Tea Terms and Definitions

Overview of terms that describe different tea growing environments. 

This image depicts a forest, which is where unmanaged ancient tea trees are often located. 

Types of Environments

• Ancient Tea Garden

Standard managed tea gardens with older, dashu trees (100 years +) . We only source from non-dwarfed gardens that have over 60 % rainforest coverage. 

• Unmanaged Ancient Tea Garden 

Unmanaged tea gardens usually located within a forest, away from human intervention. The terms huangshan gushu 荒山古樹 or huangshancha 荒山茶 are used to describe teas from these areas.   

• National Protected Forest

National protected forests are known as guoyoulin 國有林 in Mandarin. The land belongs to the government and certain minorities have picking rights. Teas from these forests have a lot of strength and often demand a higher price than teas from other types of environments. 

• Ecological/Shengtai 

An ecological/shengtai garden refers to a tea garden with human intervention, typically with younger tea trees that are less than a 100 years old. 

• Transitional Tree Tea

This refers to tea picked from later domesticated uncultivated yesheng tea trees or as Mr Chen likes to say ye-cha 野茶. 

• Yesheng Tea

This refers to tea picked from uncultivated trees which can be slightly toxic to the human body. There are sweet, bitter, sour and spicy varieties of yesheng tea.