Situated high in the Southwest area of Yunnan is a mountain with a reputation for producing some of the best quality Ancient Tree Pu’erh in China – Jingmai Mountain, one of the oldest tea mountain in Yunnan, China. The variety of high-altitudes, tea trees, soils, climate and processing skills are all factors that contribute to the quality of tea in the area. We visited one of the area’s tea farmer, our trustworthy partner and dearest Yunnan friends, the Yan’s Family two years ago and learned a lot about the Jingmai’s tea.
We flew a long way from Shanghai to Kunming, and then flew directly from Kunming to Jingmai Airport. After a long flight, we are warmly welcomed by Mr. Yan. But there’s still a long way to the village where they are living. After driving for few hours, we finally enter the village area full of “Forest” atmosphere.
Jingmai village is a lovely and quite village. Look at those chickens, they’re all running around the village. Most of the tea trees around the area remain as natural jungles, and all the plants and animals around help maintained a natural growing environment with biodiversity.
We are then welcomed by a lovely dinner prepared by Mrs.Yan. Have you ever tried the deep fried “Puerh Tea” Tenpura, it was made by the freshly picked Pu’erh tea leaves. I believe every tea lovers will love this dishes with no doubt.
We visited Jingmai in Spring at that time, so we luckily can catch the season of harvesting the fresh tea leaves. We followed a group of “tea lady” to the high mountain. They are actually the professional Tea leaves picker in every harvest season.
The tea trees owned by Yan’s family are all growing in natural environment without using any pesticides or fertilizers. The most concerned and often asked question for every tea buyers must be “How many years are those Tea Trees?” Mr.Yan laughed and answered , “In our perspectives in the old time, we just know the trees are very big and tall, and survived for many generations, we didn’t bother to give it a numeric figures.” There are actually two kinds of tea trees which is owned by Yan’s family , one is called the “Ecological” Tea Trees which is around 30-50 years. The other are ancient trees which is around 200-500 years old.
According to UNESCO, “In recent years, wild ancient tea trees of some 2700 years old, half wild-half cultivated ancient tea trees older than 1000 years and well preserved large ancient Pu’er tea plantations with tea trees of 100-1000 years old have been discovered in Jingmai area, making it one of the regions that practiced earliest use of tea resource and had significant influence on the tea culture of the world.”
After picking the fresh leaves, the tea leaves undergone the making process including “withering”, “kill green(Sha Qing), “Rolling” and “Sun Drying”. For the step of “Kill-Green”, it is partly processed by Machine and partly “pan-frying” manually.
After several days staying with Yan’s family in Jingmai, what is the most enjoyable part in this tour? It must be the Day and Night non-stop tea tasting sessions of Jingmai Pu’erh tea. We originally planned to visit Jingmai again this year, but unfortunately being cancelled due to the pandemic. But for now, we received the fresh harvest by Yan’s family this year. We curated this special Master Tasting Collection box – “Taste of Jingmai “.
The Tasting box included four kinds of Jingmai’s tea. Click link in below to know more!
All of them are picked from the wild tea trees ( 300+ years ) in JingMai Mountain
- Jingmai Sun-dried White Tea ( 25g )
- Jingmai Sun-dried Black Tea ( 25g )
- Jingmai Sheng Puerh / Raw Puerh ( 25g )
- ( Limited! ) Jingmai Shou Puerh / Ripe Puerh ( 15g )