China Trip 2026: Forest Tea
When you picture a tea farm, you may conjure up an image of sprawling estates in Darjeeling or Assam in India, or shaded gardens in Japan. You might imagine row after row of neatly spaced bushes, carefully trimmed, no more than waist high. You might not think of a forest.
In Yunnan, authentic Pu-erh teas are harvested, not from shrubs and bushes, but from trees. Trees with thick trunks and gnarled branches that can reach 80 feet high. The varietal of tea plant in Yunnan is known as Da Ye, "big leaf" - or, as it is called in the English-speaking tea world, assamica. The trees are grown from seed, rather than the cuttings used to clone tea bushes on plantations. The resulting tea is unlike others, making Pu-erh tea it's own special category.
In the mountain forests of Yunnan, tea trees grow wild, in the mix with other trees, flowers, and all forms of life. For the makers of forest tea, trees are grouped by age, with many being over 100 years old. Tea from old trees is often called Gu Shu. "old tree" or "ancient tree". Forest tea has a complex and layered flavor, but more than that, it brings a textural component, as well as the ever elusive Cha Qi, "tea energy".
The tea forests of Yunnan have been cultivated and cared for over thousands of years by a variety of ethnic minorities in China, often referred to locally as indigenous tribes. We met with Ah Tu in Banpo Village on Nannuo mountain. A member of the Hani tribe, his family have been tea farmers for generations. He took us on a walk through his family's section of the forest before sitting down to tea with us.
Ah Tu and his family plant the trees, care for them, and harvest the leaves. They also produce the tea - sorting, withering, sha qing ("kill green"), rolling, and finally sun-drying. They create three different "grades" of tea. The top is Dan Shu, "single tree", where the entire batch is made from leaves harvested from a single tea tree. The next is made primarily from the older trees, and the third grade is a "mixed harvest" of the remaining leaves.
Ah Tu sees himself primarily as a tea farmer. He does not package, market and sell the tea to consumers. After tasting his 2026 harvest, we knew right away we wanted to carry them in the shop. In additional to being wonderful tea, it was an opportunity for us to commemorate the joining of Callisto Tea House and Bana Tea Company, by having tea cakes specially pressed to our specifications, with our own design. We bought out Ah Tu's entire harvest. This will be tea to treasure for years to come.
