Yiwu 易武

Yiwu is a famous tea area in eastern Xishuangbanna, Yunnan. According to tales and legends, Yiwu tea originated way back in the Three Kingdoms Period. In writing, Yiwu tea was first mentioned in the Ming Dynasty. Later, in the Qing Dynasty, it was regarded as one of the "Six Great Tea Mountains" 六大茶山 that supplied tribute tea to the imperial court. Nowadays, these mountains no longer supply the court, but they still carry their cultural significance with their name. Other than Yiwu, the Six also include: Yibang 倚邦, Youle 攸樂, Mangzhi 莽枝, Manzhuan 蠻磚, Gedeng 革登.

Today, these mountains are usually referred to as the "Ancient Six Tea Mountains" that sit east of the Lancang River, in order to distinguish them from the "New Six Tea Mountains" sitting west of the river. In the late Qing and Republican periods, the eastern mountains suffered repeated decline through fires, epidemics, and warfare. Meanwhile, the western mountains were less affected by these events, and in the twentieth century they rose in prominence through merchant expansion, administrative change, and later state-owned factory development in places like Menghai. The 1957 Xishuangbanna field survey helped formalize the classification of the mountains into the Ancient Six and the New Six.

For us, Yiwu area was the first among the Ancient Six to visit and source from, already in 2018. The work started experimentally: in those early years we aged Yiwu samples the same way we aged Lincang material. We kept samples for two years so we could compare vintages and correct inexperienced early decisions, among them selling our entire 2022 batch of gushu 古樹 Mahei instead of holding it, which we still regret. That shaped how we manage our aging stock, and how we grew up as traders.

Getting to know the Yiwu area through the years hasn't been an easy task. It is geographically difficult to access, which has helped preserve its wild environment, since the more accessible mountains were the first to become over-picked when Chinese tea rose in global popularity. As we found out, the best batches are often kept by farmers and tea makers for their own use and their closest circle, and the tea on the market, especially the global one, is often made of blends with a less unique character than the micro-batches consumed locally. There is nothing unusual in that: it is how most tea regions behave when the local market knows the material well, unlike the famous green teas made almost entirely for export. That's why we had to cultivate personal, long-term trading relationships with Yiwu farmers, not only to develop our tasting and appreciating skills, but to establish our brand's integrity and reputation in the local market. Those years are what brought us inside that circle.

That access is what led us to Cha Wang Di 茶王地, a named plot inside Gua Feng Zhai, within the state-owned forest, guo you lin 國有林. Gua Feng Zhai is not sourced as one village: its gardens are known by individual land parts, di kuai 地塊, and You Jia Bian Cha, Baishahe, Lan Shi Di, Cha Wang Di and Hei Shui Liangzi each carry their own terrain and ecology. Our Yiwu Gua Feng Zhai Cha Wang Di 2026 Sheng Pu'er comes from that one plot.

Our work on the Yiwu selection was enhanced by Pink's formal education as a Certified Pu'er Tea Tasting Graduator by the Chinese government, which added an academic-scientific angle to our approach to understanding pu'er tea even better. We now understand that one of the biggest problems in the global industry these days is the diverse aging conditions that have not yet been studied in sufficient depth. Many drinkers buy fresh pu'er tea, especially young freshly pressed tea cakes that have not yet matured in precise dedicated aging conditions, with the intention to age it by themselves, in their own home conditions; but these conditions are usually not carefully monitored, and the result does not merely disappoint. It damages the tea for good. A high-end pu'er is bought for what the aging is meant to produce, not for how the leaves perform now. Our goal in this regard is to maximize the aging potential of each batch, and be able to supply ready-to-drink pu'er teas that meet their actual market value, especially for those drinkers who don't have a fully equipped climate control to do so.

That's why we currently prioritize aging over immediate sales, with great resources put into our aging warehouse in Xiamen, in order to keep track of the best precise parameters for aging. We keep over 90% of our pu'er tea selection unreleased, and continue experimenting and comparing storage methods side by side, including wet and dry storage. The slow, comparative approach is how we understand which Yiwu batches are meant to be tasted years from now rather than today, and what their future profile is likely to be.

Some of that patience goes to batches we never bought. We have sampled Mahei every spring for four years, returning to the older samples as they age; when gaogan 高桿 prices there climbed, we moved to other mountains at the last minute and kept sampling anyway. In late March 2024, during the picking, we tasted a first rough gaogan batch from Tian Men Shan, above Mabo village 馬叭村 near the Laos border, and bought several tens of kilograms. Within weeks the name was the talk of the Chinese trade and the price went vertical. When we returned in 2025, the price was higher and the gaogan batches we were offered no longer matched what we had bought in 2024. We tasted blind instead, and chose a batch from younger gushu trees in the same garden.