Yunnan province produces the vast majority of pu-erh tea. Indeed, the province is the source of the tea's name, Pu'er Hani and Yi Autonomous County. Pu-erh is produced in almost every county and prefecture in the province, but the most famous pu-erh areas are known as the Six Famous Tea Mountains
The six famous tea mountains are a group of mountains in Xishuangbanna that are renowned for their climates and environments, which not only provide excellent growing conditions for pu-erh, but also produce unique taste profiles (akin to terroir in wine) in the produced pu-erh tea. Over the course of history, the designated mountains for the tea mountains have either been changed[12] or listed differently.
In the Qing dynasty government records for pu-erh, the oldest historically designated mountains were said to be named after six commemorative items that were left in the mountains by Zhuge Liang, and using the Chinese characters of the native language of the region.These mountains are all located northeast of the Lancang River (Mekong) in relatively close proximity to one another. The mountains' names, in the Standard Mandarin character pronunciation are:
Southwest of the river there are also six famous tea mountains that are lesser known from ancient times due to their isolation by the river. They are:
For various reasons, by the end of the Qing dynasty or beginning of the ROC period, tea production in these mountains dropped drastically, either due to large forest fires, over-harvesting, prohibitive imperial taxes, or general neglect.To revitalize tea production in the area, the Chinese government in 1962 selected a new group of six famous tea mountains that were named based on the more important tea producing mountains at the time, including Youle mountain from the original six