Mahei, three pressings, and a cellar in Ulaanbaatar
This vertical was born from Amgalan Chin’s patient relationship with the Lao Zha family, whose small workshop sits at the edge of Mahei village in Yiwu. In spring 2014, Amgalan first traveled there — not by the usual Kunming route, but after months traversing the old tea-horse trails from Mongolia through Siberia. He stayed with the family for two weeks, hand-selecting leaves from 80-year-old native tea trees growing on the limestone slopes at 1,100 meters.
He commissioned a single pressing of that year’s first flush: careful wok-firing, sun-drying on bamboo mats, and stone compression into 200g cakes. The remainder of the maocha was left in the family’s care, aged in their attic in loose form.
In 2019, when Amgalan returned — this time via the Trans-Siberian railway with a trunk of dark tea samples — he found those stored leaves. The family agreed to press a second batch, using the same technique, to see how five years of Yiwu air had changed the material. The 2019 cake was born.
By 2024, the tradition had solidified. Another return visit, another pressing from the same trees, still managed by the same hands. Each cake traveled back with Amgalan to his temperature-stable cellar in Ulaanbaatar, where the dry continental climate slows and refines the aging.
This set releases three points on the curve for the first time — a vertical of place and patience, not a hurried collectible.