Tea is an extremely popular beverage around the world, coming in second to coffee as the most popular beverage in the world. When one thinks of tea, they may think of sitting back and relaxing in a comfortable armchair, cozying up to a roaring fire and then indulging in a warm, chewy chocolate chip cookie. Since first being discovered in China around 2000 BC, tea has evolved into a lucrative, worldwide market that has created some expensive teas most people wouldn’t dream of buying, let alone drinking. They don’t think about pandas and certainly not panda poo.
But, turns out, it’s all about the panda dung. Wildlife expert and Sinchuan University lecturer An Yashi is debuting a special blend of green tea that is expected to go for as much as approximately $35,000 per pound, Australia’s SBC.com reported. It’s fertilized using panda excrement.
Yashi has taken to collecting panda droppings from the Panda Breeding and Research Center in Chengdu, Pravda reported.
Call it what you will, but the panda excrement, dung or plain old poo, is to be used for the fertilization of what is the world’s most expensive tea. Turns out panda excrement is loaded with various vitamins and minerals that come from bamboo – what pandas primarily eat.
According to Yashi, those important nutrients end up in the tea through that fertilization process. And he plans to sell it for up to $36,000 a pound, or nearly $80,000 a kilogram, according to various reports
The tea is priced at 10 times the price of Zhu Ye Qing, which was formerly the most expensive tea in the world.
Pandas have a very poor digestive system and only absorb about 30 per cent of everything they eat. That means their excrement is rich in fibers and nutrients. It is packed with cancer fighting nutrients.
Priced at $35,000 per pound, the tea is likely to stay on the shelf unless the super-rich latch onto its appeal. According to the Daily Mail it will be sold “accompanied by a special panda-shaped tea set and two wildlife paintings.”
Apart from the Panda poop tea, another most expensive tea in the world, however, is a rare Chinese tea called Tieguanyin, which is priced at £1,700 per kilo (that’s around $1,500/lb). The tea is named after the Buddhist deity Guan Yin (Iron Goddess of Mercy). It’s an oolong tea, meaning its oxidization is somewhere between that of black and green teas. Luckily for anyone who buys this expensive tea, a leaf can be brewed up to seven times before it loses its flavor.
