The Chosen One 2025 Spring Banpen Raw Puer
$28.00 – $740.00
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- About the Land
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Description
Standing out from the crowd, this tea is pressed entirely from selected ancient trees in a sub-region of Banpen, successfully highlighting the best qualities of the area while retaining the complexity and depth of the land.
It’s not hard to find bitter and aggressive teas in the Banpen-Banzhang-Laomane stretch. The trick is finding one that is balanced, but also with an intriguing personality. For us and for this year, this was that tea.
As expected, there is some pleasant bitterness, but this tea is far from a one trick pony. The fragrance and flavour in the soup are enticing, and the mouthfeel quite full and layered, all with minimal roughness/astringency compared to other Banpen gushu. The huigan is quick to show up and there is a nice cooling sensation in the throat, making this a very comfortable tea to drink.
Unsurprisingly, this tea has a strong energy and body feeling. Everyone’s physiology and experience of this will be different, but for us it’s more of a powerful hug that wraps around you and grounds you.
As always with teas of this level, we recommend this for more experienced drinkers to enjoy over extended sessions, as some nuances may be lost on those new to puer. This is a special tea that deserves time and focused attention when brewing.
$1.65/gram
Region: Banpen, Xishuangbanna Prefecture
Picking Period: April 1-5, 2025
As we highlight each year, a big draw with this tea is the quality of material used. The trees were planted by this farmer’s family over 45 years ago, at which point plantation style terraces were more common. However, since the 2000s, these trees have been converted to fangyang (放养, or “left to grow”). This means no pesticides, weed killer, pruning, fertilizers or over-picking.
While this style of farming isn’t ideal for producing maximum output, it does contribute to much higher quality tea than neighboring taidi productions, which adhere to conventional farming methods. The other downside is that the trees left to grow taller on their own tend to compete for space and may require relocation, which isn’t always successful. Additionally, manual weeding is a laborious task that takes at least a month each year to complete. Picking tall trees, even if they’re only middle-aged, is also a more difficult task than pruned bushes.
But if we had our way, every tea would be like this. The deeper roots and more concentrated yield produce a tea richer in fragrance and flavour than typical plantation productions in this price range. And of course, all this without the presence of any pesticides or harmful substances.
Additional information
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