What is “Forest Tea” or “Forest Puerh”?

 Over the last few years there has been more and more puerh being labeled as “Forest Tea” or “Forest Puerh”.  I find this supper strange because this terminology was never used to describe puerh until rather recently although lots of puerh has always been picked from forests.

I first heard of “Forest tea” when Shah8 introduced me to the concept in the comments in this post here.  I set out to try a few samples and try to come up with my own impression of what “Forest Tea” is.  Below are my thoughts and conclusions based on only a handful of samples.

1- “Forest Tea” or “Forest Puerh” is actually not puerh or at least is composed of a majority of leaves that are not conventional varietal puerh leaves.  Although it’s processed like puerh I believe “Forest tea” mainly consists of wild tea varietals and not conventional puerh materials.

2- If it’s mainly just Yesheng or “wild tea” (aka “wild puerh”) then why not just call it what it is which is “wild tea”? Notice that people and not many vendors are using the term wild tea or Yesheng ? I think it may have dropped out of style as people have realized that it is not puerh and doesn’t really age like puerh? I’m not sure?  Either way it seems to me to be trendy tea speak to market tea.

3-  But Yesheng puerh is different than “Forest Tea”!  All the Yesheng or wild tea that I have tried have consistent material- all one same varietal pressed into the cake.  However most of the “Forest Tea” I have tried have a blend of different looking leaves.

4- I believe the method of picking “Forest Tea” is different than picking wild tea and puerh teas.  When wild tea or puerh tea is picked certain varietals are targeted and that targeted varietal, either the conventional varietal for puerh tea or wild varietal for Yesheng/ wild tea, is 100% of the material in the cake.  However, Forest teas seem to be different in that all tea-like varietals within a specific Forest area are all picked at the same time and processed together without blending or sorting.  You can see evidence of this if you look at the spent leaves.  The result is a sampling of the actual tea ecosystem rather than a selection of a specific varietal within that ecosystem.  In this way there is a blend of tea like materials within the cake but they are not purposefully blended.  Often the tea is picked over a very spread out area of forest as well adding to the variety of the end product.

4- “Forest Tea” seems like it might follow from the pure Forest movement of puerh.  That is the movement of certain vendors and producers to find more pure and relative untouched tea growing in natural and untouched environments.  As groves of conventional puerh become popularized these vendors are turning to “Forest Tea”.  In this way Forest Tea is also a philosophical puerh movement.

Below is a list of “Forest Tea” posts, all great teas, but I wouldn’t call them great puerh…

2012 Yang Qing Hao Yeh Gu- this seems to be a very good and very early example of Forest Tea.  I purchased a single cake when they significantly dropped the price on this one.

2016 Yang Qing Hao Wujin Cang- a less intense, younger, and cheaper version of yehgu.  This one has more leathery tastes and less complexity than yehgu but more bang for your buck.

2020 Puerist Youle Forest Tea- bitter and intense cocktail of powerful energy.  Very wild tea varietal tasting.

Similarities are that they are all quite bitter, they all have an intense energy,  they all have complex sweetness and floral and bitter profile.  There is sometimes a certain emptiness or compartmentalized taste that puerh doesn’t have.  They all have very good stamina and can easily go 20 steeps.   

Peace