Why High Mountain Grown?

We often talk about how our tea is high mountain grown, but sometimes we don't give as much of an explanation as to why it is important to get your tea from mountain sources rather than from valleys and lower elevations. Here are three reasons to source your teas from high elevations rather than from lower elevations:

Tea plants are best suited to higher mountain climates. The earliest known tea plants were found growing wild and thriving in the high mountains of China, showing that the plant is ideally suited for this type of environment. The high mountain soil, water, air, and climate all provide a unique terroir that lends itself to the highest quality tea plants.

The higher elevation farms tend to be cleaner. A farm may use only organic growing standards, but if they are located at the bottom of a mountain and the farms above them use pesticides and chemical fertilizers, those pesticides and chemical fertilizers will eventually come down the mountain and end up in the soil where the tea plants grow. Higher mountain farms aren’t usually going to have any farms located further up the mountain.

Higher elevation farms are typically more bio diverse. When you look for tea, try to avoid tea from farms that strip the land in order to plant tea crops. Instead look for farms that allow the native grasses and plants to continue growing around the tea plants. The tea plants take longer to grow in these types of environments, but the flavor is much better and more rounded than teas from strictly monoculture tea farms.