The Essence of Tea

The Essence of Tea We're an online tea store, sourcing & pressing our own Puerh tea cakes & also specialising in Aged P

We've had a small project under way for the past couple of months to create some flat plates for gongfu brewing. Old e...
22/07/2026

We've had a small project under way for the past couple of months to create some flat plates for gongfu brewing. Old examples of these plates aren't so easy to find these days and quite expensive, so we decided to recreate them, using pure rice straw glaze and traditional methods of hand pressing into forms to create the shape and thin body.

These fit perfectly with our other Fangxia porcelain teaware and hand-dyed tea cloths.

It's rare that a clay surprises us these days, in general we're pretty good at guessing what clays will and won't work w...
04/06/2026

It's rare that a clay surprises us these days, in general we're pretty good at guessing what clays will and won't work with different teas.

We loved the appearance of this Lao Tuanni clay from the start - similar in composition to pots from hundreds of years ago. The big surprise for us was when we started to use it - it seems to brew perfectly whatever we throw at it - young puerh, middle aged puerh, old puerh, old liubao. Yancha is next on the list, I have a feeling we're going to be pleasantly surprised with that too.

With such perfect weather this spring and extraordinary conditions, we decided to go high and focus on a selection of si...
29/05/2026

With such perfect weather this spring and extraordinary conditions, we decided to go high and focus on a selection of single trees and selected ancient tree pickings. I think some of the best teas we've ever made.

Now available online for your pleasure!

Single trees and selected high end pressings. Our 2026 teas are almost ready. Just got a couple of days of tasting and...
27/05/2026

Single trees and selected high end pressings. Our 2026 teas are almost ready. Just got a couple of days of tasting and photographing to do and hopefully they’ll be ready to release by the weekend

Making this year’s Red Tea, White Tea & Sheng puerh at our Beyond the Clouds tea garden. We rented this land with thes...
21/04/2026

Making this year’s Red Tea, White Tea & Sheng puerh at our Beyond the Clouds tea garden. We rented this land with these farmers for 10 years, growing without chemicals, picking once each year and using pine needles from the forest as fertiliser. This land has been improving each year under this natural management and the tea quality is better and better each spring. We made a test batch of white tea last year and it quickly sold out. This year we’ve decided to increase our production of white tea. There’ll also be our staple red tea and sheng puerh. Some of the sheng puerh will also be used in the blend for our Earth Shu puerh

17/04/2026

Concentrated, thick, powerful, grounding single ancient tree in pristine environment. This is the kind of tea that makes all the work worthwhile.

Frying tea and cleaning the wok in Yiwu’s DaQiShu village. Cleaning the wok between batches is an important step in pr...
15/04/2026

Frying tea and cleaning the wok in Yiwu’s DaQiShu village. Cleaning the wok between batches is an important step in preventing burnt leaf fragments from ending up in the finished tea. Sandpaper and a brush are used to loosen anything stuck to the wok and then it’s quickly rinsed with some water before frying the next batch. The leaves are fried in ~5kg batches of fresh leaves which will translate to just over 1kg of dried maocha after sun drying

#易武

14/04/2026

As a new day begins, the first task is setting the freshly processed tea from last night out to dry. When the weather is good it can dry completely in a day. The weather is perfect these days and the tea is nice and concentrated this year.

Going to collect some fresh leaves from Guafengzhai’s Lie Hu Shan (Tiger Hunting Mountain). This was one garden that we ...
12/04/2026

Going to collect some fresh leaves from Guafengzhai’s Lie Hu Shan (Tiger Hunting Mountain). This was one garden that we didn’t include last year in our Guafengzhai tasting set. It’s a lesser known garden that was discovered about 10 years ago, mid way on a very steep slope in the protected forest (Guoyoulin). The environment here is impeccable and the trees are big. More importantly the tea is very nice, very smooth and refined with good energy from trees that haven’t been overpicked. It’s difficult to convey with photos but there is something really special about these forest environments

Going to collect some fresh leaves from Guafengzhai’s Lei Hu Shan (Tiger Hunting Mountain). This was one garden that w...
12/04/2026

Going to collect some fresh leaves from Guafengzhai’s Lei Hu Shan (Tiger Hunting Mountain). This was one garden that we didn’t include last year in our Guafengzhai tasting set. It’s a lesser known garden that was discovered about 10 years ago, mid way on a very steep slope in the protected forest (Guoyoulin). The environment here is impeccable and the trees are big. More importantly the tea is very nice, very smooth and refined with good energy from trees that haven’t been overpicked. It’s difficult to convey with photos but there is something really special about these forest environments

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