Shu pu ’25 b7 Lao Cha Tou

Name: Shu puerh Lao Cha Tou batch7
Year: 2025
Weight: loosee maocha
Whereabout: Thailand, Mae Suai, Wawee organic tea farm

Details:

sweet with strong shu feeling, a good one, this was an intial brew of 2 minutes, the very first brew was a rinse only, a nice tingling Qi on the edge of the tongue, the next third brew is even more sweet, the fourth brew sweetness and exotic delicate wood notes, soo good, exotic woods notes, wood raisin notes, this tea is really strong, meaning its power, like brewing 15 grams instead of 6 and the chunks holds together still, you may drink this tea from 24 to 48 hours and if you do not have that time, simply try to dismantle the chunks, I believe this tea is perfect shu and I would say if this tea would be aged for 20 years than it would be a gem indeed

the story of this tea is that I asked my thai friends to send me more of the batch 7 shu puerh and they replied that all is sold and then they come back to me later saying that Veian and his father like to drink and save for them ‘the cream of the shu puerh’, of this batch 7, a grade named Lao Cha Tou, the small chunks that are created at the bottom of the 300 kg pile of this batch, condensed tea leaves pressed or rather sticked together, packed with flavour, so the tea farmer guys were kind to me and sold 14 kg of this tea chunks, so out of 300 kg of tea you get only 20 kg of this kind of grade, many times much more less

Lao Cha Tou (老茶头) is a pu-erh tea, specifically a form of compressed ripe (shou/shu) pu-erh. These tea nuggets are of course irregular and they vary in shape and size. Some would call them natural tuos (from tuo cha shape).

During the wet piling fermentation of ripe pu-er tea, the tea pile can get too hot and risk burning. To prevent this high heat, the piles are turned over to reduce the temperature inside the pile. While manual turning lowers the heat, it cannot completely separate the leaves because tea leaves, after rolling, secrete a large amount of pectin, causing them to stick together in lumps. After the fermentation is complete, these lumps are picked out from the bottomm of the pile. The tea nuggets make up only a small portion of the pile, about 3-6 percent of the whole amount produced. After several years of aging, these fermented tea nuggets transform into what’s known as “Lao Cha Tou” (old tea heads).

One of the feature of Lao Cha Tou is its exceptional durability in brewing is that it can be steeped about 30 times even more, further feature is its exceptional taste that usually sweeter and the tea soup is thicker. These tea nuggets also age well, the tea soup gets with the increased age more mellow, smooth and velvety.