler
Border Bound: Laos Tea Sampler
Border Bound: Laos Tea Sampler

Border Bound: Laos Tea Sampler

One River Tea

Regular price $30.00 Sale

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In January of 2020, we traveled to remote Northern Laos, where the Laotian jungle presses up against the Chinese border.  Here, hundreds of years ago in this perfect climate and unspoiled environment, tea gardens began to sprout up and this area became a part of the Ancient Tea Horse Road, supplying much of the world with pressed, transportable tea.  However, due to the relatively recent creation of definite country borders, many of the old gardens found themselves on the wrong side of China, and thus unmarketable as Chinese puer.  However, despite the intense isolation of the area, news has gotten out to the West, and this tea is slowly becoming available to the discerning international teaheads, consumers that realize with tea what is important is the environment, the trees, the production, not the name or the famous location. 

That said, we are excited to release a sample set of the teas we found down in Laos.  These teas all come from the beautiful remote village of Kormaan outside of Phongsali, Laos.  They are all made from what we would - without hesitation - call ancient trees (100+ years).  And the tea is all grown, made, and sold by the Keosuyaping family.

What's in the box:

 

Laos Green Tea (Gushu Sheng Puer) - 40 grams

Laos Red Tea (Gushu Black Tea) - 40 grams

All teas were harvested processed and pressed in Fall of 2021

We are delighted for this opportunity to partner with some very isolated farmers that are producing a great product, but without a sympathetic domestic market (a lot of these Laotian tea farmers get strong-armed into selling their gushu puer for cheap to big Chinese business men, who will relabel it and resell it as Chinese gushu).