Yunkang 10

A high-yielding Yunnan clonal cultivar planted extensively on terraced plantation land from the 1980s onward. Most inexpensive sheng and shou pu-erh, and much Dian Hong, comes from it.

雲抗10號Camellia sinensis var. assamicaYunkang 10ChinaAlso called Yun Kang No. 10

Where it sits in the botany

Yunkang 10 is recorded under Camellia sinensis var. assamica, the variety group one level above cultivar. It is associated with China, which is where it was selected or is most widely planted rather than the only place it grows.

Registration code: Yunkang 10. A breeding or registration code identifies the selection in an institutional register and is often the name a grower uses when the trade name is not.

Also transliterated as: yun kang shi hao.

What the plant is like

The usual contrast drawn between 'plantation' and 'old arbour' pu-erh is largely a contrast between Yunkang 10 and mixed old seed-grown stock.

Why a grower plants it

Yield, hardiness, when it buds, what it resists and whether a machine can cut it. This is the half of a cultivar’s identity that decides what is actually in the ground, and it is usually left out of writing aimed at drinkers.

Bred for the problem a provincial industry has rather than the one a connoisseur has: how to get a large-leaf assamica crop off terraced ground in quantity, reliably, with fertiliser and a plucking table. It roots readily from cuttings, crops hard, tolerates the disease pressure of a warm humid climate better than the old seed stands do, and produces a uniform shoot that can be picked to a consistent standard — which is what a factory buying by the tonne requires. The cost is the one every clonal monoculture carries: a field of one genotype has one response to any new pest or pathogen.

How much of it is planted

Described across Chinese tea writing as one of the most widely planted cultivars on Yunnan's modern terraced tea land, and as the material behind a large share of inexpensive sheng and shou. The denominator is terraced plantation area within the province, not Yunnan's tea area as a whole, which also includes the older seed-grown stands.

How firm this is: Inferred rather than taken from a primary breeding or registration record. The dominance is consistently reported and the denominator distinction is the part that is usually dropped. No percentage is asserted, and none was verified against a provincial planting register.

What it does in the cup

Reported as straightforwardly bitter and brisk when young, with less of the layered returning sweetness the old stands are prized for, and as producing a sound rather than remarkable shou. As Dian Hong it gives a sweet, malty, heavily golden-tipped black tea that most drinkers would not distinguish from material off older bushes.

How much of this is really the cultivar?

This is the cultivar the entire gu shu and da shu market is defined against, and that is worth stating plainly because the contrast is usually sold as a contrast between old trees and young ones. It is largely a contrast between a uniform modern clone on fertilised terraces and a mixed seed population on unimproved ground, and the two differences travel together so completely that almost nobody separates them. A buyer paying a large premium for old-arbour material is buying spacing, root depth, genetic mixture, picking standard and provenance at once — and the plant is only one of the five.

Cultivar, growing site and processing all shape a cup, and the cultivar is very often the smallest of the three. It is also the one that fits on a label, so almost every commercial incentive runs toward overstating it. This section is on every cultivar page that has been reviewed for it, including the ones where the honest answer is “less than you would think”.

What it is usually made into

The categories this cultivar is typically processed into. It is a statement about common practice, not a limit — processing decides the category, and a cultivar can be taken down more than one route.

Dark tea and pu-erh — Teas changed after processing by microbial activity — either deliberate wet-piling or long, slow ageing.
Black tea — Tea taken deliberately through full enzymatic oxidation, giving the dark leaf, amber-to-red liquor and malty or brisk character most Western drinkers think of as simply 'tea'.

Teas in the catalogue made from Yunkang 10

Sources

TeaHQ editorial synthesis — TeaHQ

This page is TeaHQ’s own synthesis throughout. No breeding register or institutional record stands behind the account above, which is why the origin note carries its confidence in the open rather than reading as a citation.

How TeaHQ handles sources

Written comparisons

Where TeaHQ has set this cultivar against something it is routinely confused with, and argued the differences out in full.

Yunnan Da Ye Zhong vs Menghai Da Ye vs Yunkang 10 — The plant material behind pu-erh, and the distinction that the ‘old arbour against plantation’ argument is actually about. One is a mixed old population, one is the selected large-leaf stock of the manufacturing heartland, and one is the high-yielding clone planted on terraces from the 1980s.