2016 Bing Dao Taidi Shu Bing Cha

Dark shu puerh leaves pressed into dark brown 100 g cakes. Chestnut-brown infusion of soft creamy fruit taste with a distinctive component of walnuts and moist autumn forest, with a pleasant minerality in the aftertaste.
Origin: Bing Dao Village, Shuangjiang District, Lincang Prefecture, Yunnan Province, China
Brewing recommendations: 4–5 g of tea per 100 ml of boiling water, steep for 20, 15, 10… seconds. This tea is ideally prepared in a miniature teapot, shiboridashi or zhong and cup(s) of the same volume so that the entire content could be strained at once.

Taidi refers to tea trees grown on plantations, which in the case of Yunnan teas is more than 80 % of production. These are young tea trees around the age of twenty years grown on tea plantations around the village of Bing Dao, that spread at an altitude of about 1800 m. Picked in the second spring harvest in 2016 and subsequently processed and stored in Menghai. Bing Dao Village is one of the northernmost tea-growing places in Yunnan. This, together with the higher location of the plantations, guarantees a relatively cool climate, which gives the teas from this area a unique sweet-spicy aroma.

What is Shu-puerh?
The attempt to speed up the process of ripening of pu-erhs led to the discovery of the Wò Dūi method (渥堆, wet piling), which was first used in the early seventies in the famous plants Menghai and Kunming and that has spread throughout the whole region and become very popular. It is a controlled enhancement and extension of all microbial processes in the leaf. The Mao Cha tea leaves are made wet again, piled on top of each other, and covered by waterproof sheets under which they ripen for 40 to 60 days. Then they are pressed, similarly as Sheng Puerhs, or dried and sold as loose-leaf tea. Although the original idea that led to the production of Shu Puerh was to replace the very long ripening process of the green variant, it basically led to the discovery of a brand new type of tea, which won its place in the tea market. After complete drying or pressing also Shu Puerhs ripen and gain quality with time.

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