Yongde Liang Guo Shui Danzhu 2026 - Sheng Pu'er (Raw)

In spring 2026 we selected three individual trees at Liang Guo Shui, a remote village in Yongde 永德 we have been sourcing from since 2019, and processed each one separately as danzhu 單株 (single-tree) sheng pu'er. This page is the tree that stood out among them.

That spring we visited Liang Guo Shui ourselves, together with master Jenny. Reaching the village takes around 3 hours by mountain road from Yongde town. The remote landscape remains largely untouched, and just by standing there many of the tea's characteristics suddenly made sense. Large dark rocks lie throughout the mountainside, both above and beneath the soil, contributing to the tea's distinctive mineral texture, while the high elevation at 1,800-1,990m, creates a cool mountain climate that helps shape its exceptionally smooth character. The texture is silky smooth, with strong sheng jin 生津 (mouthwatering effect). The taste sits on the sweet side, and the clarity is very high.

Rather than selecting a finished batch of maocha, we came all the way to choose the trees ourselves. Together with Jenny, we selected three individual teng tiao 藤條 tea trees from the same garden as our Liang Guo Shui 2025 and 2026. That garden is wild-grown and receives teng tiao pruning once a year and nothing else; the full method is described on the Liang Guo Shui page. This one stands about 5 meters tall. The best part of this batch: we picked it ourselves, together with the local aunties of the village, who came up to help after a single phone call. After picking, we drove the fresh leaves back to Jenny's family workshop and spent the entire night producing the tea together. The tree gave 12.25 kg of fresh leaves, which became 3.35 kg of maocha, and we hold the entire batch.

Once the processing was complete, we compared all three single-tree batches side by side. We had chosen the trees by size, overall health, and their position relative to the sun and to the trees around them, and it was only through this process of choosing and then comparing that we understood how many tiny factors separate one tree from the next. Even before the leaves were fully dried, the first thing that came to Nadi's mind was: the wet leaves smell like Bingdao 冰島. It may sound like a joke, but something in material this sweet, smooth and clear does recall it, and we stand behind the comparison. Among the three, this specific tree stood out immediately. It preserved everything we had admired about Liang Guo Shui since that first autumn tea in 2019, its refreshing character, remarkable smoothness, and clean expression, while offering the fullest texture and the most complete cup of the three. It is the finest Liang Guo Shui we have sourced to date, from a place almost nobody else sources from.