Ancient Arbor vs. Wild Arbor

[tearabbit]

I'm fairly new to the pu world. Although I have started to try out quite a few samples from YS, Houde, Nada, and Hojo, I'm still a bit confused about the advertisement of Ancient Arbor vs. Wild Arbor, ancient tea garden vs. wild vs. old plantation. My specific questions are really the following:
- When a tea is marked as Ancient Arbor, is it equivalent to Ancient Wild Arbor, or it could be just from some ancient tea garden?
- When a tea is marked as Wild Arbor, is it not from old trees (Gu Shu) then?
- What's difference between tea from ancient tea garden, vs. old plantation?
- What's the difference between tea growing naturally vs. wild arbor?

Sorry about the loaded questions, but it'll be very helpful if someone can help demystify this a little.

Thanks!

[MarshalN]

My suggestion is to ignore those labels completely and just judge the tea on its own -- is it thick and full? Is it good? Does it have good qi? Those labels are almost completely meaningless most of the time. I've seen enough cakes that are labeled as "wild" or "old" that are anything but -- so don't get too attached to what the teas are called.

[Drax]

From your questions, I think you have it right -- age has nothing to do with plantation versus wild, and 'tea garden' is likely a euphemism for 'plantation,' etc.

You might assume that wild = old, but that may or may not be true.

But all of that aside, +1 to what MarshalN said. We've seen way too many examples of teas with these names that don't match the names. You may be able to put more stock in it, depending on the vendor and the production, though, if it's important to you.

[tearabbit]

Thank you all for the replies! I have just started to learn the difference through tasting and looking at the leaves, but still a long way from being able to tell if it's 100% Ancient or wild or both.

I just have one more question:
if a tea cake is made from old plantation tea leaves or wild but less than 100 years, then would it still age well?

Thanks!

[TIM]

Thank you all for the replies! I have just started to learn the difference through tasting and looking at the leaves, but still a long way from being able to tell if it's 100% Ancient or wild or both.

I just have one more question:
if a tea cake is made from old plantation tea leaves or wild but less than 100 years, then would it still age well?

Thanks!

Depends on how you age them. If its dry storage.... then not really.

[tearabbit]

Depends on how you age them. If its dry storage.... then not really.

I live in Northern California, which is pretty dry. Does that mean Old Plantation and young wild arbor will not age well?

[slurp]

It seems different vendor in the west have different terminology. I searched to find these terms and came up with only the YS website. Looking at the YS website, it seems -

Ancient Arbor = Old trees
Wild Arbor = Plantation trees = Taidicha

I think the description as 'wild arbor' is quite misleading. There's nothing wild about these bushes, just plantation bushes. Not trees, not wild.

As others have said - best to disregard these terms and taste the tea.

[tearabbit]

It seems different vendor in the west have different terminology. I searched to find these terms and came up with only the YS website. Looking at the YS website, it seems -

Ancient Arbor = Old trees
Wild Arbor = Plantation trees = Taidicha

I think the description as 'wild arbor' is quite misleading. There's nothing wild about these bushes, just plantation bushes. Not trees, not wild.

As others have said - best to disregard these terms and taste the tea.

Wow, I'm shocked at "wild arbor" equal to "plantation trees" on YS. So the 2011 Wu Liang Shan made by YS is actually just plantation trees? http://www.yunnansourcing.com/store/pro ... oduct=1731
Does that explain why the after taste doesn't stay very long and was not even there after a few brews? Has anyone else had the same tea and similar experience?

[shah82]

Wild arbor, using the traditional meaning, is self sown tea from a bird's bum. Wuliang, Lincang areas have a great number of relatively drinkable wild arbor tea. Frankly though, something like genuine wild arbor are usually odd. Sometimes *very* odd. And we're talking about the drinkable kinds that won't give you diarrhea. The vast majority of legit "wild arbor" tea are abandoned plantations with renewed harvest and attention. The vast majority of claims about wild arbor at all are false or only has a sprinkle of leaves. I certainly believe some claims about wild arbor. YS's Bang Ma tastes medicinal enough such that I'd readily believe it was wild arbor, but it's not something I'd ever want to drink outside of certain purposes.

[slurp]

I might be wrong, but this is my interpretation of these labels. Otherwise why the big price differences. It seems they want to make some premium cakes and some cheap cakes. All the cheap cakes they label as 'wild arbor'. What else could they be, if not plantation material at this cheap price.

[gasninja]

Wild arbor, using the traditional meaning, is self sown tea from a bird's bum

I just started growing some tea plants from seed this year. That would have to be a big bird.

[MarshalN]

While I hesitate to say that all "wild arbor" just means plantation (I'm pretty sure that's not correct) there are plenty of times when people say "ancient arbor" or "wild arbor" and it's not what's advertised. This applies not just to YS but to pretty much all vendors, across the board.

[Catfur]

I think most wild arbor trees are what used to be tea plantation plants, that were abandoned at some time in the past, and then returned to cultivation after some period. If the pictures vendors provide are accurate, they are usually of the scrubby little tree variety (<20' tall), not big trees (as true ancient arbor trees are), nor plantation bushes. Plantation bushes are usually kept trimmed at a height where workers can easily pick tea with ease, so even if they are pretty ancient (and there are some plenty old plantations), they don't get that big. If you let a plantation go (or manage it in order to grow trees, and not bushes), though, some of the bushes will grow into trees and others will get crowded out. If you let those trees grow long enough, they get big.

Pretty sure that's all there is to that (other than the misrepresentation, lies, scams, fakes, etc...).

If I planted a mesquite bush and some yuccas in my back yard (I live in the Chihuhuan desert), abandoned the place for 50 years, and came back, would you really be able to tell whether my yucca and mesquite were plantation or wild, would it even matter?