Fengqing Ancient Tree Spring Chun Jian Raw Pu-erh Cake Tea 2012

Description

	Cup Method		Chinese Gongfu Method
	Teacup: 12oz / 355ml		Gaiwan: 3.8oz / 110ml
	203℉ / 95℃		203℉ / 95℃
	5g Tea		8g Tea
	Brewing time: 3 – 5 mins		10 steeps: rinse,10s,10s,10s,20s,20s,30s,30s,45s,45s,60s
			Rinse time is 3 seconds

There are fifteen towns in Fengqing that cultivate old tea trees, including Xiang Zhu in Xiaowan Town; Xinyuan; Dashi Village; Mengyou Village; Yongxin; and others, all in all totalling around 31,000 mu.

Mengyou in Yunnan is an area thick with wild tea trees, half wild and half cultivated. Many of the old trees here are aged to a few hundred years, while a rare few are a thousand or more. The ancient tea plantations here in Mengyou establish a special cultural landscape, giving great vitality to this place.

This pu-erh cake comes from the representative pu-erh production area, Fengqing, in the southern part of the Dianxi Longitudinal Valley. Fenging is a county in the northwest of Lincang, one of the four famous pu-erh production areas (among Xishuangbanna, Pu’er, and Baoshan), and is one of the first birthplaces of tea in the entire world. It is also famous as the hometown of Yunnan black tea in Lincang. Fengqing has a long history of planting, producing, and drinking tea, and the land features a throng of mountains webbed with rivers.

This tea is made from the Fengqing large-leaf species, a type of Yunnan large-leaf tea tree. It propagates sexually and takes the form of a super large-leaf arbor, which means that this plant can grow to over six meters tall. In 1984 the Fengqing large-leaf species was certified by the Chinese government as a national grade. It contains an abundant amount of tea polyphenol and catechins, 30.2% and 13.4% respectively, and also contains 2.9% amino acids and 3.2% caffeine.

Pu-erh tea is one of the oldest types of Chinese tea, with a history stretching back over 1,700 years to the Eastern Han Dynasty, when the tea was called Jing Cha. It is named after the town of Pu’er in Yunnan province, which was the earliest trading center for this tea. In its early history pu-erh was used as a bartering currency throughout southwest China, and there the famed Cha Ma Gu Dao – or Tea Horse Road – was built especially to transport this tea through the Himalayas to other countries and areas in Tibet.