After the rigorous crackdown of the Thai government and military on the opium cultivation and trade in the Thai sector of the the infamous Golden Triangle in the course of the 1980′s, the ethnic Yunnanese population of mountain enclaves in Thailand’s border region with Burma started experimenting with local tea species that were local to the area for hundreds of years or more. Despite quite respectable results with local Green and Oolong tea, these initially didn’t manage to establish amongst popular world class teas, and moreover offered little potential for a diversification of the local tea portfolio.