MIST & MEMORY | Dragon Bamboo Aged, 2006 Raw Pu Er

Signature Bulang: dark leaf, assertive bitterness, thick liquor, resinous forest depth, and 'hui gan' (returning sweetness) that feels less like sugar than like mountain air clearing after the rain. 

Our old friend Zhang Tao supervised and participated in the production of these two massive tea containers (~ 13kg and 15kg respectively) in 2006. The tea was initially stored in Guangdong and was transferred to Vancouver in 2014, where it has been kept in dry storage. 

The brew still feels very powerful (i.e. it needs a few more years to become mellow), but the leaves have noticeably turned from dark green to golden brown; it is clearly not a young tea anymore.

When drinking this tea, give yourself some time for the sweet mouthfeel to develop. We also suggest drinking it early in the day, as the uplifting energy of these ancient tree leaves is still quite powerful.  

Origin:   Bulang Shan (Yunnan)

Production:  March 2006

Brewing recommendation: 6g tea / 110g water @ 95°C, 15", >15 steeps

Rinse once or twice before drinking; bamboo is not an airtight (and dust proof) container.

Origin: Bulang Mountain

Bulang Shan, in Menghai County, Xishuangbanna, Yunnan, near the China–Myanmar border, is a high-relief pu’er tea landscape centred around roughly 21.58° N, 100.41° E, where subtropical monsoon climate, forest cover, mist, and elevations from about 535 to 2,082 metres shape some of China’s most powerful large-leaf teas. Its tea gardens lie among rivers of the Lancang–Mekong system, evergreen and seasonal tropical forests, and acidic, well-drained mountain soils enriched by organic matter from shaded old-growth and semi-forested gardens. Long associated with the Bulang people, one of the region’s early tea-cultivating communities, the mountain is known for ancient tea-tree populations and famous villages such as Lao Banzhang, Xin Banzhang, Lao Man’e, and Manxinlong. Its teas are usually made from Yunnan large-leaf material into sun-dried maocha for raw or ripe pu’er, with a signature profile of dense liquor, strong bitterness, deep forest aromatics, and a persistent returning sweetness that reflects Bulang Shan’s humid, mineral, forested borderland terroir.