Spring 2025 Ding Jia Zhai

Ding Jia Zhai village, Yiwu Mountain Ancient tea garden, mixed picking Typical Eastern Yiwu characteristics: thick soup, deep Huigan, heavy Chaqi This tea comes from an ancient tea garden, located North-East of Ding Jia Zhai, close the Tian Men Shan mountain range. Eastern Yiwu is a remarkable terroir thanks to its preserved nature, high altitude, steep slopes and deep forests. The tea that grows in this area has a distinguishable taste. Most of the gardens growing there arte shared between Ding Jia Zhai and Gua Feng Zhai, but a lot of tea makers from Yiwu and surrounding villages source fresh leaves there for their premium cakes. This tea lives up to the terroir's reputation. The fragrance is an understated fruitiness with a hint of smoke. That smoke-like aroma is not always an indicator of primitive processing facilities, it is often present in forest tea, it could come from the varietal genetics, especially if it has mixed with local wild tea trees. But the fragrance is not the point of this tea; it is clearly a tea for the body and the mind, this is revealed from the first infusion. The soup holds well in the mouth, it feels like syrup, you can feel its activity on the gums and flows down the throat easily. This is followed by a deeply relaxing body feel, your muscles unwind and your spirit ascends. This tea will make you feel slightly euphoric, and a little more talkative. Some light bitterness and astringency appears after a couple of brews, you will have to tame it with adjusting the brewing parameters. After the session, the understated mix of fruit and smoke will linger in your mouth, you can always get a puff by practicing retro-olfaction. I highly recommend this tea if you're into Huigan and Chaqi; avoid it if you're just after fancy fragrance and explosive taste, this is a powerful tea with a subdued strength.