What Is Single Tree Tea?

Single tree tea is tea harvested only from one specific tea tree and processed on its own so that it is not mixed with tea plucked from other trees. It is regarded as the most premium category of Pu-erh and oolong tea. Some books on Phoenix Dan Cong from Chaozhou, Guangdong Province, say that tea made from a single tree is called Dan Cong, but the term is no longer used in that sense today. In Phoenix Dan Cong, too, tea made from only one tree is called Dan Zhu (single tree).

In Japanese, single tree tea is read "tanshu-cha."

Under the same conditions, the older the tree, the higher the quality of the tea. However, the trees in a tea garden are not all the same age. Farmers grow new tea trees wherever there is space, and new trees also grow naturally from seeds that fall from the trees, so a typical tea garden has trees of all ages, from old trees to young ones. Large tea factories in Yunnan generally collect fresh leaves from several areas and tea gardens and blend them, while small producers usually collect fresh leaves garden by garden. Either way, the quality is averaged out. Single tree tea, made from only one old tree, is not diluted by leaves from other trees, so its quality stands out.

A single tree normally yields about 5 to 8 kg of tea.

Why is the name "single tree tea" not better known, despite its exceptional quality? You will hardly ever see the term in tea books. This is because single tree tea is extremely rare. Demand for it is enormous, and in most cases it sells out before it even leaves the producer's workshop, let alone the region.

Single Tree Tea Is Not Always High Quality

Any tea made from just one tree can be called single tree tea, so even among single tree teas, the quality varies greatly depending on the age of the tree, the altitude of the tea garden, and whether fertilizer is used.

However, not every farmer owns ancient trees that are several hundred years old. Depending on the producer, a tea sold as single tree tea may be made from a relatively young tree. Also, even if a tree is old, tea grown with a lot of fertilizer tastes thin. Being single tree tea does not by itself mean the quality is good.

HOJO's Single Tree Tea

In both Yunnan and the Phoenix Dan Cong region, we have worked for many years with producers who own particularly large ancient tea gardens even by local standards, and we buy our tea directly from them. Today, the purchase price of single tree tea in the producing areas of Yunnan is said to be 3,000 to 10,000 yuan per kilogram. The producers we work with, however, own a great many old trees of the 500-year-plus class that can each be processed individually as single tree tea. Because they have so many of these old trees, we can buy single tree tea at a much lower price than usual and also keep our selling prices well below the market rate.

In Yunnan, single tree tea usually means raw Pu-erh, but in addition to raw Pu-erh, HOJO has also made single tree black tea and white tea. Single tree black tea and white tea are extremely rare, and we had never heard of single tree black tea before.

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