TeaHQ

Mengku

A valley in Shuangjiang county, Lincang, running north to south with tea villages strung along both flanks — the East Half Mountain and the West Half Mountain, which local buyers price as distinct sources. The west side, holding Bingdao and its neighbours, is the expensive one; the east side is cheaper and generally read as brisker and more astringent. Above both stands the Da Xue Shan wild tea forest, a stand of very old large-leaf trees at high altitude that is protected and only lightly picked. Mengku Da Ye Zhong, selected here, is one of the national cultivars behind a great deal of Yunnan production.

勐庫China1200–2200 metresAlso called ShuangjiangAlso called DongbanshanAlso called Xibanshan

Elevation

Recorded at 1200–2200 metres.

How firm this is: Inferred from general knowledge of the district rather than measured or taken from a source that states it. The valley floor and the ridge villages differ by many hundreds of metres, and the wild forest above sits higher again.

When it is picked

Three named crops rather than a flush structure. Spring — chun cha — is picked after the dry season breaks the growth back, and the pre-Qingming and pre-Guyu pickings within it carry the premium; it is the crop the speciality trade buys and in a strong year it is most of a village's income. The rains bring yu shui cha, summer leaf that grows fast, thin and cheap, and much of it goes into blends or is not picked at all. Autumn gives gu hua cha, picked as the rain withdraws and the air dries, and it is the second-best crop of the year — lighter and more aromatic than spring, less concentrated, and considerably cheaper. Winter growth effectively stops without a true dormancy. The valley runs north to south with tea on both flanks at very different heights, so the two sides do not pick together — the lower east side opens first and the high west-side villages follow.

How firm this is: Inferred from general knowledge of the district rather than measured or taken from a source that states it.

How production is organised

Household smallholdings, and primary processing done at village or family scale: leaf picked by the family that owns the trees, wilted, pan-fixed in a wok, rolled by hand or by small machine and sun-dried into maocha on the spot. Brands and private buyers purchase the maocha and press it elsewhere, so the value added downstream is much larger than the value added in the village. There are no estates in the plantation sense on the old-tree ground, and the smallest unit that means anything commercially is a named village rather than a garden. The east and west halves of the valley are priced as separate sources by buyers, so village identity does more work here than almost anywhere else in Yunnan, and the incentive to misdescribe which flank a lot came off is proportional to the gap.

How firm this is: Inferred from general knowledge of the district rather than measured or taken from a source that states it.

How the name is written

Also transliterated as meng ku, mengku. Romanisations of a district name vary by system and by vendor, and a packet spelling one way is not describing a different place.

Teas this region is known for

  • Bingdao sheng pu-erh — Sweet from the first sip with almost no bitterness, which is the opposite of what young sheng usually does and why it commands the price it does.

Other growing regions in China

The neighbouring districts are the useful comparison: they share a country, a grading convention and often a cultivar, so what differs between them is closer to terroir than anything a cross-border comparison can isolate.

Sources

  • TeaHQ editorial synthesis — TeaHQ

This page is TeaHQ’s own synthesis throughout. No external document stands behind the elevation band, the climate note or the character described above, which is why each carries its confidence in the open.

How TeaHQ handles sources