At a daily drinker price, meet the grade of tea that too often gets passed off as gushu.

With the ghost of each sip quickly coming back on the after-breath providing dimension found almost exclusively in old arbor tea, it's not surprising that excellent 大树 Dashu "big tree" grade sheng pu'er can often be passed off as or blended in 古树 Gushu "ancient tree" teas.  With a bit more sass and spunk than ancient tree tea right out of the gate, what this Dashu tea lacks in mellowness, patience + longevity, as well as depth of responsiveness in the mid session, it makes up for in personality in spades; a sprightly delivery of the Nannuo Mountain terroir characteristics.

In the late 1930s a project was undertaken to seed-propagate over 300 acres of new tea plantations in the Nannuo Mountains. While much of it was eventually replaced with other crops over the decades, a few of these original tracts remain outside of  Xiangyang Village right down the road to Dá É's factory that she built in 2019.

photo taken from a vista adjacent to Dá É dashu gardens

During their younger years, these tea gardens were annually pruned in the late spring to manage their height at a more harvestable level, the treatment that typical "tabletop" 台地茶 taidi cha plantation bushes get.  Since then they have been left to grow, unpruned and unmanaged by conventional agrochemicals.  This has become a common treatment that we see implemented in recent years that is known as 生态 shengtai or ecological tea farming.  At almost 90 years old, this is a mature shengtai garden.

Dá É only owns less than two acres of these gardens (10 亩).  It doesn't produce much per season, and therefore she treats this garden as a source for experimental materials.  Fortunately for us, she has expressed a willingness to be open to suggestions, and we will begin commissioning special projects soon.  Let's start with this solid, first spring harvest, raw pu'er as a good standard to see what this micro-arbor has to offer.