2021 just got lit with the introduction of our Scarlet Fire ripe pu’er cake!

On 3/1/2021, the blend we had chosen for this offering was pressed into these 100 gram cakes (mini-tuocha of blend also available) and we could not be happier with the results. Not only is this tea completely passable as a dynamite ripe tea as we list this, but over the next year, as it settles and ages, it’s going to knock some socks off.

We’ve combined the dark cocoa notes of an expertly-processed spring 2020 Bulang mountain gong ting and a slightly larger 2020 leaf from Meng Song, the same garden and processor where we sourced the leaf for our Antwerp’s Placebo and tRuth cakes. On the sweeter, creamier side, the Meng Song area tea tempers the dark cocoa edginess of a Bulang gong ting, making for perfect balance.

Silky smooth mouthfeel, the tea liquor is thick and rich and we enjoy the buttery aroma with a hint of the scent of fine black licorice in the background. Experiment with letting tea cool a bit prior to sipping as it seems to round out the flavors nicely. Experiment. This is tea for your journey so make it the way that makes you happiest.

All leaves used in the production of our Scarlet Fire are grown in gardens far from big cities, pollution and spray-free. This is a pure as any of our offerings for we want you drinking the healthiest and most natural tea available.

The namesake for our Scarlet Fire is two songs that the Grateful Dead frequently performed together, Scarlet Begonias would segue into Fire on the Mountain. On set lists, that would appear as Scarlet>Fire, with the arrow indicating that one song, through the improvisation that the band was famous for, fed into the next with no break between the two. Here is a nice 1977 version of such a pairing.