Question about Tibetan brick teas

[John_B]

Greetings! I'm out of the habit of asking questions, doing more blathering on these days, but others may have some input about one.

A mystery tea turned up, labeled as Yunnan-produced sheng, but described as a brick tea produced in a Tibetan style by the vendor (a 2 kg. brick at that). I reviewed the tea sample, and did a little research on other brick teas (Hunan hei cha instead), but just didn't get far with teas produced in a Tibetan style.

The lighter website version of the story is that Tibet tended to trade for tea with China (the "tea horse road" idea), versus producing its own, but that doesn't seem to preclude them making it. I'm guessing it really was raw at the outset but since it was a 1997 tea aging has changed the character. It's nice, and interesting in character, but it reminds me a good bit of hei cha (Hunan brick tea, not that I've tried much in the way of those).

To be more specific, can anyone pass on references or input about what "Tibet-style" brick tea would be, beyond Chinese-produced pu'er and hei cha that ends up there?

http://teaintheancientworld.blogspot.co ... style.html

[Ethan Kurland]

If you peruse propaganda used against Tibetans to excuse Chinese theft of Tibet, you will probably find reference to use of bricks as weapons or some other non-drinking use. Ha ha. Seriously, good to see you posting John B. Hopefully, someone who is not ignorant like myself has more to say than hello. Cheers

[Chadrinkincat]

Tibetan style sounds like a euphemism for compressed tea dust that didn’t make it into teabags. Likely meant for making yak butter tea.

[John_B]

Thanks Ethan.

It would be interesting to try those tea bags too. Were they making sheng-processed tea-bag tea in Yunnan back in 1997?

This brick and the description content with it is hard to place. Once you try a tea the story line kind of takes a back seat to what ends up in the cup though.

It reminds me more of hei cha than 21 year old sheng but I can't be sure if it started out as a "raw" version or not. Maybe it's just Hunan style brick tea.

From what I've seen Tibetan butter tea is typically made with tea that has stems pressed along with leaves, and this doesn't.

[John_B]

I talked with someone who would be familiar with this style of tea, be it genuine or otherwise, and turned up what is probably the last word on what it is.

It's probably tea fannings (the left-overs a comment mentioned) pressed into bricks to be coupled with unusual stories and sold to tourists for prices well above any standard market rates. The "Tibet" reference is almost certainly just a loose idea that got connected along the way.

Here's a Taobao example of one selling for $28 for 6 kilograms.

https://item.taobao.com/item.htm?spm=a2 ... 6Rk#detail

That's too bad, but I suppose not completely unexpected. I had included mention of a specific type and even example of an inexpensive Hunan brick hei cha in that post to help frame context, and this doesn't fall too far from that theme, it just adds a bit of messy complexity related to "indirect" marketing approach.

The tea wasn't that bad, especially for being in this range, but lacking the normal range of mouth-feel and aftertaste was a bit of a red flag.

I tend to not put negative content in blog posts, since there are lots of positive stories to tell, but I did add an update related to that one.