Of Time and the Mountains
The new face of old-growth teas
by Steven Krolak

At the dawn of the eighth century, the ancestors of Charlemagne ruled France, the first poem in the English language had yet to be written, and the Mayans had begun to build a great city that would be known as Uxmal.

Around that same time, on a hillside in Xishuangbanna in the Chinese province of Yunnan, a tea tree was planted by people whose names have long since vanished into the mists that cloak the forest slopes. As that tree grew, it was nurtured by generations of local villagers who not only used its leaves for medicine and tea but revered it for spiritual purposes. Their religion forbade them from harming the forest, which supplied them with a number of other useful plants. The tea leaves were plucked and then dried in the sun. The tea was traded and came to be known far from the mountain. Pressed into bricks and named pu-erh, it blazed a caravan road through the mountains and gorges of Yunnan's high plateaus to Tibet, where it was exchanged for horses, which the Emperor of China needed for the defense of his realm. Over the next millennium, the tree witnessed the rise and fall of empires and survived rebellions, invasions, wars and revolutions almost too numerous to chronicle.

Today, covered with ferns, mosses and epiphytes, the tree—known as The King Of Tea Trees—is protected by a crude wire fence. Sheltered not from destruction but from its many admirers, it is now a popular stop on a burgeoning tea tourist trail. Stooped like an aging sage and reaching only a third of its one-time height, it overlooks other generations of tea trees still being plucked by the descendants of those who planted it.

The leaves of these trees, many of which are hundreds of years old, are the focus of a new wave of tea entrepreneurs who combine a passion for quality and a sense of history with a vision of a more equitable future. Their products are found under various names—old growth, ancient tree, antique tea—but their goal is the same: to write another chapter in the remarkable story of the ancient tea trees of Yunnan.

FACT OR FANTASY?

It is easy to be inspired by the story of old-growth tea. But it is just as easy to detect the hand of slick marketing in the claim that some teas are better simply because they are older. The tea world is rife with exaggeration and intrigue, and when the product is reputed to possess special attributes (for example, it has been taken as a tonic), it becomes almost impossible to separate fact from fancy. So is old-growth tea just another snake oil? Or is there something demonstrably unique here? There are only two ways to tell: by the art of cupping and the integrity of the supply chain.

Joshua Kaiser is founder and CEO of Milwaukee-based Rishi Tea. For the past 10 years, his company has been sourcing tea in China. But it was only recently that he began to take a personal interest in ancient tea gardens, and this happened rather inadvertently. After some pu-erhs sourced by an associate received poor reviews, Kaiser realized he and his staff knew too little about this tea. "I took that incident to heart and became focused on bringing pu-erh and other unique teas from Yunnan into our organic program," Kaiser recalls. "As a tea lover and experienced buyer of other teas at origin, I took it upon myself to learn more about Yunnan tea and pu-erh, as well as to travel and invest a lot of R&D time there."

As Kaiser found out the hard way, the world of pu-erh—and the ancient trees from which it is made—is complex. Definitions are in order.

"Old growth" refers to the broad-leafed assamica variety of the tea plant Camellia sinensis. Rising to heights of 90 feet and living for hundreds of years, these trees grow in a belt that runs through Yunnan, Thailand, Myanmar, Laos and Vietnam. But it is on the high plateaus of Yunnan, at elevations of 5,000 feet, that antique tea has had its greatest impact. Perhaps as little as one percent of all tea derives from antique trees. Some 90 percent of this tiny fraction are pruned and manicured trees, while the remainder—a mere tenth of a hundredth—are wild-growing and wild-harvested, filling a niche in forests so rich in biodiversity that part of the region has been declared a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve.

But it would be a mistake to assume that the leaves from antique trees are, by definition, superior to their plantation cousins. According to Kaiser, antique tea is very much like wine. Its quality is determined by many factors, chief among them the character of the tea tree varietal, the microclimate in which it grows, the soil type and nutrition that support it, the picking standard, and, of course, the processing. That said, it all seems to come together in a few—a very few—special places, such as the mountains of Xishuangbanna, where "the tea trees have evolved and conditioned themselves over many generations to make great tea in É specific microclimates and soil conditions."

These factors in turn result in a chemistry that is known for its elevated polyphenol content, L-theanine amino acid levels and polysaccharides, all of which are associated with beneficial health effects such as reduced cholesterol and lowered risk of heart disease. Scientists have identified in pu-erh teas a host of living organisms, such as streptomyces, as well as statin and gamma-aminobutyric acid (or GABA, an analgesic and neurotransmitter effective in the treatment of epilepsy). But Kaiser suspects this is just the tip of the iceberg. "There are more than 300 chemical components in tea that shape the aromatic principle, mouth feeling and 'complexity' found in the cup. It is not economically or in some cases technically feasible to test the extent of the difference between antique garden tea and common garden tea."

DESPERATELY SEEKING TRANSPARENCY

Veerinder Chawla of Portland, Ore.-based The Tao of Tea has also been active in the highlands of Yunnan. His current offerings include numerous pu-erh bricks, loose leaves and birdnests, drawn mostly from Jingmai, Nannuo and Banzhang. Chawla was drawn to the hills initially for educational reasons. "I felt that the basic understanding of pu-erh in the U.S. was nascent. What has been regarded as pu-erh is just the cooked variety, or shu. Decorative bricks are described as rare stuff without real proof of their age. I wanted to clear up the misinformation and mystery." He envisioned a conventional cooperative venture but soon found that the pieces of the puzzle were not readily available. "Sanitary factories were hard to find, and so was organic wild-grown tea itself, even in Jingmai."

Kaiser's experience was similar. "Age and vintage, in many respects, is contaminated by poor storage or pesticides. Worse still, [tea sold as pu-erh] is often not from the actual origin or crop year as the seller would claim," he says. "Most old vintage and pu-erh tea supply chains are not compliant with the USDA-NOP because of traceability issues and chemical residues."

It is easy to see why this is the case. As Kaiser relates, pu-erh is not made in the villages where the leaves are picked. The raw material, sun-dried green tea leaves (saiqing mao cha), originates in the villages and is then sold to a manufacturer who buys similar leaf from sources all across Yunnan. The fermenting and pressing of the leaves into finished products takes place in central factories, many of which are quite renowned.

Renown aside, this system makes a single-origin-based approach to pu-erh almost impossible. According to Kaiser, "In most cases, there is no way for consumers to know that the pu-erh they buy is made with saiqing mao cha from a certain mountain, vintage or harvest season because there is no transparency from the pu-erh factory about where or when the leaves were harvested."

To make matters worse, pu-erh recently has become a hot commodity in China. Because it appreciates over time and can be stored for centuries, it is perceived as a safe and lucrative investment. "Prices have quadrupled in the last two years," Chawla says. This offers a further inducement to those who would—and do—"cut" saiqing mao cha with lesser leaves, and even other leafy material, on the way to the factory. Chawla is concerned that pu-erh tea could be priced out of the U.S. market just as its unique flavor profile is gaining more acceptance. Moreover, inflated prices can drive overharvesting, through which, in Kaiser's view, "The trees become exhausted and the soil health decreases and as a result the output yield and overall quality suffers."

Both Kaiser and Chawla realized the need to control their entire supply chain if they were to successfully and responsibly market old-growth pu-erh and other tea. Beyond this, both sought a solution that would aid sustainability as well as the bottom line. This meant helping to shore up a local ecology and indigenous economy that could be negatively impacted by the runaway speculation in pu-erh.

For Chawla, the solution lay in personal involvement in leaf collection, creating a processing unit on site and entering a joint venture with the TianZi Biodiversity Research Centre, based in Chiang Mai, Thailand. "Biodiversity is the definition of old growth," says Chawla. "The tea had to be part of a fuller ecosystem." Today, The Tao of Tea has a presence in six to seven villages and processes the leaves in its own unit. The Biodiversity Research Centre organizes investment projects that support the conservation of wild herbs and flowers in threatened areas. In areas of Banzhang, where forest is being felled to make way for more plantation-style tea trees, TianZi has helped save hundreds of acres for conversion into tea forest gardens, devoted to the conservation of rare plants as well as the production of tea.

For its part, Rishi began working with certified organic partners in China to develop a holistic approach that would ensure USDA-NOP compliance, including strict inspections and lot tracking. As Kaiser describes it, "From the ancient tea villages where the plucking takes place to the designated raw tea factory where the leaf is checked, purchased from the villagers and initially processed, to the quality assurance factory where our final processing and grading is carried out, [the supply chain] is all linked in a transparent system."

If they are informed and selective, buyers can now have a reasonable assurance that they are getting what they bargained for. But what does "old growth" mean in the cup? Can it really be distinguished from plantation tea? In a sense, we are comparing apples and oranges because even traditional pu-erhs are not the cream of the plantation crop. Yet in the old-growth pu-erhs I have tasted, the familiar notes are all there—earthiness, expansiveness and that mind-clearing straightforwardness that announces the tea as something not entirely civilized—but they seem magnified. The same might be said of the green and white teas that Rishi has now produced from its old-growth program.

Kaiser can offer a more informed cupper's assessment. "When we taste Dian Hong Congou TGFOP from common gardens next to Dian Hong from antique gardens, we find the antique garden tea to be far superior, with a unique balance of brisk, aromatic and sweet character," he asserts. "After six to eight months, antique Dian Hong reaches its peak, becoming less brisk, smoother, malty and semisweet with a caramelized aroma," he says, noting just a few of the differences.

THE TRUTH IN THE TALE

Inevitably, we arrive back at perhaps the most unique element of old-growth tea: its story. Tea drinkers enjoy not only the taste in the cup but the way in which tea can transport them into another realm. If coffee can propel you forward, tea can allow you to jump back in time and become part of an epic narrative. Small wonder that Chawla's original Portland shop resembles a cross between a religious shrine and Indiana Jones' base camp.

Ancient-tree tea has a big story to tell. Embedded in the history of Yunnan's 26 ethnic minorities—the Jinuo, Aini, Lahu, Dai and more—this tea is a long-standing conduit of culture in southwestern China. The Bulang people, for example, are considered the descendants of the Pu, the original tea planters in the region of Xishuangbanna. Today, they are among the fair-trade partners group that works with Rishi. On the one hand, tea is "just another economic resource" for them, according to Kaiser. Yet the Bulang of Mangjing regularly pay tribute to an ancestor named Ai Neng, who is regarded as a tea forefather. Other tribes, whose sacred rituals blend Buddhist and earlier animist beliefs, demonstrate what Kaiser refers to as "deep spiritual, cultural and even religious ties to the antique tea trees of their mountain." In many cases, the trees themselves are venerated, and their protection is a moral imperative.

This story is essential to the success of old-growth tea. Telling it in a responsible way that truly informs connoisseurs, supports local economies and enhances quality in the cup—this is the challenge, and the accomplishment, of entrepreneurs like Kaiser and Chawla.

THE FUTURE OF OLD GROWTH

Yunnan tourism has been growing by more than 15 percent annually for the past decade, and the province is poised to become one of Asia's major destinations by 2020. Many of these expected multitudes will tramp through the mountains of Xishuangbanna to see the antique tea gardens. Already, tourism is bringing trash and traffic to an area already pressured by overharvesting and land conversion.

The key to conservation of the gardens for both Kaiser and Chawla lies in the empowerment of local communities and diversification of the market. Kaiser already sees progress in local efforts to control the more damaging effects of tourism. Several village leaders have voiced concerns about the impact of tourism with Kaiser and have vowed to speak with tour operators about the need for visitors to respect the local ecology. Signs will be posted reminding tourists to pick up their trash. In addition, Rishi has been able to expand the application of antique-tree leaf beyond pu-erh to black, green, white and oolong teas. Chawla sees old growth at a crossroads. "Do we disclose our sourcing areas or not?" he asks. "If we do, we inspire more merchants to go there and potentially change the place. On the other hand, a real sense of 'origin' has been missing from pu-erh, and the teas need this identity to thrive."

With these new perspectives in mind and a very old story to tell, it is likely that teas from ancient trees, so long prized by connoisseurs in Asia, can build a following in North America.

 

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