Naka Sun-Dried
Black Tea 2024
A sun-dried Yunnan black tea with a flavor as full and soft as velvet. Made from mature forest trees growing high in the mountains. Warm orchid and violet aromas shape a tea both rustic and sophisticated.
Back by popular demand, 2024’s Naka Sun-Dried black tea holds strong with mossy, foresty aromatics, underscored by its distinct floral qualities and notes of cantaloupe.
$18.25
- Tea Origin
- Naka Village, Mengsong Township, Menghai County, Xishuangbanna, Yunnan Province, China
- Tea Bush
- Yunnan Dayezhong (Yunnan Large Leaf Heirloom Tea Tree)
- Tea Maker
- Gong Liping and Ran Yijun
- Harvest Time
- Late March
- Plucking Standard
- One bud, two leaves
The Naka region high in the mountains of Xishuangbanna has a long history of tea production, mostly for puer tea like our Naka sheng puer from the same origin. At such high elevation, the subtropical rainforest is constantly surrounded by misty clouds and diffuse light year-round–ideal tea-growing conditions.
In the Mengsong area where this tea was sourced, the rural communities are mostly inhabited by people of the Lahu ethnic minority. They have a long tradition of planting new tea trees in the forest gardens every spring. As a result, hundreds of acres of old tea gardens are made up of a mix of mature and young trees, as well as an unusual mix of large-leaf and small-leaf tea plant varieties. Surrounded by the fruit trees, flowers, and ferns of the natural forest, the unique environment of Naka has developed a tea that possesses an warm floral aroma and a very persistent aftertaste. The trees here also yield a particularly smooth, soft flavor that has made it popular for using in black tea in recent years.
Making Yunnan Sun-Dried Black Teas
As the name suggests, Yunnan sun-dried black teas (sometimes called “sun-red”) mainly differ from traditional black teas in their drying. Instead of using an oven to quickly dry the tea after oxidation, the darkened leaves are spread thin to dry in the sun, often in a covered solarium. In the subtropical heat of Yunnan’s climate, the drying process only takes a day.
Sun-dried black tea processing is actually quite similar to the way sheng puer tea is made in Yunnan. The only difference is the extra oxidation step that all black teas go through. Unlike sheng puer and green teas, black tea is not fried to deactivate the enzymes that cause oxidation. After the fresh leaves are withered and kneaded into long twists, the tea makers gather the tea into breathable bamboo baskets and let the moist leaves darken overnight. By the time they spread the tea out in thin layers to dry in the hot noon sun the next day, the leaves have oxidized and turned “black.”
The resulting black tea has some characteristics in common with the sheng puer tea and Yunnan white tea that also originated in this province. It possesses the depth and complexity of a sheng puer with a hint of its greenness, the rich smoothness of a Yunnan white tea, as well as the rich floral, fruit, and sweet honey notes characteristic of black tea.
To try sun-dried black teas from different Yunnan origins made by the same-method, try our Youle Sun-Dried black tea from Youle Mountain.
No chemical fertilizer, pesticide, or herbicide was used in the production of this tea. Click here to read more about our promise to fair trade and the environment.
