Enjoy this guest post from Peter Micic & Daniel Kirk:
We arrived knowing very little about Fengqing county, a seven hour bus ride southwest from Kunming, Yunnan's provincial capital. It is the heartland of black tea in the province and home to some of the most beautiful tea plantations on the earth. One of the many gifts Queen Elizabeth II received on her official China tour in 1986 was Fengqing's premium black tea. Some sixty kilometers northwest of the County is Lushi, one of the main routes along the fabled tea horse road and a major resting point and pass for caravans of horses that crossed the Blue Dragon Bridge spanning the Mekong River.
Fengqing was hosting a three-day Black Tea Festival, with lots of official events going on, including a trip to an ancient tea tree some fifty kilometers away and said to be over 3,000 years old; and a tea picking competition, but what became valuable to us, were the informal gatherings of tea traders we met in the lobby of our hotel.
We spent the first day roaming tea stores and admiring all the teas on offer--loose tea leaves, tea leaves shaped into bricks and cakes, the tea wares on display, and what teas we could sample. The harvest time for black teas is late March, early April, just before All Souls Days, and in late September, early October.
The evergreen bushes from which tea is picked can grow to impressive heights, but are generally pruned to make picking the leaves easier. Yunnan black teas lack the bitterness of many strong black teas offering a delicious sweet flavor. One of the most impressive black teas we sampled on the first day was ''China Red.' This tea was the Rolls Royce of black teas, but that is not to say that other black teas we sampled were any less than average or mediocre. 'China Red,' did however, take our breath away.
The difference between Yunnan black teas and other Chinese black teas is the amount of fine leaf buds or 'golden tips' in the dried tea. There are loose or 'broken' teas with very few golden buds and is generally bitter. There are also teas that have more golden buds and dark tea leaves, and a tea called Yunnan Pure Gold, which only contains the golden tips or buds. The leaves of this tea are a brownish-orange, but become reddish brown after being brewed.
Around dusk on our first day, we took a taxi to a nearby village winding up mountain roads and crisscrossing scores of terraced tea fields. Our driver, a 28- year old woman, took us to an organic tea plant. The aroma of freshly-picked tea leaves was intoxicating.
There are four stages in processing black tea: withering, rolling, fermentation and drying. The leaves can be withered or dried under the sun but here the process was achieved by thinly spreading the leaves in troughs for up to eighteen hours depending on the condition of the leaves.
We took early morning hikes through tea fields scattered across hills and mountains. Rows of terraced geometry, tea carved out of hills, a natural history museum of tea, and two guys climbing a winding dirt path in quiet tribute.
We had planned to visit the 3,000 year old ancient tea tree, but after driving for less than half an hour and climbing elevations close to 1,500 meters high, there was a fork in the road, and my instincts said turn left. We got out of the taxi and walked for about five minutes before we stumbled across mountains of tea trees that caught us by surprise. The sheer scale of the tea hills was breathtaking, a valley of leaves bathed in the soft morning light.
Returning to our hotel that afternoon, we met several tea traders in the lobby. I started talking about the ancient tea tree, and mentioned that I had never heard or seen a tree that to my mind was measured not in centuries but eons.
The hotel owner showed me a small plastic bag of tea. It was loose fermented black purer tea. The leaves were picked from the 3,000 year old ancient tea tree in 2006. 'If you think what you have sampled so far is mind-blowing', said a tea trader from central China, 'then you should try this tea. I was so taken away by it, I wrote a poem on my mobile phone extolling its virtues and then texted it to all of my friends. ' Seeing the relationship between work and the renewal of friendships among these tea trader poets was marvelous. Quite unexpectedly, we received an invitation to join our newly found 'tea brothers' in 2013, at the same hotel, where we would revisit friendships and drink lots of tea.
Peter and Daniel are based in Kunming, the capital of Yunnan province. They spend much of their time traveling across parts of southwest Yunnan sourcing and drinking tea.
©2012 Peter Micic/Daniel Kirk
Fengqing was hosting a three-day Black Tea Festival, with lots of official events going on, including a trip to an ancient tea tree some fifty kilometers away and said to be over 3,000 years old; and a tea picking competition, but what became valuable to us, were the informal gatherings of tea traders we met in the lobby of our hotel.
We spent the first day roaming tea stores and admiring all the teas on offer--loose tea leaves, tea leaves shaped into bricks and cakes, the tea wares on display, and what teas we could sample. The harvest time for black teas is late March, early April, just before All Souls Days, and in late September, early October.
The evergreen bushes from which tea is picked can grow to impressive heights, but are generally pruned to make picking the leaves easier. Yunnan black teas lack the bitterness of many strong black teas offering a delicious sweet flavor. One of the most impressive black teas we sampled on the first day was ''China Red.' This tea was the Rolls Royce of black teas, but that is not to say that other black teas we sampled were any less than average or mediocre. 'China Red,' did however, take our breath away.The difference between Yunnan black teas and other Chinese black teas is the amount of fine leaf buds or 'golden tips' in the dried tea. There are loose or 'broken' teas with very few golden buds and is generally bitter. There are also teas that have more golden buds and dark tea leaves, and a tea called Yunnan Pure Gold, which only contains the golden tips or buds. The leaves of this tea are a brownish-orange, but become reddish brown after being brewed.
Around dusk on our first day, we took a taxi to a nearby village winding up mountain roads and crisscrossing scores of terraced tea fields. Our driver, a 28- year old woman, took us to an organic tea plant. The aroma of freshly-picked tea leaves was intoxicating.
There are four stages in processing black tea: withering, rolling, fermentation and drying. The leaves can be withered or dried under the sun but here the process was achieved by thinly spreading the leaves in troughs for up to eighteen hours depending on the condition of the leaves.
We took early morning hikes through tea fields scattered across hills and mountains. Rows of terraced geometry, tea carved out of hills, a natural history museum of tea, and two guys climbing a winding dirt path in quiet tribute.
We had planned to visit the 3,000 year old ancient tea tree, but after driving for less than half an hour and climbing elevations close to 1,500 meters high, there was a fork in the road, and my instincts said turn left. We got out of the taxi and walked for about five minutes before we stumbled across mountains of tea trees that caught us by surprise. The sheer scale of the tea hills was breathtaking, a valley of leaves bathed in the soft morning light.
Returning to our hotel that afternoon, we met several tea traders in the lobby. I started talking about the ancient tea tree, and mentioned that I had never heard or seen a tree that to my mind was measured not in centuries but eons.
The hotel owner showed me a small plastic bag of tea. It was loose fermented black purer tea. The leaves were picked from the 3,000 year old ancient tea tree in 2006. 'If you think what you have sampled so far is mind-blowing', said a tea trader from central China, 'then you should try this tea. I was so taken away by it, I wrote a poem on my mobile phone extolling its virtues and then texted it to all of my friends. ' Seeing the relationship between work and the renewal of friendships among these tea trader poets was marvelous. Quite unexpectedly, we received an invitation to join our newly found 'tea brothers' in 2013, at the same hotel, where we would revisit friendships and drink lots of tea.
Text and Photos © 2012 Peter Micic/Daniel Kirk
Peter and Daniel are based in Kunming, the capital of Yunnan province. They spend much of their time traveling across parts of southwest Yunnan sourcing and drinking tea.
