 PU'ER TEA
Also know as PU-ERH and P'UERH TEA
P'UERH is the original spelling but it has been anglicized several times during its westward expanding use. It is manufactured in the Pu'er tea
district of southern Yunnan Province in China. It takes its name from the small city of Pu'er and is only a few hundred miles from the Laos and Burma border.
This tea is well known throughout the medicine shops of China, and is highly regarded for its medicinal qualities as a digestive, weight reducer and nerve stimulant. The leaves have a
marked bitterness. They are plucked, panned, sun-dried, and steamed; after which they are either allowed to remain in leaf form or they are pressed into circular cakes of varying
diameters. Cake tea is the most ancient form of manufacture of tea and it has come down through hundreds of years to the present time. A method of preparing this tea was described by
Lu Yu in the first book on tea, published in China about the year 780 A.D. In cake form it is interesting to note that the cake tea of Lu Yu was wrapped in bamboo for the sake of
transportation and is still done that way to this date for the high quality Pu'ers.
Pu'er tea liquor has a flavor unlike any other tea in the world. It is somewhat earthy in flavor (not
repulsive at all) and has a long lasting flavor profile within the mouth or palate area.
What is Pu'er tea?
Pu'er cakes and Pu'er in general are said to have three reasons for their acquisition. The first
of course is the enjoyment of the tea, second the health benefits, third, and for some the most important, the investment potential. Puer became popular outside of the tradition markets of
Tibet and Mongolia, where for many years it was exchanged for horses, when it became sought after in Hong Kong for it's health benefits, and for it's mysterious quality of slow, natural
fermentation, that causes it to improve with age. During the Cultural Revolution a lot of the old cakes were destroyed increasing the rareness of aged puer. In 1973 a process was invented
to create fermented puer in a short time, from 40 to 60 days. Now the popularity of Pu'er has spread out from Hong Kong and Guangzhou, to Taiwan, Beijing, and Shanghai within China,
and the popularity of Pu'er has started to spread to the US and Europe.
All Pu'er starts out the same. The basic ingredient is called mao cha. Mao cha is harvested
and allowed to dry in the sun. Yunnan is the only province that grows tea that has a lot of sunshine and blue skies in China. One of the side affects of all this sunshine is some very large
leaf tea plants. All tea originated in Yunnan and you might be surprised to know that the tea plants are Camellia sinensis assamica. The reason is that when the British found the variety of
tea growing in India they named it Assamica and believed that it was wild, but had actually been planted along the old Silk road that ran from Yunnan and Burma into Assam. Even though
the origin issue has been cleared up, the ancient tea trees in Yunnan have still have kept the name. A lot of Pu'er produced is said to be made from wild tea trees, but this is not the case.
Wild tea trees are known to make people pretty sick sometimes, and what is called wild by Pu'er makers is in fact old tea trees that have been cultivated, and are usually over a hundred
years old, the age of the tree being determined by measuring the trunk.. Of course the quality of the mao cha is an important factor in Pu'er. The ideal mao cha is not
oxidized and is two leaves and one bud. Farmers typically bring their mao cha to towns and villages where is purchased by local buyers and sorted and then purchased by Pu'er
producers. Although relatively large areas maybe favorite places for certain producers to buy their mao cha, the cultivation is done by small farmers. Since Pu'er has become more popular,
many farmers are cutting their old trees to create bushes which have a better yield, so the number of old trees is decreased every year.
There are two general types of Pu'er, cooked and raw. The raw or shen (green) Pu'er is made from mao cha and steamed and pressed into cakes. It is the shen Pu'er that demonstrates the
miracle of Pu'er. It slowly changes over time through a natural fermentation process. The microbes present in the mao cha are not destroyed during the sun drying process and continue
their magic and over 8 to 10 years the raw tea is transformed from green to cooked black. It is the shen that is most valuable over time and starts to reach is full maturity after around thirty years.
Pu'er teas are elemental and mysterious dark, fermented teas which are robust, earthy, rich and grounding. Pu'er is often a favorite tea of the truly dedicated tea drinker. This aged tea
usually begins with a variety of leaf from exceptionally broad-leaved tea trees. The more mature leaves are used to make a crude dark oolong tea. This tea either left loose or punched into
cakes is then permitted to retain barely enough moisture-content so that the tea continues to ferment slowly over time. For this reason, Pu'er is best-stored open so that oxygen can
continue to refine the tea.
In understanding grades, it is wrong to assume that the 1st grade is the best grade for Pu'er as
there is only an incidental correlation between the grade of the Pu'er and the quality of an individual cake. For example, some of the most sought after tea if made from mao cha that is
larger still than grade 10 tea. It is always a question of taste. Of course if a lot of expensive buds are used in a cake, it will drive the price up, even if it is not considered a good candidate
for aging, so do not be guided strictly by the grade, think also about the uniformity of compression, and is if compressed to tight.
We work hard to give you some superior choices. We hope you enjoy them. Pu'er is one of China's favorite teas and certainly the world's most unique .
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