2025 ripe pu-erh tea cake
Medusa’s Teapot
Jingmai-area material from Lancang County, pressed into a 357 g cake. My wrapper painting is titled La Théière de Méduse.
View at Yunnan Sourcing →Tea
I paint tea-cake wrappers for Yunnan Sourcing. Here are the teas that carry my artwork, a quick guide to brewing, and a few places I like to buy tea.
Teas with my artwork
2026 ripe pu-erh tea cake
Knight’s Chamfer
Single-area ripe pu-erh from Jingmai Mountain. Each cake comes in a gift box showing the full, uncropped painting.
View at Yunnan Sourcing →
2023 old arbor raw pu-erh tea cake
Han Gu Di
From Han Gu Di, one of the more remote villages in the Jinggu area. Wrapper design by me.
View at Yunnan Sourcing →
Design contest
Year of the Rabbit
5th place in Yunnan Sourcing’s 2023 wrapper design contest.
See the winning entries →How to brew tea, gongfu style
Small pot, lots of leaf, short steeps. Based on Yunnan Sourcing’s brewing guide.
- 1Warm the vesselRinse a gaiwan or small teapot with hot water, then pour it out.
- 2Add leafAbout 4–6 g of leaf per 100 ml of water — much more than Western-style brewing.
- 3Heat the waterMatch the temperature to the tea (see the table below).
- 4Rinse the leafCover the leaf, wait about 10 seconds, and pour it off. Pu-erh gets a longer rinse.
- 5Steep brieflyStart with about 10 seconds, then pour off every drop into a pitcher or cups.
- 6Repeat and lengthen10, 15, 20, 30, 45, 60 seconds… Good pu-erh can give 10–20 or more steeps.
Kinds of tea
Amounts are per 100 ml of water, from Yunnan Sourcing’s brewing guide. Tap a picture to browse that kind of tea.
Green tea
Fresh and bright. Yunnan greens are robust and take many steeps.
5–6 g · ~85 °C (185 °F)
White tea
The least processed tea: sweet and refreshing.
5–6 g · ~85 °C (185 °F)
Black (red) tea
Fully oxidized, robust and malty — Yunnan’s Dian Hong is a classic.
5–6 g · ~90 °C (194 °F)
Oolong
Partly oxidized, from floral and green to deep and roasted.
4–5 g · 95 °C+ (203 °F+)
Raw pu-erh (sheng)
Sun-dried, pressed into cakes, and changes as it ages.
6 g · 95–100 °C (203–212 °F) · one 20 s rinse
Ripe pu-erh (shou)
Fermented by “wet piling” for about 45 days: earthy, smooth, dark.
6 g · 95–100 °C (203–212 °F) · two 15 s rinses
Hei cha (dark tea)
One of the original post-fermented teas, sometimes with “golden flower” — sour-sweet and ageable.
Purple tea
A special purple-leaf tea from Yunnan.
Where I buy tea
Tea shop
Yunnan Sourcing
Pu-erh and other teas sourced directly from Yunnan and beyond.
yunnansourcing.com →
yunnansourcing.us → (US shop, ships from Texas)
My recommendation
Blue People Ginseng Oolong — Vital Tea Leaf
Taiwanese high-mountain oolong blended with ginseng and licorice root: honey-sweet and energizing.
Tea photos courtesy of Yunnan Sourcing and Vital Tea Leaf; each links back to its source.