Manglu Mountain, in early summer
In the folds where Yunnan's Hengduan Mountains rise, the Lancang River runs straight down through them. Across a thousand years of unhurried growth, the Lancang basin raised up its ancient tea trees one by one, and the ethnic peoples who first settled here planted old tea gardens beside them. Puerh was born on this ground — old, and a little unaccountable.
This spring, Lincang's Manglu Mountain arrived at Baoputang. Manglu sheng is the benchmark tea of Xigui — grown on the dry-hot river valley and rocky slopes carved by the Lancang, a one-of-a-kind puerh mountain that sits at both high latitude and low elevation at once. This batch is picked from early-spring old trees: the older the tree, the deeper its roots reach, the more minerals it draws up, and the more that shows in the cup. The liquor runs golden amber, orchid and honey in the aroma, a distinctive mineral edge, and a clear rock-sugar sweetness underneath. One cup down the throat and your mouth is already asking for more — the kind of tea built for summer heat.
What you're drinking now is still young. Sheng puerh exists to change — five years from now, or longer, this same tea will have aged into something more captivating. You raise a tea with time. The painting on the tin is Manglu Mountain itself: the river bends and circles it, mist off the water settles over its rocky slopes year-round. Mountain held up by river, wood grown into stone's own spirit — one mountain, one river, and between them, Xigui's tea fragrance that doesn't end.