It's All About Tea — ancient tea

In this blog post, we continue our exploration of non-native Chinese teas produced in Asia.

Our destination is Laos - a country on the crossroad between China (more specifically, Yunnan), Vietnam, and Burma, among others. Nestled in the area known as the cradle of tea origin, Laos is a country with ancient tea heritage, pristine forests, and age-old tea trees. Let's explore its merits and discover the Laos tea that increasingly draws the interest of tea drinkers by the year. (Read More)

Tibetan black tea is made from more mature tea leaves. The picking standard for it includes a bud and up to five leaves. Modern days processing includes typical steps for producing Hei Cha – fixing, rolling, wet piling (Wo Dui – 渥堆), drying, steaming, pressing, and finally, aging. While the processing changed with time, some believe it is namely Tibetan tea that precedes all other types of Hei Cha and served as a model for all subsequent Hei Cha production and processing in other areas of China. 

Tibetan tea processing includes 5 stages and a total of 32 processing steps. The aging period alone requires a minimum of 6 months. Some claim its production process is the most intricate and time-consuming among all tea types. (Read more)

In today's post we will discus the origins of tea in China and ancient Chinese tea drinking methods. From 2737 BCE and all the way up to modern times, let's take a look at how tea culture transformed. (Read more)

In the modern-day tea world, “wild tea trees” are a huge debate. There has been an increasing number of tea vendors that use the mystic appeal of wild tea trees as a marketing ploy. Thus more tea enthusiasts start to believe that these teas are not exactly authentic.  

The majority of ancient tea trees grown in China’s Yunnan province. Yes, the pu-erh region! 

Since they are not cultivated, they can stretch anywhere from 5 up to 10 meters in height, which makes the tea leaves challenging to harvest. (Read more)