DETAILED TASTING NOTES

Warm Leaf Smell: perfumed and a bit sour, fermented lemons, lavender
Wet Leaf Smell: lemon vanilla custard, lemon thyme
Texture Feel: medium thick, brothy
Taste: tangy wood sorrel, lemon thyme, sauerkraut, a bit soapy (somehow in a good way), rhubarb yoghurt, kiwi
Finish Feel: refreshingly cooling, and ever-increasingly sweet and juicy and aromatic, crazy huigan (returning sweetness) - like lemon sorbet
Empty Cup Smell: peach candy
Aftertaste: sour lemon drops
Body Feel: light, settled, refreshed

Category: Sour Tea - Other Tea (Some would say Sheng)
Native Name: 景迈酸茶
Harvest: 2024 Spring
Origin: Nuogang ancient forest, Jingmai mountain, Lancang Lahu autonomous county, PuErh city (Simao), Yunnan province, China
Cultivar: Dayezhong (Big leaf)
Altitude: 1500–1650m

This is one of the most unusual teas I have come across, and pretty much impossible to find outside of very specific villages in Yunnan. Despite excellent body and aroma, what keeps me coming back is the finish. The light sourness translates into an almost unmatched sweetness that builds and persists in your mouth long after the last sip, that cooling huigan (returning sweetness) is just next level.
 
I personally prefer drinking it fresh, though I have been observing how a 2023 batch from my private collection ages, and both are excellent. Like any puerh, this tea will change over time, and I think that's worth exploring further. If you are looking for something genuinely new, give it a try.

Gongfu brewing:
95°C
6g /100ml
1st infusion: 10sec, next: +3sec/infusion
10 infusions

Jingmai mountain, Yunnan, is home to some of the largest ancient tea forests in the world, five of them, covering approximately 1,180 hectares. These are not monocultures but complete living ecosystems, within which tea trees have been growing for centuries. We have visited producers across many villages on the mountain and sourced from two that stood out to us, both from Nuogang, also the best-preserved Dai ethnic village in Jingmai.
 
This tea comes from the second producer we found there: a quiet young man gradually taking over his parents' gardens in the Nuogang forest. His trees range from 50 years, young for Yunnan, to gushu (ancient trees), with a trunk of around 70cm circumference, probably 300 years or more. He harvested old and young trees together which is called huncai (mixed picking).
 
Suancha (sour tea) is something we have only encountered in Nuogang so far. Our producer told us he adapted a recipe from the Bulang people of a neighbouring village, who traditionally pound sour tea with salt, garlic and chilli and serve it with rice. Yes, like a condiment, a bit like sauerkraut. Seems like he twisted the recipe into something you drink. The process follows standard raw puerh steps: withering, rolling… but instead of being sun-dried at the end, the leaves are packed into bamboo tubes or clay jars, nothing added, and left to ferment anaerobically for one season to a year. They are then taken out and sun-dried.