In traditional Chinese thought, bitterness is considered the best flavour to remove heat of the body. Although this concept might sound a bit unique, many cultures use similar ideas. In India, the abundance of cooling lassis balances what would be otherwise a quite hot diet. In the Mediterranean region, cucumber salads in the summer are a must and intuitively, we all understand that peppermint tea is cooling.

We recently launched our 2022 collection and we have a Kucha (bitter tea) from Laomane village in Bulangshan on offer. Although we are open to any teas from Yunnan, we have mainly offered teas from Yiwu and the 6 famous tea mountains. This tea was quickly sold out when we offered it a few years ago. We had to bring it back.

Laomane teas are comprised by 2 varieties, the sweet and the bitter one. The bitter one tends to be slightly more prized than the sweet. Personally, despite so many years of us offering sweet Yiwu teas, we prefer the bitter variety. The tea itself delivers an initial bitterness in the mouth that quickly transforms into a lovely and complex sweet aftertaste. If you enjoy bitterness in tea, we would recommend this one. If you don’t, we would still recommend you to at least sample it, especially in a hot day like what we are experiencing now. It will cool you down.