Cultivar: Wild puerh trees over 500 years old

Harvested by hand for the second time: Spring 2018

Origin: remote forest with rocky ground in Yunnan, China

Process: raw, sun dried, pressed by hand as marbles

Weight of a marble: 7 grams minimum

Taiwanese order. These old, wild puerh trees have been discovered by a puerh maker from the Hanni tribe thanks to his local contacts. He searched for these trees, because of the high prices that puerh made of old trees (gu shu) fetch, and because famous mountains (ex: lao Banzhang) are over exploited and are progressively loosing their wild character. This fresh raw puerh is extremely powerful. It has this typical ku wei, bitter taste that forms the backbone of great puerhs. But I find it amazingly smooth and long lasting. It tastes very pure in the mouth. And it turns to sweetness like a bubble gum, after a while. The marbles were pressed by hand and this means that they are quite easy to flake, because their compression isn't too strong. This size and shape is now standard for puerh samples in Yunnan. For a small teapot or gaiwan, I recommend flaking and only use a third or less of such a marble. It's only with a big teapot that you should consider using a whole marble!