2022 Ku Zhu Shan Dan Zhu

Pu Erh tea from a single tea tree (Danzhu)

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Ku Zhu Shan Dan Zhu Sheng Pu Erh Tee 2022

The story of this Pu Erh

Ku Zhu Shan Danzhu is available in our range again this year. Unlike in the past, we did not try the sample of this Pu Erh tea. In fact, we pre-ordered this tea before the harvest because if we had acted a little late this tea would have sold out. Based on our last 2 years experience with this Ku Zhu Shan Dan Zhu, we didn't hesitate to buy the same Pu Erh tea from the same garden and most likely the same old trees for tea fans here.

2 weeks after its arrival in our shop we tasted the tea with our tea friend Halyn. Fortunately, we were both fascinated by this year's tea and indeed we found that this year's Danzhu is much sweeter and much smoother than last year's tea, either because the tea was pressed into cakes or because of the drought in Yunnan. The smoothness may be the result of being caked, as the process of steaming and pressing the loose tea into cakes takes out the green and astringency of a new tea and speeds up the aging process.
The extreme sweetness may also be due to the steaming and pressing, as well as the drought as the tea trees don't grow as fast due to the lack of water and fewer leaves. In the end, the slow growing process with less energy distribution allows the leaves to accumulate more nutrients. But of course the same trees produce tea of different qualities every year for many different reasons.

general information

Danzhu means single tree. The leaves that this pu erh tea contains all come from a single tree. Leaves from one tree are processed into one batch, they do not mix with leaves from other individual trees. Trees used to make a Danzhu tea must be old enough and large enough to produce enough leaves. This means that Danzhu tea must come from old tea trees, not young ones. This tea was 03 – 05.04.2022 Harvested from approximately 300-year-old tea trees on Mount Ku Zhu Shan in the city of Jinggu. The trees are on the mountain about 2200 meters above sea level.

taste and aroma

This year's Ku Zhu Shan Danzhu Pu Erh has a familiar floral and sweetness to us in general. After all, the tea comes from the same trees as in previous years. What makes it different is its smoothness as mentioned in the story and its extreme sweetness that is there as soon as you sip the tea and lasts about an hour after drinking the tea. It's really very cute!
Also, we noticed that the liquid has a subtle, buttery saltiness on the middle of the tongue for the first 2 seconds when it hits your mouth. The saltiness is gone as you swallow, but we suspect that gentle, creamy saltiness at the beginning is one of the reasons the tea tastes extremely sweet afterwards.

This Ku Zhu Shan Dan Zhu Pu Erh has almost no bitterness and the astringency is very subtly present in the second and third infusions, absent in the first and later infusions.