Year of the Snake 2025 Spring Yiwu Raw Puer
Price range: $3.50 through $245.00
- Description
- About the Land
- How to Brew (Dragon Balls)
- Additional information
- Reviews (0)
Description
A tea you can set your watch to, this tea represents what Yiwu sheng is all about, with a great fragrance, soft character and gentle sweetness.
Since we press this tea each year, it creates an excellent opportunity for vertical comparison of the same material year on year, going all the way back to the Year of the Monkey (2016). While the core of each pressing remains the same, there are inevitable differences due to varying weather from one spring to the next.
The weather this year bucked the recent trend of ultra-dry springs in Yunnan, with periods of rain interspersed throughout the season. As a result, this year’s tea is much more balanced, with a fragrance forward profile and noticeable sugar-sweetness.
Our experience storing this tea over the last 10+ years has been the development of even more noticeable honey and fruit notes within 3-5 years. Based on this experience and feedback from customers, we’re confident in this tea for long-term storage.
In previous years (2017-2018) we tested this tea against the EU Maximum Residue Limit (MRL) of 191 and 440+ pesticides, both passing with ease. Although this year’s tea has not been tested, the tea is from the same land and our confidence in this tea and relationship with the farmer remains strong. If you would like a copy of the lab results for previous years, please contact us.
This year’s wrapper features artwork by a most excellent Zurich based artist and illustrator, Alice Hoffman. Make sure to check out her work here, and follow her on Instagram.
For a comparison of the same tea processed different, try our 2025 White Snake and Black Snake.
$0.11/gram
Region: Yiwu, Xishuangbanna Prefecture
Picking Period: March 19-27, 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.
Many of our samples for spring 2025 are in dragon ball form. While these balls will perform the same as the cake, they can be slightly trickier to brew. Here’s how we do it:
Additional information
| Weight | N/A |
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