A decade in one Bulang village
The same Lao Man’e cooperative in Xishuangbanna pressed all three of these cakes, seven and ten years apart, so the raw material and the village stay constant; what changes is the storage clock run on each one. The 2010 lot was plucked just before the late-April rains and has aged into a dark, resinous tea with camphor and plum-bark depth. The 2015 came from a drier year, thicker leaves and sharper bitterness, now settling into honeyed, baked-apple warmth after years in the Kunming facility. The 2020 harvest followed a wet spring, producing fragrant leaves with a brisk, almost white-flower top note that forecasts a long aging trajectory still ahead of it.
All three cakes are held in the same Kunming cellar, rotated for even exposure, so the differences in the cup come from time and terroir rather than three different storage philosophies competing with each other. The vertical is offered as a guided tasting: brew the three side by side and taste the decade that shaped them, one climate, three years, one continuous thread of storage care.