Ancient Green Tea

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Tea Knowledge

Understanding ANCIENT GREEN tea

Ancient tea tree

Ancient tea is one of the unique green tea in the Northen Vietnam. Therefore, it has many places where have the old tea trees in this area. And the cultivar tea tree belongs to Camellia Sinensis var Assamica which has the large and thick leaf. Normally, the high of tea tree is around 3 – 10m, it depends on the age. Furthermore, as the minority who live here said that there are 2 types of tea tree. Firstly, Shan tea tree which is grown for 20 years ago. And the other one is old tea tree which has more than 100 years ago. But nobody know exactly the age of tea tree here because it’s long time ago and they have no way to evaluate.

There are some photos about the tea tree when I visited in April of 2018.

Location of old tea area in Vietnam

As I mentioned, this tea tree is grown in Ta Xua rank high mountain between Son La and Yen Bai province in Northwest Vietnam. On the other hand, there are seven villages where have many old tea tress such as Chung Chinh, Bản Bẹ, Móng Vàng, Tà Xùa A, Tà Xùa B, Tà Xùa C and Háng Đồng village. Beside of that, most people live here are H’mong minority for a long time. And with the altitude is around 1.000 – 1.600m is an advantage element for old tea trees growing.

The processing

In Ta Xua, the H’mong minority calls this tea by Vietnamese is “trà sao suốt”. Actually, it belongs to green tea bases on the processing.

Beside of me is a woman H’mong minority who is piking up fresh tea leaves. She is also a tea maker.

She only picks up one bud and two young leaves. As a result of picking, this tea is one of high quality green tea in Vietnam.

There is the processing:

First: killing green

Second: rolling

Final: drying

The tea leaves after processing