A tea session with Pu Jin Jing

Pu Jin Jing is a tea person i greatly admire. She runs a tea workshop in Lincang.  We have known each other for years on the chinese tea blogs but it was only this summer that i had the pleasure to meet her in Lincang city.

She is famous for writing very detailed articles about tea cultivation and processing. I have learned a lot from her and this tea session lived up to my expectations. We met in her newly opened tea shop in Lincang city.

Yubai was with me, as we were just coming from Jingmai mountain. With three hardcore drinkers reunited at the tea table, the kettle was going to work hard.


 We started our session with three black teas, just released from Pu Jin Jing’s factory.

 -2013 Da Bai Cha buds
- 2013 golden buds
-2013 gushu black tea

Each has its own character, but our preference went for the gushu black tea, despite its modest look, the old tree character could be felt in the throat and the cups were filled with richness.

After this pleasant starter, we went to the serious things: puerh tea.

here is the list of the teas we went through:

-2012 Spring Bangdong
-2012 Autumn Matai
-2013 Spring Matai
-2012 Spring Matai
-2012 Spring Manglu Shan
-2011 Spring Manglu Shan
-2013 Spring Jingmai Single Trees
-2007 Manglu Shan
-2013 Spring Xiao Hu Sai

 The session lasted for about ten hours. After that, i was tea drunk like i rarely am, but for Pu Jin Jing, this is a normal day, she is used to try lots of samples. We tried each tea for  few brews, and then started the next one while keeping on with the former one. Sometimes, we had a cup of shu cha to keep our stomach comfortable. As a rule of thumb, i brew one shu for each three sheng. Pu Jin Jing advises to go from the greener tea to the darker. This time, we didn’t follow that rule, maybe because passion was keeping us busy.

We exchanged a lot of information and Pu Jin Jing is a very knowledgeable and humble person. This session was free of fancy talks, we talked about tea manufacturing and agriculture. This session was one of the most inspiring on my life, great tea with passionnate people.