Lancang Ancient Tea Company 2014 "Man Nong Old Arbor (曼弄古树)" Raw Puerh

Certified Organic Tea

This is one of the few premium single-origin productions which Lancang produced for a brief period in 2013-2015.

For lovers of powerful sheng with a touch of Menghai bitterness, this will deliver in spades.

An example of a big Chinese producer treating a single origin terroir tea right.  If you are already familiar with premium Western-facing or Taiwanese productions, we strongly recommend sampling to compare textbook Chinese factory processing of single-origin material.

[For a side-by-side tasting of single-origin raw and ripe, processed by the same producer, we suggest ordering the "Mannong Sheng-Shou Tasting" set from the menu.]

TERROIR

Man Nong (actually 3 villages: New, Old and Man Mai village) in Menghai is within the greater Hekai district close to the Banna/Simao border, located due west of Pasha and only 6-7 km north of Ban Pen. It is known for its abundance of large old arbor tea gardens, the largest in Yunnan, mainly cultivated by the Lahu tribe. Several years worth of spring harvested, purely older tree material from Man Nong was collected and stored to eventually press this cake in 2014. This production is certified organic by IMO.

TASTE PROFILE

Dry cake has an intense spicy and pungent fragrance penetrating the wrapper, promising great things to come. It is the fragrance of a textbook-processed raw puerh in the old style using top quality leaf; none of that sticky floral sweetness in many new productions (deliberate processing to boost fragrance). Seven years aging and this tea is just beginning to show its potential. While there's plenty of substance to reward long term aging, the flavor palette is already mostly expressed by now.  Initial steeps show typical Banna style powerful resinous and sweet herbal notes, with intense animalic fragrance and a mouthwatering rooty bitterness lingering at the edges. Thickness of soup increases together with a dried prune sweetness in later steeps alongside a mildly salty umami. The qi is enveloping and mood uplifting, not as in-your-face as the Bang Wai but very present.