2025 Charcoal Roasted Chiang Mai Raw Puerh (Thailand)

Roasted raw puerh is something most tea drinkers have never encountered, but it isn't new. Across the mountains of the Golden Triangle, from Yunnan down into Thailand and Laos, roasting or singeing tea leaves over a fire has long been one of the ways tea is prepared, sometimes during production, sometimes right before brewing. The old tea trees of northern Thailand belong to this same world, carried south generations ago by the same highland peoples. 

We have rarely had the chance to carry tea from Thailand, so an expertly roasted sheng from older tea trees is a real treat, and easily one of our favorite finds this year. The roasting is done at a level of skill you would normally associate with an excellent charcoal-roasted Taiwanese oolong, and the first couple of steeps drink that way: round, nutty, notes of toasted hazelnut and almond, warm and approachable. But there is a sheng underneath, lightly staring back at you the whole time. As you move into later steeps, that raw puerh character steps forward, while the roast settles into the background.

It is a comforting, rounded, genuinely easy tea to drink, and it holds up across a long session. I could  easily drink this every day.

Spring 2025 production.