Yunnan Shaken-Leaf Black Tea

A black tea with an oolong soul.

This tea begins as a standard spring black tea — one bud, one to two leaves, hand-harvested from a small-leaf cultivar grown in the highlands of Yunnan's Pu'er region. The plants themselves have an interesting backstory: their lineage traces back to Fujian province, where this cultivar originated, before being transplanted and acclimatized to Yunnan's cooler elevations.

What makes this tea different is a single additional step that most black teas never see.

The Process

After the leaves are picked and withered, they go through yao qing 摇青 — a technique borrowed from oolong production, where the leaves are gently tumbled and shaken in bamboo baskets. This controlled bruising breaks down the cell walls at the leaf edges, triggering a partial, early oxidation before the leaves are rolled. In oolong production, this step is what develops floral aromatics; here, it's applied to a tea that will then continue through the full black tea process: rolling, full oxidation, and drying.

The result isn't quite an oolong, and it isn't quite a conventional black tea. It sits at the edge of both.

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Session estimates use a fresh portion of dry tea each time. Each portion can be infused repeatedly.