Tea: Illud Tempus Type: Raw Puer (生普洱） Region: Nuogan Village, Jingmai Mountain, Puer Harvest: March 2025 Press Date: May 2025 2025 Tasting Notes: Cardamom, Pea Flower, Spinach, Fresh Tobacco, Pine Wood This item is a small 7 gram single-session pressing of the larger similarly named 200 gram cake: same material, same maker, same press date. We offer them individually or in sets of three. This was our first year exploring one of the big names in Yunnan Puer: the Jingmai Mountain. This mountain, right on the border of China and Myanmar in Western Yunnan, is the crowning jewel of the Simao region, or classically Puer. Our time out on the mountain made many things clear, it’s not just one mountain, one village, one people, but several slopes peppered with clusters of houses and one greater higher elevated plateau from whence comes some of the best teas of the region (the Daping Zhang). The Simao government has spent a lot of money subsidizing the livelihood of the original inhabitants of the Jingmai Mountains, whom are primarily Dai with a handful of Bulang and Hani minority groups living closely together in a richly diverse cultural harmony. The Jingmai mountain has some 12 villages, all accessible via car (if one can stomach the winding mountain roads), and each producing tea with their own unique taste due to the terroir. Part of the reason for this government subsidy is a desire to preserve the original cultural heritage of the region, and as a result, some villages are entirely built in the old Dai or Bulang style: the Dai architecture being more open and breezy while the Bulang is more dark and sturdy. Visiting these villages felt like stepping outside of time into a time of origins; hence, the inspiration behind this tea cake name: Illud Tempus, the time of origins. The tea itself is nice and juicy, there are a lot of berry notes on the dry leaves after they are placed in a warmed gaiwan, along with the slightest whiff of fragrant wood. This evolves into a more vegetal fragrance like fresh tobacco or cooking spices when brewed with hot water. As the session continues, we get notes of sweet spinach and cardamom in the cup. The brew is a light pale gold that rolls easily on the tongue and sits lightly in the mouth. There is a light floral sweetness in the palate reminiscent of pea flowers. We expect this tea to thicken up as it ages, but for the moment, it is a distillation of spring flavors with a honey thickness following close behind. If you're interested in sampling this year's full flight of puer pressings, check out the Yunnan Flight, a set of 6 dragon balls from different regions each pressed in 7 gram balls for convenient brewing. We recommend brewing this tea gongfu style in a gaiwan or Chinese teapot. We use 6 grams of tea in a 100ml brewing vessel with boiling water, steeping 5 second for the first few infusions and adding 5 seconds after ever subsequent infusion. Most of these puer teas can be re-infused over 15 times, when brewing in this gongfu style.
