In the primordial jungles of liminal China, as it fringes the mountains of Laos, there grows a wild and powerful tea. Yiwu is well renowned for its gentle character of tea, their welcoming depths, and for their incredible ability to age magnificently. Highly sought, endlessly copied, this region has been meticulously divided down to micro regions with their different flavors, terroirs, villages, ethnic groups, mountains, and even sides of mountains and different garden plots on a single mountain side.
Most of the tea in this tea cake comes from one such micro region, the Bai Sha He, a garden of gushu tea trees tucked away deep in the folds of Gua Feng Zhai. While this tea isn't a 100% Gua Feng Zhai Gushu tea cake (which we would need to sell at about $3/gram), we chose other gushu and dashu material from different gardens and regions to complement and be subservient to the incredible wild flavor and power of the Gua Feng Zhai.
Gua Feng Zhai is one of the most remote tea growing regions in Yiwu. The first dirt road into the village was hewn from forest in 2001, electricity was first connected in 2008, and the tea has been fanatically coveted since the early 2010s. A lot of paranoia surrounds this region, we saw purchasers taking turns to watch their leaves 24 hours a day as they are kill greened, rolled, and sun-dried, for fear of them being swapped with non-Guafeng Zhai material. While we weren’t as overtly paranoid, we did stick with the leaves we wanted from their picking to their processing and drying (a wonderful week spent in the wilds of Yiwu) and can confidently provide this incredible chance to try some of the tea world’s most coveted tea.
No Man’s Land refers to the wild nature of the garden, the small place humans hold in the larger magnificence of the ecology, and to the fact that this tea was made entirely by our friend Rita, her sister Xiao Mei, and their mother. We didn’t see any men making this tea, which is the norm in most tea making regions throughout China, and so we were moved to name this tea in honor of the women behind its production.
The tea itself is something transcendent. We have few words for it but will try our best to explain the tasting notes and tea session experience.
There is a sweet juicy thickness that comes from the leaves when placed in a warmed gaiwan. We get a lot of tropical fruit from the dry leaves, mango juice and guava, with a more spicy backbone of wildflowers. As soon as we begin brewing with hot water, the wet leaves reveal their wild side, and we are transported back into hiking hours through the jungle to see these tea trees for ourselves. There persists a thick spicy freshness in the leaves.
The tea on the tongue is thick, oily, and rich, with very little bitterness, but a pleasant huigan after a few sips. The flavors of this tea are particularly difficult to describe; we are left thinking of things like ‘wildflowers’ and ‘high fragrance’ but the specific flavors are difficult to place.
One thing that is unmistakable is the Chaqi, or tea energy. The presence of this tea blooms in the body after a few brews, we immediately begin to belch, as all of our stagnant energy begins to move, and the tea wakes up our digestive system. It was the quiet power of this tea that keeps us locked at the tea table until we finish the session, for as soon as we step away, another blissful wave of tea energy sweeps over us, and we are drawn back with ‘one more brew’ in mind. Be sure to have time and space to appreciate this tea.
