We manufacture the most valuable tea on the planet - tea from the old trees, or 古树茶 "gu shu cha", how it's called in Chinese.
Value of this tea is mostly recognized in Chinese tea culture, but it becomes more and more known also in Western world.
Our principles of fully natural tea production
Wild sourcing
Natural habitat
Wild sourcing
Material for our tea we take only from the wild tea forests, not from the plantations. We have 15 hectares or our own jungle land, with abandoned old tea trees on it. Some of them many years ago (from 80 to 400) was planted, some just grow in the wild.
No pesticides
Natural habitat
Wild sourcing
We don't use any chemical fertilizers or pesticides. We trim the grass around tea trees only by hand.
Natural habitat
Natural habitat
Careful selection
Area of tea forests and production is located near a large National park, in Maetaeng County, Banlao village. One of the cleanest regions of Thailand, without any industrial activity in the region.
Careful selection
Hand-made production
Careful selection
Tea leaves are handpicked by local village settlers. Because before in our village Banlao was only miang, traditional fermented tea production, we educate locals about the right technology of harvesting the leaves for high quality tea (one leaf one bud, or two leaf one bud depending of the type of tea)
Hand-made production
Hand-made production
Hand-made production
All the steps of tea processing is fully manual (for sheng puer and white tea) or mostly manual (for the other types of tea)
Expertise
Hand-made production
Hand-made production
We do care about the quality of our tea, so we use all our more than 15 years of experience in tea culture and bring the best specialists to the factory. Co-founder of the project, Sergey Shevelev, spent 10 years in China learning about tea, and wrote the book Geography of Chinese tea.
How do we care about our jungle tea tree forest?
- We just don't touch it. Sometimes remove fallen trees, that's it.
- Even though we are dealing with wild tea trees, they require a certain amount of care. We cut weeds near tea trees only by hand without using any chemicals to remove them.
- We also trim the trees a little bit to stimulate leaves growth, and make the easier access for the harvesting.
- We don't use any commercial fertilizers for the tea trees, but we plow the soil around them to provide the trees with extra oxygen and improve the absorption of trace elements from the soil.
- Sometimes, if necessary, we use only organic fertilizer before the rainy season for additional nutrition for the trees.