DETAILED TASTING NOTES

Warm Leaf Smell: yoghurt, gooseberry
Wet Leaf Smell: lilac, lemon curd
Texture Feel: thick and oily
Taste: zesty pomelo and guava, herbaceous tonic water, mixed flowers, Altai herbs
Finish Feel: cooling, intense juicy huigan (returning sweetness), quite active development in the mouth, vaporous
Empty Cup Smell: custard cream
Aftertaste: fig leaf
Body Feel: clear head, energised

Category: Sheng (Raw) Pu'Erh Tea
Native Name: 春攸乐大树生普洱
Harvest: 2025 Spring
Origin: YouLe (Jinuo) Mountain, Xishuangbanna, Yunnan province, China
Cultivar: Dayezhong (Big leaf)
Altitude: 700–900m

Floral and zesty with a thick, oily texture and an intense juicy huigan (returning sweetness).
As for how this tea ended up with us: the producer simply shipped a kilo "sample" without a word of warning. It could have been an awkward situation. Fortunately, the tea was fantastic, as everything I have tried from him has been, and we of course settled the bill once we realised what had arrived.

GongFu brewing:
95°C
6g /100ml
1st infusion: 10sec, next: +5sec/infusion
11 infusions

Last Hunter comes from Youle (Jinuo) mountain in Xishuangbanna, one of the six famous tea mountains that supplied imperial courts for centuries. Nestled between the Yiwu and Menghai production areas, the mountain is covered in humid tropical forest shared with elephants, wild buffalo and monkeys. It is also the territory of the Youle (Jinuo) people, the last of China's 56 officially recognised ethnic minority groups to be identified, living almost exclusively on this mountain.

In winter 2024, we had the chance to meet one: a man who guided us through the jungle casually listing the countless ways local wildlife and flora could kill us. He turned out to be the last hunter of his lineage — a practice abandoned after China began restricting hunting in the late 1990s. He welcomed us into his home in Baduo village with remarkable generosity and charisma, never stopping surprising us. That is where we discovered he also tends an heirloom plantation and produces a small amount of tea each spring. Some trees in his plantation are around 800 years old.