Village Tea Artisans And Traditional Farming Economic pressures are endangering small village tea farmers. Many small tea growers are lured by promised wealth by big collectives who are usually more concerned with low prices than high quality. Recently, in some areas of China, farmers have simply left their tea to wilt on the bush. They cannot afford the effort and expense of processing, only to sell for low prices. When you purchase Puerh (Pu-erh) tea from us, you are helping to support threatened farming traditions.

The popularity of Puerh tea within china and more recently throughout the world has seen a great market rise for this celebrated and treasured tea, meanwhile the unique characteristics and charm that attributed to the legendary Puerh tea are somewhat overlooked or forgotten in the production efforts to meet the ever growing demand.

To satisfy the demand of a rapidly growing market for Puerh many large companies have introduced large tea estates and factories surrounding the tea growing areas. These estates are organised with rows of neatly hedged trees at waist height grown for maximum yields and for ease of machine harvesting and mechanical processing. Focused on low production cost and producing a consistent product of average quality to market to the everyday consumer for corporate profits.

Bland Blends. Estate teas are blends of machine processed tea with a wide range of quality. Tea is only as good as its weakest component. This type of large scale farming has not only put pressure on the environment due to clearing of natural forests but is placing considerable economic pressures on the small villages that the estate farms are displacing.

Handmade tea. Unlike estate grown teas (pictured to left) our Puerh (Puerh) teas are sourced and collected from wild stands of tall low yield big leaf tea trees scattered throughout the forests and only hand harvested during the optimum time of season (less than 3 weeks of each year) by villagers using local knowledge of each tea tree stand. Once the tea is collected it is taken back to the village where it is then processed by hand using techniques passed down by the village ancestors. (Click here to view Tea Art and Puerh Processing.)

Our Puerh is predominately sourced and collected from the ancient tea trees scattered throughout the forests, with some trees aged in excess of one thousand years. The old Puerh trees, unlike farmed tea trees, wild tea trees bear low yields due to minimal interference from humans and are only hand harvested each year by the local villagers during the optimum time of season being a very small window around three weeks each year during the first flush. Harvesting is critical in the tea quality. The best Puerh is harvested just before the spring rains known as the awakening of the insects when the first flush appears (very first new shoots or buds appear), then hand processed within each village using the skills handed down from the village ancestors that have remained unchanged for many centuries to produce the highest quality Puerh tea.

The Puerh tea we source is made from only the wild ancient tea tree leaves from, the Yi Wu Mountain within the Six Mountain region, MengHai. The best Puerh teas always come from the Six Tea Mountains region (Liu Da Cha Shan).

The ancient wild tea tree leaves and the traditional Puerh tea processing techniques used by each village, make our Puerh tea a unique tea drinking experience for regular tea drinkers and the best choice for Puerh drinkers.

The Puerh we offer is from an organically grown and hand processed tea leaves free from pesticides, from a region rich in soil and rain, without industry and pollution. Enjoy.