Akha White Tea from Laos

We're really pleased with the this Akha White Tea from Laos.  The taste is lush, round, and immediately satisfying.  It's clean tasting with a deep and interesting energy and mouthfeel - truly a delight of a tea. 

The tea was harvested from relatively young forest-seed grown tea plants and dried in the shade.  It seems like a fairly simple process, but there is a lot that can go wrong with making shade-dried white tea.

Only a small amount of this tea is available as it was from a very early and unusual spring flush in Phongsaly in northeast Laos.  The people making the tea are Akha, one of many semi-nomadic minority ethnic groups who have living in the area off and on for centuries.  Since the 1990s, the government of Laos has been actively resettling these minority ethnic groups in an effort to sedenterize them.  Tea has been a sustainable alternative for the Akha as they have made this shift away from shifting swidden agriculture.   

Early spring 2024 production.  No agrochemicals were used in production of this tea.  It's squeeky clean.