By the time when Chinese emperor Shen Nong discover tea, it’s a tree grown in the wild. Later on planters started to maintain it as a bush in order to make tea plucking easier. But still wild grown teas can be seen in Yunnan province of China. Ya Bao Wild White Tea is something that I enjoyed during my three years of stay in China (https://www.teasource.com/products/silver-bud-ya-bao-white-tea). Today the news (article written by Deutsche Welle) is about Miang tea trees, the forerunner of plantation tea, grow wild in Thailand’s rain forests. Nowadays, eco-friendly businesses are using these tree’s leaves to strive for the perfect cup of tea and foster biodiversity at the same time.

At Monsoon Tea House, tea caddies bearing names such as “Dhara Green,” “Jungle Black” and “Lanna Silver Needle” line the shelves like exotic candy jars. A local knitting group chats over specialty brews, and Mon Chaya, a 31-year-old tea grower, drops by to discuss her handpicked wild crop with Kenneth Rimdahl, Monsoon’s Swedish owner.

Rimdahl was visiting Thailand looking for teapots when he discovered a secret hidden in the Thai forest: ancient miang trees. There was a time when locals used them to make both medicine and a snack food called miang kham, which was made with pickled tea leaves. Some older people still do.

What they might not know is that miang is actually a member of the genus Camellia — which Rimdahl describes as the “grandfather” of the most common tea variety in the world. Intrigued by this ancestor of modern tea, he founded Monsoon Tea Company in 2013 and started paying forest dwellers to pick the wild leaves, which he now sells under his own “forest friendly” brand.

Today he offers tasting sessions at his teahouse in Chiang Mai in northern Thailand and talks visitors through the journey miang leaves take from the wild forest to fermentation, to create the subtle flavors his global clientele enjoy so much. He stresses that his tea collectors only harvest a small share of wild miang leaves, ensuring that the plants will continue to thrive.

“Tea With Nipun” has planned to share more details on wild grown tea in Yunnan province of China and down south region of Sri Lanka (Ceylon)

Read More: http://www.marketexpress.in/2019/01/miang-tea-save-thailand-forests.html

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