Changning Yesheng sheng maocha – old trees from Taliensis variety

Changning – city in Baoshan municipality
Yesheng – wild
sheng – Green type puerh
maocha – loose, i.e. in this case pressed tea

The city of Changning is located in the Baoshan region of Yunnan province, south of the Langcang River. When we were exploring this area we have came across dozens of big tea trees with massive trunks which are of different species then Camellia sinensis. It is asigned as Dalizhong 大理种 – Camellia Taliensis.  This can be observed by the morphology, as well as the oxidative and sensoric properties of the leaves. Local farmers often call it yesheng 野生 – wild. In 2017 when I led my first expedition to Yunnan (with Michal Kabilka and Robert Krolikowsky) we were exploring these Taliensis tea trees in Mangshui 漭水 thanks to our tea farmer friend Yu Hongwen. We picked some leaves and by the time we got back from harvesting from mountains, our leaves were too wilted that we did not achieve the desired result. According to my observation, I have found that leaves from C.talienisis oxidize more quickly then leaves from Camellia sinensis. That clarifies why we can see mostly black Yesheng hong 野生红 rather than Yesheng shengpu 野生生普 – the sun dried puer. This tea I obtained from a farmer from Changning and is one of the good precessed sun dried green puer loose leaf tea. Due to it’s slight oxidative character and it’s sweet taste notes with floral background it resembles wulong type of tea, but the distinct elder-flower aftertaste reveals that it is C.taliensis.