Seeds of Virtue 2017

For Mr. Tang, crafting beautiful teas from a clean and balanced ecosystem is sacred. He is deeply dedicated to the craft of traditional tea making; this philosophy guides everything he does, and is embedded in every tea he makes. Alongside being an expression of their terroir, his teas are distinctly peaceful and feel extremely clear, just as he feels as a person.

We have been asking Mr. Tang for a pu'erh ripe for many years, but making this fermented tea requires a production facility where the humidity and temperature can be controlled. Mr. Tang did not have access to a facility like this until very recently. In 2017, his good friend Qing Shui invited him to bring some of his high quality pu'erh raw to ripen at the Jinggu Tea Factory.

Mr. Tang selected the leaves of 100 year old tea trees from Jinggu and blended them with tea leaves from Bulang Mountain. His thought was to combine the roundness and sweetness of old tea trees from Jinggu with the depth and intensity of tea from Bulang.

The tea leaves were harvested in the Spring of 2017 and fermentation started later that year, lasting for 6 months. The tea was then air-dried and aged until 2020, before being pressed into cakes.

Mr. Tang named his first pu'erh ripe "Shu Zi," a phrase taken from the philosophical works of the ancient Chinese philosopher, Chuang Tzu (Zhuang Zi). Its name means, "with deep plowing and careful and repeated weeding of the seed, my harvests were rich and abundant." In this way, Mr. Tang dedicated this tea to a meticulous, fastidious, and honest approach to farming.

This is one of our favourite pu'erh ripes. It has the rare quality of maintaining a light, almost refreshing mouthfeel, while still being earthy and soothing. It's a tea that we would drink everyday in the winter, when we want something grounding and close to the earth, but not too heavy in texture.