2024 Thailand Forest White Tea
This tea comes from old growth tea forests near Chiang Mai in Northern Thailand, the same kind of native tea trees that are loosely referred to as ‘Da Ye Zhong’ just a few hundred kilometres away in Xishuangbanna, which in the modern era is separated merely by a few lines on a map.
This particular tea was produced by a Taiwanese tea maker who moved to Thailand in the early 2000s. Picked, withered, and then dried in the sun, this tea is full of deep sticky fragrance, with a thick mouthfeel and strong lingering sweetness. The endurance of the material means you can re-infuse the leaves many many times, and the tea has an unexpected strong energy kick.
This white tea could easily be sold across the border in Yunnan as a 'gushu baicha', as often also happens with Puer-style teas made from trees in Laos, Myanmar, Vietnam.