Research Trip 2026: Menghai (勐海) - Pre Trip Editorial Conversation

The episode is also available on YouTube and Spotify.
A full transcript is included on the episode page and below:

[00:00:05] Jason Cohen: Hello everyone. I'm Jason Cohen, the author of an Introduction to the Art and Science and Chinese Tea Ceremony. Today we're doing a special bonus episode on our pre 2026 research trip to Menghai. Here to talk about this upcoming adventure is our editorial team, Pat Penny.

[00:00:24] Pat Penny: Hey, hey!

[00:00:25] Jason Cohen: And a special guest coming out of behind the scenes for maybe just one episode is our podcast and style editor Nancy Lin.

[00:00:38] Nancy Lin: Hello.

[00:00:40] Jason Cohen: Welcome both!

Well, Pat, you and I will be on this trip to Menghai. We've already announced the 2026 research trip is to Menghai. You and I will both be on this trip and I'm incredibly excited. Nancy, you are a constant tea drinking companion and have excellent taste in teas, and you've been coming to all of the Talk Taste Triage that Tea Technique has been holding here in New York. So you have a pretty well developed palate. We even did a Yiwu focused tasting for the group followed a few weeks later by a Menghai focused tasting for the group. So I think you have a lot of questions, but before we get to your questions, Pat, how excited are you?

[00:01:20] Pat Penny: Dude, it hasn't really dawned on me fully but once I bought the tickets that was the first step of just like, oh yeah.

 You also gave me like a little preview of some of the things that you've got lined up for us, and I think that was the true start of the excitement. But yeah, I'm ready to like land in Kunming, eat a little shaokao, drink a little questionable beer. And then just straight up tea adventure for five to six days in a row.

[00:01:42] Jason Cohen: Kunming has great beer. It's the tea mountains where all you're gonna find

[00:01:46] Pat Penny: Yes, you're right

[00:01:46] Jason Cohen: knockoffs and brand.

[00:01:48] Pat Penny: We did have really good beer when we were in Kunming last year, so yeah, you're right.

[00:01:51] Jason Cohen: Snow brand. Snow brand, Xue.

[00:01:54] Pat Penny: No, but we hit up a bunch of micro breweries and those were all really good.

[00:01:56] Jason Cohen: Ah, that's true. That's true. We did. Yeah. The Kunming micro brewery scene is pretty fun. Really honestly, in China, I just like drinking the local pale lager.

[00:02:06] Pat Penny: That's almost always my go-to as well, but I feel like we actually did find some really great beers last year. And like we've both talked about this at length, like we're not really on a beer kick anymore. But like, it was, it was fun to check out the local beer scene. The local coffee scene was great. But I think we're gonna be pretty brief in Kunming this year and seems like we've got a lot planned in Menghai proper.

[00:02:27] Jason Cohen: Yeah, we'll be in the tea mountains nearly the entire trip. I'm super excited. This is actually a part of Yunnan that I've never been to. I've spent all my time in Yiwu. I guess technically I've been to the very edge of Menghai. But yeah, I've never been through Menghai proper. I've never done a trip focused on Menghai, and I don't know what to expect. Every year we go and our expectations morph and change and things exceed our expectations to change what we expect. But my association with Menghai is so much on one side. The factory teas, the plantations, the larger production, the scale up of the nineties. And then on the other side, it's all of the rarified stuff, Lao Ban Zhang (老班章) , Lao Man E (老曼峨) , and yeah, they feel like there's almost like a dichotomy, right? You have the very lowest of the low end, you have your plantations, you have your factory, and then you have your culty mountains.

[00:03:26] Pat Penny: Some of the highest priced possible puer as far as new product goes at ever.

Yeah, I mean I'm certainly very excited to see some of those regions, to go to Lao Ban Zhang. But even just to like be in Bulang in general which is where I think a lot of the teas that we initially drank when we were starting to drink puer at the Tea Institute. Certainly a lot of those, a handful of those were Bulang teas. And, as we got deeper and deeper into what Bulang meant and what some of the specific villages were, we learned more and more. But I'm excited to, I think, put some real context behind what these villages mean and what their teas mean beyond I think the stereotypical impressions that people here in the West.

[00:04:05] Jason Cohen: I totally agree. I mean, Bulang was my first love in puer. That was really the region that got me into Puer. I think, I think that's true for a lot of people, right? It's big, it's powerful, it's bold.

[00:04:14] Pat Penny: It's when you're in your IPA phase, right?

[00:04:16] Jason Cohen: Yeah.

[00:04:16] Pat Penny: Like it's the same thing. Yeah.

[00:04:18] Jason Cohen: Yeah. You go for puers, so now you wanna go for the extreme puers. And so that definitely shaped a lot of the early Institute days was a bit of my preference. We wound up with some great cakes. Cakes that even now I still think are great. But yeah, I feel like having spent so much time in Yiwu recently and really doubling down on drinking Yiwu teas and getting to know Yiwu teas, we're gonna go through the same thing again now with Menghai. We're gonna come back, we're gonna be total Menghai bros. Like Lao Man E or bust.

[00:04:44] Pat Penny: I'm ready for it, man. Yeah, sign me up. I'll be having like my Laphroaig of puer or however you wanna make a metaphor out of it. But I'm ready to have my palate punched every single day. No finesse. No lingering sweetness. Just punch me in the face with Bulang.

[00:04:59] Jason Cohen: No, we're go, we gotta go for the micro producers, man. You can't be going for Laphroaig. You gotta be like Port Charlotte.

[00:05:04] Pat Penny: Oh, I'm sorry. That wasn't an apt metaphor for you.

[00:05:07] Jason Cohen: Nancy. Go ahead. You look like you want to jump in there?

[00:05:11] Nancy Lin: All right, we like jump straight into Menghai specifics. So taking a step back for audience members that are maybe not familiar with Menghai, can we just have some background on Menghai, the region, the tea, and its significance in the world of puer?

[00:05:32] Pat Penny: Jason's looking at me for the answer, even though I think he probably has a really well structured lecture worth of information on Menghai. I think for me at least, like we had just mentioned, Menghai was definitely one of the initial areas where many of the puer teas I was drinking in the early 2010s was coming from.

But like Jason alluded to, most of the well-known factory tea is sourcing quite, maybe not the bulk of their tea, but quite a lot of the tea is coming from Menghai region. Menghai, I think for us in particular in this trip, a lot of what we're interested in, Menghai is where a lot of the tea processing for like shou puer is centered as well. So where some of the initial major factories were situated and where a lot of the technological and innovation development around puer has been seeded. So on this trip in particular, while we're in Menghai, I think we're excited to learn a lot about shou puer. But taking a step even further back, when we talk about the privatization of tea factories as well as the state owned tea factories, you have a very famous factory ending in the code two, which is Menghai tea factory.

So many of the most famous puer productions were coming out of this factory, even when they were labeled under (China National Native Produce & Animal By-Products Import & Export company) CNNP. And you know, this is kind of like a, a lot of connoisseurs are like looking for productions from, where some of the most famous recipe cakes like 7542 are coming out of. Jason, any other color you wanted to add on Menghai?

[00:06:55] Jason Cohen: No I, I, I agree with everything you said. I mean the big thing for me right now is actually, I wanna say as little as possible about giving a lecture that type of assessment before we go. Because so much of, I think the inherited knowledge and the inherited ideals were shaped by the Western introduction to puer during this transformation to the boutique era.

And we've talked about this, but we've had this bifurcation of the people saying, oh, you should just buy factory teas. And the other people say, no, you should be buying these expensive boutiques. And we drink both. We've talked about this. We drink factory teas and in fact, a lot of the factory teas are coming out right now are quite nice and elegant and almost Yiwu dominant in their aroma structure.

But so much of Menghai was driven by the development of Menghai tea factory and CNNP of which Menghai tea factory was a part of in, in that early period. Yiwu was too remote. It exported some tea to the factories, but they needed easier access. They wanted to scale up production. They did a mix of plantation. They did a mix of increased xiaoshu harvesting, planting harvesting while at the same time there was amazing ancient tea groves. There was amazing, barely cultivated, lightly cultivated forest tea scattered throughout the region with very unique flavor profiles in each microclimate and terroir. And so it was a harvesting production area after really Yiwu, which was the heart of where it began. But it became the bulk of what people were exposed to during this boutique era because of access and where things were located up until the Taiwanese and that group went to Yiwu and reopened Yiwu for puer production. So there's all of this very what actually in reality is very recent history that shaped our views of these areas. And I think so much of that history gets muddled in this conversation around Dayi and the debate on factory tea. And I'm somewhat reticent to say more, to, to cast further, further judgment.

I, I mean, of the things that we're gonna go to Menghai and find out on this research trip. That's one of the big questions, right? One of the big questions is what's the reality of what's going on? Because as we said, we were quite pleasantly surprised to find out that there's a substantial amount of gushu going into all of the contemporary factory productions. Does that mean that I'm gonna go and buy tongs of 7542? No, you and I bought a cake and we were quite happy with it. That was the first factory cake that I bought in, I don't know, what was it a decade for you?

[00:09:37] Pat Penny: I don't think I've bought a new 7542 probably since 2010 or 11. I've bought some age 7542 of course, but yeah, new factory tea? No. That's probably the first one I bought since maybe my first or second year drinking tea.

[00:09:50] Jason Cohen: Yeah. I'm happy we have it. And actually it tastes like

[00:09:53] Pat Penny: it was super drinkable.

[00:09:55] Jason Cohen: Yeah. Doesn't require a decade of age. Totally ready to go.

[00:09:59] Nancy Lin: Two follow ups here, but to Pat, what is 7542? You guys have been throwing around some numbers. What do those mean exactly?

[00:10:09] Pat Penny: It's just tea math. It's just tea math, bro. Yeah, so two, two is the factory code for Menghai tea factory. So when we talk about Menghai, this might get conflated as we're talking about these things, but there's Menghai, the county, which is an area that contains many famous tea mountains and tea regions, which Jason's named a few. You have the Bulang Mountains, which includes like  Lao Ban Zhang, Xin Ban Zhang, Lao Man E, Ba Ka Long, Ba Ka Nan. But there's plenty of other famous tea regions within Menghai.

And then there's Menghai Tea Factory, of which they have one famous recipe cake called 7542. They have plenty of other famous recipe cakes but 7542, the recipe was created in 1975. It's leaf grade four which is that average in between your tippy and your more coarse leaf. And then two, once again is that factory code. So there's plenty of other famous factory recipes: 7532, 8582. But I think Menghai Tea Factory, I don't know Jason if you would debate this, but I think they're probably the most famous nowadays for their recipe cakes.

[00:11:13] Jason Cohen: Yeah, definitely. I would say of the factory, they're the most famous overall.

[00:11:17] Pat Penny: The standard bearer. Really?

[00:11:19] Jason Cohen: There's like really the only, if you were in Mongolia or Tibet and you're like, ah, but Xia Guan (下关) .

[00:11:28] Pat Penny: Xia Guan all day.

[00:11:29] Jason Cohen: Xia Guan all day. Yeah.

[00:11:30] Pat Penny: Or you maybe some Hai Wan (海湾) bros in Hong Kong or something. I don't know.

[00:11:33] Jason Cohen: Yeah. But if you're gonna talk about factory tea, you're gonna have to talk about,

[00:11:36] Pat Penny: I love my Nan Jian Tu Lin (南涧土林) shou puer, personally Phoenix brand. But hey, Menghai is great. Menghai Tea Factory is amazing.

[00:11:45] Jason Cohen: I need a reay. I have a Xia Guan jin cha (紧茶) , the mushroom shape, mogu shape cake. But I think it was like 1992 or something. I haven't broken a chunk off of that in a long time.

[00:11:58] Pat Penny: A little iron flame jin cha or something. Yeah.

[00:12:01] Jason Cohen: Yeah. Yeah. It's a Fei Tai (飞台) one too. It's the special commission Fei Tai.

[00:12:05] Pat Penny: Higher quality. Nancy, that was question one. I think you said there was two.

[00:12:09] Nancy Lin: Yes. The other question that I had Jason touched on it a little bit about the Western market's entry into, was it factory tea and that was in Menghai. Can we talk a little bit about what is the western market's conception of Menghai tea?

[00:12:26] Jason Cohen: It's all over the place. It's really hard question to answer, right? Because I would say the tea world, the puer drinking Western tea world, that little tiny microcosm is split. What would you say, Pat? 50 50?

[00:12:40] Pat Penny: Boutique versus factory?

[00:12:41] Jason Cohen: Yeah, boutique versus factory.

[00:12:43] Pat Penny: It depends on your Instagram feed on any given day, but yes, yeah.

[00:12:47] Jason Cohen: Yeah. 50 50, 60 40 comes and goes. There's people out there saying you can't access the good stuff. The good stuff's too expensive or not available. Just get factory cakes. If you want reliable tea that you know is good to drink that you know is gonna age, just drink factory tea. And there's other people out there talking about all the three letter acronyms, B-Y-H, C-Y-H, that's a, gimme another one. There's

[00:13:11] Pat Penny: The boutiques?

[00:13:11] Jason Cohen: Yeah. There's, there's a bunch of everything. The three letter acronyms, people are saying like, get this, get that. And is, is one better than another? They're very different things. The Western conception right now is highly biased towards whoever your favorite vendor is. If your favorite vendor is pushing age factory material, and that's what you're drinking and that's what you're biased towards, or if you're vendors producing boutique Yiwu. So it, it is really hard to say what the overall conception is, but certainly Menghai is almost everyone's, I would say is, first intro to puer. It's the most prevalent of the areas up until very recently. Yiwu's acclaim has grown and grown. But yeah I think that it's a difficult question to say, like Pat said, so much is based on your little information bubble.

[00:14:12] Nancy Lin: Is the demand for Menghai tea more driven by the Western market? Like I, I don't know much about the production. Is it more, is it like Yiwu or other teas where it's mostly for domestic consumption and then just whatever the western market can grab, it grabs and that becomes its own thing.

[00:14:31] Jason Cohen: All good tea is dominated by domestic consumption in China.

Yeah, there's I can't think of a tea that would be, that the premium material would be destined for export.

[00:14:43] Pat Penny: We take the little slivers that we can get. We've talked a lot about Bulang, Jason, but you're kind of the the one who's written out the plans. Are we getting beyond Bulang? Do you mind giving just a little bit of a synopsis without maybe ruining too many surprises for our audience of where we're gonna go?

[00:15:02] Jason Cohen: We're definitely gonna go to a shou puer production facility. That's actually something that I'm pretty excited about. I don't drink a ton of shou puer, but,

[00:15:10] Pat Penny: But after this trip, we're gonna.

[00:15:12] Jason Cohen: We're gonna become such shou puer bros.

[00:15:15] Pat Penny: I'm, I'm ready. My wallet is ready for it.

[00:15:18] Jason Cohen: Love it. Love it. You didn't buy any of that Gongting (宫廷) Gushu Yiwu shou that I got.

[00:15:25] Pat Penny: I didn't. So I'm, my, my wallet is ready for shou puer like so much more than it was ready for Yiwu sheng.

[00:15:32] Jason Cohen: I did buy a little of that. I, I kind of like it. You know, it was like rainy day. It's cold. I'm sitting in New York, working on the book and it's snowing out and that's when I reached for shou puer. I love.

[00:15:45] Pat Penny: I've got no qualms with shou. My only qualm is that we're gonna come back in middle of March, April, and like for me in the Pacific Northwest, like winter is done. So I'm not really gonna reach for a lot of these shous until six months after we get back, which maybe is good. If I have a bunch shipped, then I'll be in good shape.

[00:16:01] Jason Cohen: Storage shock, let 'em reacclimate. You're gonna need a, you're just gonna need a second pumidor for your shou.

[00:16:07] Pat Penny: No, i've got a totally new system for my shou. I don't know if that's what we want to get into now, but I have a totally new storage system for my shou puer and it's been working out really nicely.

[00:16:15] Jason Cohen: Did you buy the metal boxes that I got?

[00:16:17] Pat Penny: I did not. I just went with an entirely new cabinet from West Elm which then within that I have Mylar bags and I've just gone sealed storage for my shou ware with Boveda packs. So humidified sealed storage, not just it's natural humidity. I'm going with the real small packs like the eight gram, and just shoving a ton of puer into a half gallon or a gallon Mylar bag. And man, like my tea has all just really been like fully alive, tasting vibrant. My shous are just tasting way better than they've tasted before. They were just in ambient storage before. I didn't have them in a full blown pumidor.

[00:16:52] Jason Cohen: It's just muted, yeah?

[00:16:53] Pat Penny: Yeah. So it's been a nice shift and it's good to know they're still alive and I've got tons more Mylar bags and lots of space in this drawer, so very excited to pick up lots of tea.

[00:17:03] Jason Cohen: That's great. Yeah, I invested in some new storage. I got some containerized storage boxes that are corrugated metal that don't have any smell, wiped them down really good, put some fannings in it and baking soda, let it air and then finally put in the humidifiers and the tea. But, I think I put in a few too many humidifiers the first like week or two, because that tea got, it, like you can

[00:17:31] Pat Penny: Hong Kong.

[00:17:32] Jason Cohen: Yeah, it, you can smell it. Now, now the box itself has a little bit of a storage note when I open it that every time it gives me like a little bit of like a skip a heartbeat. But then when you actually smell the tea, the tea smells great and I'm rinsing my shou anyway. So on first rinse, the tea is phenomenal. Like the humidity's there, I think it got a touch too high. And now that smell is just stuck in the box.

[00:17:56] Pat Penny: It's the shou box for life.

[00:17:57] Jason Cohen: The shou box. Yeah. I was never gonna switch out what teas were going in that box.

[00:18:03] Pat Penny: Permanently infected.

[00:18:05] Jason Cohen: Yeah, it's called,

[00:18:06] Pat Penny: That's literally like for clay teaware. That's the only thing people have ever told us too is oh, you can use it for anything. Just don't use it for heicha unless that's all you're gonna use it for.

[00:18:15] Jason Cohen: Yeah. What do you think? What do you think?

[00:18:16] Pat Penny: So wait. So we're doing shou puer factory, but anything else that you're able to share with the audience?

[00:18:22] Jason Cohen: Anything else that I'm able to share with the audience?

[00:18:24] Pat Penny: Or me?

[00:18:25] Jason Cohen: We're, we are going pretty deep in

[00:18:28] Pat Penny: He Kai (贺开)  

[00:18:29] Jason Cohen: in one area. Is that your top mountain? Is that your top pick?

[00:18:33] Pat Penny: I wanna spend six days in a row on Badashan (巴达山) .

[00:18:38] Jason Cohen: No.

[00:18:39] Pat Penny: Okay. No. There's one village on Bulang Shan that I'd be particularly interested in Chaozhou spending time in, but, out, out outside of the Bulang Mountain region, Hekai (贺开) for sure is one that I really like.

[00:18:51] Jason Cohen: Yeah. Bulang, we're definitely going to, I think we'll get pretty deep into the tea forest in Bulang area. That's something that we can definitely talk about. There's, there's a couple of areas that are a little more touchy that I'm sure we're gonna make our way into. And then we're gonna see what, I believe that we're gonna have pretty good access. And some of the control over the tea sourcing and the tea fields and production is pretty well in flux. And so I think there's about to be a pretty interesting sequence of events in that area.

[00:19:26] Pat Penny: That was a very cagey way of saying that, but okay. I'm excited.

[00:19:30] Jason Cohen: You know, every time we go to one of the tea mountains, we come back and, just about every time we go to one of the tea mountains, we come back with a whole stock of things and we talk about we're drinking dancong. We're drinking yancha and dancong. We're drinking Yiwu. Right? This is gonna happen with Menghai?

In Yiwu, the type of access that we gain from going there and doing the research and doing the work is really transformational. We're getting teas that are just not available in other ways. There's not even really all that market teas. On the other side, do you think we're going to experience that in Menghai, or is Menghai too commercialized? Or do you think we just don't know.

[00:20:11] Pat Penny: I think if our vendor connections are not up to snuff or our scholar and research connections aren't up to snuff, then we probably will not experience what we experience with you in Chaozhou. But if our connections are on a similar level, which I know you've been working on these relationships for a long time, then I have a feeling we're gonna come back and we're gonna be like, we thought Menghai was this, but Menghai is actually this and this and this.

And I, I mean, you know, we've drank lots of teas from mountains that give very different profiles in Menghai and we're painting with broad strokes as we talk about it here. But I think we will come back with a different appreciation for certain mountain ranges. And we probably will hyper fixate on one or two of them, depends on which ones we can afford. But there, of course, is always gonna be the backdrop of the factory tea and we'll probably dabble a little to get a better understanding.

But I think there's gonna be the hyperlocal rare productions that are still gonna blow us away with, not only the unique attributes of that area, but I think we'll find a lot of the things that made Yiwu puer great are things that will also make Menghai puer great. Just, different attributes will sing louder than others.

[00:21:17] Nancy Lin: How have you guys been preparing for the trip? Have you guys been drinking lots of Menghai, Menghai tea?

[00:21:22] Pat Penny: All right, I have a complaint here. Last year, when we went to Yiwu, Jason did like a full blown prep course, basically. He had one of our contacts send him tea. And he got, like a very deep intro into this region's tea, into the taste of gushu versus xiaoshu versus dashu versus mix pick from this connection. And we walk into some similar tastings where, you know, we're tasting with these contacts and they're saying, which one's Gushu? Which one's xiaoshu? And Jason already trained, he already trained for this event. Like he, he had a heads up. It was not fair. So I'm gonna let Jason answer this first. 'Cause I assume he's probably tasting samples. Like he's got contacts sending him things left and right. This man is tasting Na Ka (那卡)  and then he's tasting like Ban Po Lao Zhai (半坡老寨) and following up with some Lao Ban Zhang. So let us know. Jason, how are you preparing?

[00:22:11] Jason Cohen: I, I, I love that answer. I didn't realize it was such a competition Pat!

[00:22:16] Pat Penny: You literally said you were gonna win last year.

[00:22:19] Jason Cohen: I did. I did.

This is our first year in Menghai. I did a pre-trip in 2023 in order to go establish our connections in Menghai and to start to build that up. We haven't had that luxury in Yiwu to go build that up. I haven't had that luxury yet in Menghai So actually, I've developed this contact network and we're gonna go meet them face to face for the first time. But we don't have the guanxi yet. We don't have the connection and we haven't proven ourselves as scholars yet for me to get a box of sample material in which to train on. So I'm actually going in really just focusing on tasting just in my collection which is smaller now in Menghai teas than it is in Yiwu teas. I think this is just collection versus collection, depending on how you're training.

[00:23:05] Pat Penny: Well, that's very unfortunate for me 'cause I've seen your collection and while I'm happy with mine and I love it, it's not always the size of the collection, but if it's not just the size of the collection, the cost of the collection is very different too. And I've seen some of the teas that you have. Yeah, we'll have very different training sets. We'll see who does better or worse in what regions. But I'm also gonna try and taste through a bunch of my, not just Bulang area teas, but Menghai in general area teas. I do think that my Menghai teas do lean Bulang, so I'm not gonna have a lot of references outside of that. And an annual here or there. But yeah, I think I will have, I'll be missing some study material for sure, but gonna be trying my best to taste through as many possible references as I can.

[00:23:48] Jason Cohen: Yeah I've Bada (巴达) and Bulang.

Something that really congealed in the last research trip to Yiwu is this idea, we talked about it, that  Guoyoulin (国有林) flavor and this idea of are you having gushu, are you having dashu? Where the actual speciation of the bush is different or it's more tree-like and as the giant trunk can't fit your arms around.

[00:24:14] Pat Penny: Or just the propagation style being different too, gardening style. I think we still get flavor differences in the way that the teas propagated differently.

[00:24:22] Jason Cohen: Yeah. Whether the tea's been pollarded at any point, but I think that tasting in my collection. And you go from three different Bulangs and some of these Bulangs have this wild gaminess and then others have this much softer, still strong, but have this softer camphor. And then others have this effervescence to them. And I think some of that is, how good is the gushu? Is it real? Is it deep forest gushu, et cetera? I think some of that is just really cultivation, speciation of the trees. And I don't think until this recent trip to Yiwu, I don't think I could have pinpointed the source of the flavor variations from the same region. And that's something that I hope that I can come away from this trip with the ability to do in Menghai.

[00:25:09] Pat Penny: There are state protected forests in Menghai as well, so maybe we'll see, does Menghai Guoyoulin and you Guoyoulin share any characteristics? My guess is gonna be no, but we're gonna find out.

[00:25:23] Jason Cohen: Will the food be the same in Menghai as Yiwu?  Amongst the Han my assumption is that there'll be similarities, but I think that there's a lot more village shao minzhu (ethnic minorities) influences throughout Menghai than there are in Yiwu.

[00:25:39] Pat Penny: I'm excited for the food. I'm not sure I'm excited to gain the same kind of weight I gained last year from the food. We'll see if just as much lard is used in the cooking. But yeah, like if there can be one or two less snakes, then I'll be pretty happy.

[00:25:56] Jason Cohen: My assumption is Menghai region generally is a bit more developed and integrated economically, so I think it'll be less lard it'll be more Yunnan food, less mountain people food and more Yunnan food.

[00:26:12] Pat Penny: More similar to what we were eating in Kunming sort of style?

[00:26:15] Jason Cohen: Yeah. Kunming is not really mountain. Kunming has this Muslim Middle Eastern influences, the truncation point ,Tea Horse Road and Silk Road, southern branch of the Silk Road. It has all this influence that the rest of Yunnan doesn't.

I think we're gonna get more of the influence from the shao minzhu, the fermenty flavors, more of that Southeast Asian, Thai Vietnamese herbal fermenty flavors. But I think it'll be a lot more mainstream Han style. It won't be like hard mountain sustenance food, like everything soaked in lard.

[00:26:47] Pat Penny: But will there be moldy tofu?

[00:26:50] Jason Cohen: I dunno,

[00:26:51] Pat Penny: Because I'm, I loved that moldy tofu. You guys did not sell me on it before we went. I was definitely like, not for me. And it was for me. I loved it.

[00:26:58] Jason Cohen: It was like eating blue cheese. It's still,

[00:27:02] Pat Penny: it was

[00:27:02] Jason Cohen: still, it's still not my favorite, but it is like eating blue cheese.

[00:27:06] Pat Penny: I've got a taste for it, honestly. Like, I wish I could get it here.

[00:27:10] Jason Cohen: You say that. Fuschia Dunlop has a recipe for making it yourself.

[00:27:16] Pat Penny: Do I just have to get past the dick soup recipe?

[00:27:19] Jason Cohen: Yeah, it's after the dick soup recipe.

[00:27:22] Pat Penny: Okay. I'll do, I'll give either one of those. I'll give a try.

[00:27:25] Jason Cohen: You wanna explain that one? Can't just leave that hanging.

[00:27:28] Pat Penny: I think I can leave it hanging. Jason sends me a message on my work phone last night and I do tap to preview the message as I always do for his links. And it comes up as dick soup. And it's a picture of a bunch of cartoon like rocket ships in a soup bowl. And I'm like, I'm not gonna click this link.

I forwarded it to my personal phone. Then I opened it up and it was a very interesting article about stag penises from Scotland being used in Chinese cooking and TCM yang energy cooking for vitality. And it was actually a really interesting article. I don't know, Jason, if there was anything specifically you were looking for, but when I just got the text of Dick Soup, I was like I don't think I'm ready for this.

[00:28:13] Jason Cohen: Little did you know?

Well, same author Fuschia Dunlop has a recipe for the moldy tofu, so there you go.

[00:28:21] Pat Penny: All right. Yeah, it was a good read. So I'll give the moldy tofu a try.

Nancy looked like she wanted to ask us a question, and then we started talking about Dick Soup.

[00:28:29] Nancy Lin: Then I was like, I don't wanna ask that question.

[00:28:32] Pat Penny: Everybody, just open your phones, type in Dick Soup and click the first thing that comes up as long as it's a cooking article.

[00:28:41] Jason Cohen: Try to find this article.

[00:28:44] Pat Penny: Was it New York Times? I don't remember what it was.

[00:28:46] Jason Cohen: What's the name of his publication? Moldy Peach? It was David Chang's publication.

[00:28:49] Pat Penny: Yes, you're right. It was Moldy Peach. Yes.

[00:28:50] Jason Cohen: Is it Moldy Peach or Sweet Peach?

[00:28:53] Pat Penny: Something peaches.

[00:28:54] Jason Cohen: Moldy Peaches is an band.

[00:28:56] Nancy Lin: Jam band? No.

[00:29:01] Pat Penny: Alright, so I'm opening it again.

It is on Medium. Lucky Peach.

[00:29:06] Jason Cohen: Lucky Peach. Moldy Peaches is an anti folk punk rock band. Anti folk punk band, I should say.

[00:29:14] Nancy Lin: Okay, while we're on the topic of food, is there a sensory thing that you're anticipating on this trip that you're really excited for?

[00:29:24] Pat Penny: Bitter. I'm excited for bitter.

[00:29:26] Nancy Lin: Menghai Bitter.

[00:29:28] Pat Penny: All like a full week drinking Lao Man E ku cha.

[00:29:32] Jason Cohen: That's gonna be great. Just the kuzhong (苦种) of Lao Man E.

[00:29:35] Pat Penny: No, no tian cha, all ku cha. No blend.

[00:29:39] Jason Cohen: I love it. What's the sensory thing that I'm looking forward to? Obviously I'm looking forward to barbecue in Kunming. Best barbecue in the world. In Menghai, I don't know if we're gonna find it. But the Bulang people have purple rice. And I think that's some of the best rice that I've ever had. I love the village purple rice.

[00:29:56] Pat Penny: I was very into rice on the last trip. The random different rices that we received were all so good. I actually never think of that pre-trip as like the thing I'm excited about, but when we were there, rice was amazing.

Hot take rice in China. Good.

[00:30:13] Jason Cohen: Really controversial Pat. That's a

[00:30:16] Pat Penny: But it was different rice. That's the thing. I think this is obviously a agricultural region. I think they ship out a lot of stuff around the world. And they definitely save some really good stuff for themselves. And some of those different rice varieties that we were having were awesome.

[00:30:30] Jason Cohen: Yeah. As it's wet harvest terraced rice and a lot of it's higher elevation rice. Yeah. Deeply into the rice from Xishuangbanna, which translates to 10,000 rice fields.

[00:30:40] Pat Penny: Jason took the notebook out when questions about rice came up. I think rice is gonna make its way into the book for sure. Actually I hope we can see some like the rice or no, not rice, but sometimes you do have the sticky rice tea. I think I jumped right to the bamboo tea, though. I would love to see, while we're there, some different pressing and processing methods for tea, including like the stuffed bamboo leaf and all that kind of stuff. Is that a more Menghai thing or is that a different region?

[00:31:07] Jason Cohen: It's a Menghai thing. It's totally a Menghai thing. And there's two different sets of it. There's nuomi cha where the sticky rice is pulped and then compressed with the puer. And I've had only one good example of that and I thought it was actually quite nice. It was really a fragrant rice.

And then there's a bunch of different village groups, minority groups have unique processing methods for tea, including the roasting within bamboo, rolling in banana leaves, very You Le (攸乐) thing. And yeah, there's a few others, but that type of more indigenous, less Han style processing is very much a Menghai thing. And it's something that I hope that we get to experience more of. That's a little harder to plan. Because our contacts, our focus is obviously on the high end boutique tea makers. We'll need to go wandering through some of the village regions to see what people are making that day and see if any of it's good. But I would, I would love to find some. It's not something that I drink a lot of.

[00:32:07] Pat Penny: That's how rice is gonna make it into the book though.

[00:32:10] Nancy Lin: So this year will be your fourth consecutive year of tea research. So from the first year that you guys went to now, how has your research methodology changed? Like in the fields or even how you record the different knowledge that you're gaining, things like that.

[00:32:32] Jason Cohen: I annoyed Pat less and he annoys me more.

[00:32:35] Pat Penny: Accurate.

[00:32:36] Jason Cohen: No, actually Pat and I are obviously a mind meld and a perfect tag team, but I think our ability to make successful use of our resources, both who we're with and types of research that we can do has for the most part, I think we've matured in our research methodologies.

Pat talked about this on the last podcast, but we only just recently started using voice recorders and taking voice notes which has been incredibly helpful. But, everything about tea is connected to something else about tea is connected to something else about Chinese culture. And as we've gotten better and better, I dunno if better is the word, as we've gotten more and more knowledgeable in general, it becomes easier to understand and to place the specific knowledge into context. And even just recently in writing the books, recently the chapters have gotten a lot longer, but I don't know if you think so, Pat, but I think some of our highest quality chapters have been some of the recent longer chapters.

It felt like we turned a little bit about corner on the Yixing book, and now things are longer, but the details are more fleshed out and there's more back references to look at this chapter, look at this chapter, look at this chapter. I guess that just happens when you write 500 pages on a topic. But

[00:33:55] Pat Penny: Certainly, I do feel like, and this is maybe a weird way to state it, but it stopped feeling like I was reading a book that you were writing or that we were writing as a team. And it started feeling more like I was reading a book that I had to really seek out at the library on a specific topic. Like it no longer felt like a, I don't know, like a, a hobby writing project and now felt like the book we have on ceramics, the 1000 plus page on Chinese ceramics book that we all use as a reference text. It started to feel more like that where I was like, oh yeah, we are fully in this project and this is now, I believe, will be a reference piece for many other people, hopefully for years to come versus it just being maybe some of the one to two to five page kind of information heavy texts. Now I really feel the story. And I hope that we'll be able to convey, I think, that same level of writing and that same story as we obviously approach puer, but how we do this research will really shape, what level of story I think we're able to tell.

We're gonna be, I think, very focused on, taking of course, notes and pictures and trying to gain as much research material as possible. But I think, something that we do well when we do these trips and something like a technique that we picked up is the post-trip synthesis. So obviously these discussions are part of the process. As a team we always try to whether it's just the last day of the trip or the hours after we finished with our contacts over a couple beers. We always try and synthesize what we've seen, bring it back to a larger cultural picture, larger picture as it relates to tea, as it relates to people history. And I think try to just like take the information that we've gleaned and figure out what's the deeper story that we're gonna be telling. And that's something I think we'll obviously continue to do this trip, which will help to improve the writing of the book.

[00:35:40] Jason Cohen: Nancy, as someone who's been tasting a lot of puer, who's seen some tea production in other areas, what have you really picked up on? Puer wasn't something that you immediately said, oh I like this, right? You're southern coastal Chinese, you have your preferences. You didn't immediately take to it like you did say Dancong.

[00:36:01] Nancy Lin: Yeah. I definitely did not like, maybe if I was gonna bucket it as like the typical Menghai bitter woody notes, that I was really not a fan first tasting it. And I think over the last few years of just tasting more puer I've come around tasting more the bitter tea, I guess part of it is just a acquisition and familiarization of the taste. And so going beyond the bitter notes and the woody notes, like what else is there in a tea? And it's like tasting wine, right? Like when you first start out, you maybe pick the easiest thing, which is usually like the sweetest thing. And then slowly as you become better at just drinking better things you, you acquire different preferences. I would say that I don't like every puer tea, but I definitely have a better appreciation of it now.

[00:36:56] Jason Cohen: And how has your preferences evolved between, say when you first started drinking puer tea, which was with me versus after the 2023 research trip where I visited Yiwu and then after the 2025 trip where I visited Yiwu and then comparing that with some of my prior collection of Menghai tea?

[00:37:20] Nancy Lin: That your collection has gotten better?

[00:37:23] Jason Cohen: No.

[00:37:24] Nancy Lin: Or just you're able to get better tea. But also just as you guys gain more knowledge of the regions that you guys been to you can also, when we're tasting together, you can explain the things that I should be picking up on, which I think helps me better appreciate the tea that I'm tasting and the nuances there.

[00:37:44] Pat Penny: Jason was digging for so much praise about his collection there. How has my collection become just vastly superior?

[00:37:52] Jason Cohen: The opposite really. It was really a question about preference acquisition and my collection obviously has become vastly superior over the last few years, but that, that wasn't the question. It was about preference acquisition because you, 'cause you did gain a preference for puer even before the 2023 research trip, and then I came back with all of this Yiwu and I believe you certainly have a stated preference for the Yiwu, but how has that continued to evolve?

[00:38:18] Nancy Lin: I'm not sure.

[00:38:20] Pat Penny: You'll have a great answer after we come back from this trip.

[00:38:23] Nancy Lin: Yeah. When all he brews is Menghai tea.

[00:38:27] Pat Penny: Middle of summer, August in New York and just more Menghai shou.

[00:38:33] Jason Cohen: We wanna bring on the sweat.

[00:38:36] Nancy Lin: When I first started drinking puer tea, I thought that all puer tea was just like dank and woody and bitter. That literally was my conception of puer tea. And I think Yiwu really open up my eyes to like, oh, actually puer tea can have very different flavor profiles. Like it doesn't need to be mulchy, woody, very bitter. It doesn't need to have all those flavor profiles. It can be something completely different, which I thought was really eyeopening and I think in a way made me more willing to try different puers and be more open about it.

[00:39:13] Jason Cohen: You've been with the group, the Talk Taste Triage group, for the Tea Technique tastings, what have you seen the difference in response be for the gathered crowd when we taste Yiwu teas and we did the Yiwu focused tasting versus when we did the Menghai focus tasting? You can also jump in Pat as Nancy thinks about this 'cause you host your own tastings and education.

[00:39:38] Pat Penny: It's so interesting when you expose people who are, maybe not even newer, people who have maybe had puer before to curated Menghai tea samples versus Yiwu tea samples. I do think that people who are looking for the more expressive, more in your face teas, yeah, they'll gravitate towards Menghai. And that's fine. And people who like the softer teas will gravitate towards Yiwu.

But I do think there is an overall trajectory, just like we've talked about even today with beer, right? There is this overall trajectory, which I think we've experienced as well where you like the really intense things, but then you come to some of the attributes of those softer, more delicate teas like Yiwu. And so there, there's a joke, which a lot of the Yiwu producers told us or anecdote that basically is like everybody comes back to Yiwu. Because no matter what preferences you start to acquire, what kind of trends you chase, eventually you find that you really love the things that make a great Yiwu, great. That soft lingering sweetness is really hard to, I don't know get away from. That's a preference that's really strong once you develop it.

[00:40:42] Jason Cohen: Did you have anything to add, Nancy?

[00:40:45] Nancy Lin: I don't know if I have anything to add. I will say that I think during those tea tastings, a lot of the people that come for tea tastings are not always familiar with what is a Menghai tea versus a Yiwu tea. They may have some knowledge of the broad tea categories. So I think a lot of them do come with an open mind and don't have like biases of what a tea should taste like. But I think beyond that, some of the teas I think it becomes very clear that it's not just the taste of a tea, it goes beyond do you like this tea or not? And it is sometimes about body feel, which I think is really a novelty for a lot of people visiting and drinking tea. And for the first time they've noticed like the tea's effect on the body. And it's not just what is it that's going on in your mouth as you're drinking this tea.

[00:41:42] Pat Penny: We're still like a month out from the trip. Jason, aside from drinking tea, anything that you're doing between now and then to get ready?

[00:41:50] Jason Cohen: Practicing my Mandarin.

[00:41:52] Pat Penny: Yeah I gotta get on that too. I, I've done a bad job so far. Very little studying.

[00:41:57] Jason Cohen: Yeah, always helpful. Anything else that I'm doing? I think

[00:42:03] Pat Penny: Shopping spree.

[00:42:04] Jason Cohen: Shopping spree? Yeah. No, I gotta hold off until I see what these teas are gonna cost me.

[00:42:09] Pat Penny: True.

[00:42:10] Jason Cohen: Actually, the biggest thing that concerns me is storage. My pumidor is,

[00:42:15] Pat Penny: Dude, I just got my situation figured out. Like I, I've moved things around. Like I, I figured out the shou situation. I ended up Mylar bagging a bunch of just drink it now sheng (生普洱) , things that I don't really care that much about. And so I did open up a good amount of space in my pumidor just in time for this trip. And once again, I'll be in the same scenario that I was probably like last July when all my tea came in, where I'm just like, where the fuck do I put all this? So yeah, I'm wishing both of us luck in, in that area.

[00:42:44] Jason Cohen: I know. The organization is hard. Whew! Yeah, there's a lot going on. There's a lot to do.

 We're gonna bring back a little throwback. Pat and I are gonna go back and forth and ask each other hot or not on the specific tea mountains. Pat, I'm gonna give you the hardest one, Lao Ban Zhang.

[00:43:07] Pat Penny: It's gonna be spicy. It's gonna be hot. I think we're gonna be pleasantly surprised if we have the right connections.

[00:43:14] Jason Cohen: Lao Ban Zhang has the highest potential for letdown.

[00:43:17] Pat Penny: That is true. This could be the Wuyi of our Yunnan trip. But I don't know. I think you might have found us some people who are gonna give us a really good time. We'll find out.

Okay. Lao Man E.

[00:43:29] Jason Cohen: Definitely hot. I'm feeling good about Lao Man E. I'm thinking Lao Man E is gonna be, we're gonna be able to get into some deep forests. We're gonna be able to see some things. There'll be snakes everywhere. It's gonna keep all the other laowai away. It's gonna be great. I'm feeling real hot on Lao Man E.

[00:43:48] Pat Penny: It's not a mountain, but you mentioned it. What do you think our laowai count is gonna be? It's gonna be hot or not.

[00:43:55] Jason Cohen: Ooh. I think there are more laowai wondering the mountains on Menghai then Yiwu. Last year we didn't see any laowai.

[00:44:05] Pat Penny: We, we got a picture of someone who was in the same area as us the same day. But that was it. We didn't actually see anyone.

[00:44:11] Jason Cohen: But I think we're gonna see more this time. I think there's a higher count of foreigners.

Okay. Na Ka.

[00:44:19] Pat Penny: I love it. So I gotta say hot, but I think it has a lot of potential for let down. Definitely has a lot of potential for let down, but I'm gonna say hot. We're going all hot.

Ok, I'll give you a very random one with Xin Ban Zhang.

[00:44:32] Jason Cohen: Xin Ban Zhang.

That's hard. That's hard. I this say not, this is

[00:44:42] Pat Penny: Our first not.

[00:44:43] Jason Cohen: Is right. It's gonna be, it's gonna be village tea and I mean how much gushu is going on in Xin Ban Zhang? Do you know? I don't know.

[00:44:51] Pat Penny: I haven't heard of any.

[00:44:53] Jason Cohen: So I haven't heard of any.

[00:44:54] Pat Penny: But maybe that could be the, that could be the surprise.

[00:44:56] Jason Cohen: That would be the secret.

That's a good one.

[00:44:59] Pat Penny: I'm pretty sure they moved the village further away from the gushu gardens, which is why Lao Ban Zhang is the famous, older village. I think they move like a decent clip away from the forest, so I think it's much less famous tea, but hey, we'll see.

[00:45:16] Jason Cohen: I don't think we're gonna be on this side.

And I also don't know if this is actually officially in Menghai, but Pasha.

[00:45:23] Pat Penny: Ooh. Yeah. I don't know if that is officially Menghai or not, but you know what, either way, I'm gonna say not because I wouldn't be excited to go to Pasha. Just never had a tea from Pasha that I was just like, yes, this is my region. That's always been like one of the ones where I think when I initially saw it, the first time I saw Pasha was probably 2011 or 2012, and I was like, is that even in China? It just doesn't even sound Chinese to me. Now it does, but back then I was just like, pasta?

[00:45:50] Jason Cohen: Yeah.

[00:45:50] Pat Penny: I'm gonna, I'm gonna give you the Bada Bing. What about Bada?

[00:45:53] Jason Cohen: I like Bada. You've had a great cake that I have from Bada.

[00:45:57] Pat Penny: I just love the name.

[00:45:59] Jason Cohen: I like Bada tea. I think there's good tea in Bada. I'm not gonna say it's like scorching hot. It's not Lao Ban Zhang and Lao Man E but I'm gonna say this is like a simmer. Bada, I think is at a simmer.

[00:46:11] Pat Penny: Okay. Okay. I can agree with that. You have the itinerary. Is there anything else that we're hitting?

[00:46:18] Jason Cohen: I don't actually know if we're hitting all of those.

The itinerary is Yunnan. The itinerary is you show up and you start messaging everyone. You're like, does today work? Does today work? Because they don't plan more than 48 hours in advance.

[00:46:32] Pat Penny: That is true.

[00:46:34] Jason Cohen: Is there any other mountains we should ask?

[00:46:37] Pat Penny: The Menghai Mengsong (勐宋) ?

[00:46:40] Jason Cohen: Mengsong.

[00:46:41] Pat Penny: Like where, I'm pretty sure that's where Na Ka is located.

[00:46:44] Jason Cohen: Lukewarm, might be right? I don't know.

[00:46:48] Pat Penny: That's a, we'll take the Na Ka as a yes, but uh, I'm excited for He Kai, if we get there. I think it's hot.

[00:46:54] Jason Cohen: Menghai Village Plantation.

[00:46:58] Pat Penny: Hot. Hot. As shou puer, it's gonna be delicious shou puer.

Da Ye Factory cafeteria.

[00:47:09] Jason Cohen: Food? Great. I'm looking forward. Let's see what they serve us.

[00:47:13] Pat Penny: What about the tea? What tea do you think they're gonna serve us?

[00:47:15] Jason Cohen: 7542 thermos tea In those giant coffee percolators.

[00:47:21] Pat Penny: Eighties, 7542.

[00:47:23] Jason Cohen: I have no idea.

[00:47:25] Pat Penny: Just boiling all day.

[00:47:27] Jason Cohen: I hope so.

[00:47:28] Pat Penny: Okay. I think we've sizzled this one.

[00:47:31] Jason Cohen: All right, everyone. That's all the time that we have for today. Thank you all for joining us in this edition of Tea Technique Editorial Conversations. We'll of course be doing an AMA on the trip afterwards. So if this spun up any questions in your mind, please send them over to us. We're always happy to answer and engage. And we'll probably be in the mountains a week or so later after this comes out. So we're excited. Thank you all. Cheers.