2025 Yunnan Sourcing "Cha Qi" Raw Pu-erh Tea Cake

A new old blend for 2025! Our original Cha Qi was released in 2011 and has since become a classic Yunnan Sourcing blend!

Our 2025 Cha Qi is a unique blend of seven different Menghai teas, all harvested in Spring 2025! Strong balanced taste with tons of depth and most of all plenty of Cha Qi!

Design by Rising Red Lotus

What’s in the blend

• Seven Menghai mountain components chosen for complementarity: bitter-sweet backbone, fragrant high notes, syrupy mid-palate, and a long cooling afterfeel.

• All first-flush Spring 2025 leaf, processed with wok kill-green and sun-drying to preserve aromatics and ensure proper aging.

• Stone-pressed for an even, age-friendly density (not too tight).

Profile

• Aroma: wildflower honey, fresh cane, soft resin, hint of pomelo peel.

• Liquor: clear gold leaning toward deep yellow; bright and glossy.

• Taste: upfront Menghai bittersweetness that blooms into nectar sweetness; notes of sugarcane, apricot, and alpine herb with a mineral sweet after-taste.

• Mouthfeel: thick and buoyant.

• Finish and energy: strong returning sweetness (hui gan), cool vapor rising in the throat, and confident, elevating cha qi that builds over the session.

Brewing Guide

Gongfu (recommended)

• 6–7 g per 100–120 ml

• 98–100 °C water

• Quick rinse, then 8 s • 12 s • 15 s • 20 s • 25 s; add 5–10 s thereafter for 10–12 steeps
  Tip: Tweak timing of steeps to your own preference.

Western

• 3–4 g per 300 ml

• 95–98 °C for 2½–3½ minutes; 2–3 steeps

Flask

• 1 g per 100 ml

• 95 °C for 15-25 minutes

Details

• Origin: multiple villages in Menghai County, Xishuangbanna (Yunnan)

• Harvest: April 2025, first flush

• Processing: Hand-plucked, wok kill-green, rolling, and sun-drying, traditional stone compression

• Net weight: 357 g per cake (7 cakes per bamboo leaf tong)

• Total production: 280 kg (784 cakes)

• Artwork: Rising Red Lotus

• Packaging: matching gift box included (not sold separately)

Cha Qi 2025 is designed to be lively and deep right now, with enough structure to mature beautifully for years, true to the spirit of the original blend.

Each cake comes in a free matching gift box that features the full uncropped artwork by Rising Red Lotus. The matching gift box is not available for purchase separately.  NOTE: If the gift box arrives with creases or cosmetic blemishes we cannot provide a free replacement.

This tea has been tested in a certified laboratory and has passed the MRL limits for 404 pesticide residues as established by the EU Food and Safety commission. For more information about MRL testing and the EU Food and Safety commission click on this link.