Tea gone wild

The cultivation of pu'er has brought sudden wealth to tea growers in Yunnan, especially those with wild trees that are centuries old. Guo Anfei in Kunming and Fan Zhen in Beijing sip the celebrated brew and report.

With spring coming to an end, Iceland has again become a hot word in the tea industry. Not because of the Nordic island in Europe, but because of the skyrocketing prices of wild tea leaves grown in the homonymic village in China's southern Yunnan province.

At the first Shuangjiang Mengku (Iceland) Tea Fair held in April, the premium spring Iceland tea from Shuangjiang Mengku Tea Co fetched 120,000 yuan ($19,500) per kilogram at auction, beating its 100,000-yuan record in 2012. The remaining five companies commanded a little over 20,000 yuan per kg for their teas.