Yiwushan (Yiwu Mountain)

Sheng Puer Cake 357g 2004

$133.00 Original price was: $133.00.$106.40Current price is: $106.40.

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Yiwushan (Yiwu Mountain) 2004 quantity

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Tea Origin

Yiwushan, Mengla County, Xishuangbanna, Yunnan Province, China

Tea Bush

Yunnan Dayezhong (Yunnan Large Leaf Heirloom Tea Tree)

Harvest Time

April

Plucking Standard

One bud, two leaves

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This old-style sheng puer was made in Yiwu back before the puer boom, when maocha was collected from all the local villages and then compressed into cakes, rather than processed in each village as micro-origins.

After aging for a time in its native climate of Yiwu, this tea was later moved into dryer storage in Kunming.

Spring harvest leaves from Yiwu’s forest tea trees make for a flavor that is persistent and full without being overpowering.

A historic puer tea mountain origin in Yiwushan

Yiwushan (Yiwu Mountain) was once one of Yunnan’s historic six famous tea mountains and a major stop on the iconic Tea Horse Road puer trade corridor. It became a place to gather puer maocha from all six mountains in the area. Even today Yiwu remains a major point of export for puer tea, since it lies merely 30 kilometers from the border of Laos to the south. This has been highly convenient for getting tea to buyers in Vietnam and Thailand.

As a result of the ongoing drought in Yunnan, Yiwu’s old forest tea trees are yielding slower and slower. Once, their leaves could be plucked every two weeks. Now, however, tea makers can only harvest from them once every few months, making true old-growth Yiwu tea ever more rare.

A long tradition of collaborative tea-making

Many tea-making families in Yiwu have been in the trade for generations. Yiwu residents today are generally part of the Yi and Yao ethnic minorities, as well as the descendants of Han majority immigrants.

Back in the 1700s during the Qing Dynasty, many Han people emigrated from Yunnan’s urban Shi’ping County to the remote peaks of Yiwu for the express purpose of setting up tea business with the people already living there. As these Han immigrants had business connections back in the city and greater access to education, they were able to offer a business partnership to the tea families of Yiwushan to market tea from their high-quality trees. They were also able to build tea factories there and brought knowledge of more skillful sheng puer processing techniques. With the long history of deep mutual respect and collaboration between these peoples, they have managed to grow a booming tea business and strong relationships that have lasted for generations now.