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info -about us -news -order -contact -brewing -history -community -links teas -white -green -yellow -oolong -red -pu er -scented -blooming |
普洱茶 (pu er cha) fermented pu er tea Pu Er tea is amongst the most interesting of the Chinese teas. While the other teas are oxidized to different degrees to create the different flavours and classifications, Pu Er has an entirely different processing technique. During the first portion of the process, the leaves are treated much the same way as the other teas, but rather than drying the leaves after oxidizing (or not) the leaves are steamed and fermented. After the fermentation, the leaves are compressed into various shapes, and then stored until use. Much like wine, Pu Er improves in flavour and increases in value the longer it is stored. The flavour begins with a very smokey earthy taste, with a lot of spicey variety to the palette, but after the first few years of storage, the flavour becomes smoother and more mellow. The tea continues along this path indefinately, each year bringing a more rich and delightful flavour to your tongue, and the dollar value of the tea-cake increasing accordingly. Old cakes are very sought after and often given as gifts, or traded for other goods and services as a form of currency. The cakes come in a variety of shapes, the most common being bing (pancake), tou (bowl), or zhuan (brick). Some Pu Ers are packed into bamboo tubes and buried in the ground to ferment, some packed into melons or fruits and allowed to absorb the flavours from the fruit rind. Some Pu er is not compressed, and that is called san pu er (loose leaf). In addition to form, there are some other classifications of Pu Er. The primary classification scheme is sheng (uncooked) or shou (cooked). The sheng pu er is like a green tea, so it is not allowed to oxidize before fermentation. These are often called "Green" Pu Er teas in English. A shou pu er, however, is oxidized prior to fermentation, and so, depending on the length of time it's allowed to oxidize, the tea is either lighter, like an oolong, or completely oxidized, like a red/black tea. In English, these varieties of Pu Er are often called "Red Pu Er" for the lesser oxidized variety, and "Black Pu Er" for the full oxidized leaves. To make things even more complicated, the teas can come from a variety of sources. Though all the teas are made from the Yunnan Big Leaf varietal, there are three main types of tea plants used for this. There are the old growth original trees, which are very tall, and cultivated year after year. These are called qiao mu, or "tall old trees". The next variety of tree is the ye sheng trees. This means they were not planted, or cultivated, and occur naturally in the areas they are harvested from. I like to call these "free range tea trees", however the literal translation is just "wild trees". The last variety is the most common, and so doesn't have a special name. These are the short, pruned bushes that are cultivated on the tea plantations. They have a much faster growing cycle and higher yeild than any of the other plants. For this reason, the flavour is less refined, and contains less of the healthful properties that are found in the slower growing qiao mu and ye sheng trees. Pu Er tea has the extra distinction of being the tea that contains the most healthful properties of all the teas. For more information about Pu Er teas, please visit this excellent site dedicated to providing the most accurate information possible about these teas: http:/www.pu-erh.net If you have never tried a Pu Er tea, please accept my invitation to have a free sample of any of the teas on the list. Our current pu er teas and prices:
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white - yellow - green - oolong - red - pu er - scented - blooming
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page last updated: 01/22/06