2026 Goddess of Mercy Peak Puerh

FatBat Private Pressing Gushu Raw Puerh

观音山 倚邦 古树

A deeply obscure grove at the edge of Yibang, just bordering Man Zhuan. The Goddess of Mercy Peak (Guan Yin Shan) was only uncovered in 2020 by several prominent Chinese collectors. Each year, this tea has been sold quickly on the private market due to minuscule quantities. This year we have secured a full mixed gushu picking from this grove, courtesy of our good friend in Man Zhuan, Farmer Zhang Lan (who also personally picks many of our other Guoyoulin state forest teas).

The trees growing here are a combination of small and medium-leaved varietals, very representative of Yibang and eastern Man Zhuan mountains. This is a classic Guoyoulin (protected state forest) style tea from the deep jungle – a powerful wild character that is complex and requires patience to fully unravel. A clear silken soup, powerful high floral fragrance. The sweetness is hidden partly behind a deep green character of crushed ferns, wet moss and soaked wood. A vanilla-custard nature emerges in late steeps as sweetness increases. A noble experience of the deep jungle.

TASTING NOTES

First steeps are clear and light, with a powerfully sweet aroma at the bottom of the fairness cup. High-pitched white pungent florals with a silky character, like a cream of jasmine flower. Strong sweetness is present, but heavily overlaid by the damp greenness of jungle mosses and exotic ferns. Powerful sense of the wild jungle. A character of damp dark wood-bark lies at the core -- this is youthful tannin that will age into a luscious body in a few years. An entrancing deep forest tea with excellent throat texture and luxurious mouthfeel, that is hinting at what it could become with a year or two of maturation.

TERROIR

Despite its name, Guan Yin Shan is not exactly a mountain, but rather a grove named after the Goddess of Mercy “Guan Yin”, a beloved deity in Chinese folklore. This mountainous micro-region is rarely mentioned as it sits in a transitional area between Yibang and Man Zhuan territories. It has been long known as a harvest ground for valuable morels, and we were told that the small ancient tea tree grove here was inadvertently discovered by mushroom pickers some 5-6 years ago. The tea trees are very few in number, but the ecology is pristine and truly wild, with the trees rarely picked until recent years (and even so, only once a year). An interesting terroir which yields tea that has both the noble floral delicacy of Yibang, alongside the powerful sweetness of Man Zhuan.