Chinese Pu-erh tea is

Puer is

Pu'er tea is divided into two types - sheng and shu, they differ in the production process. Sheng pu'er is called young, green or raw, in Chinese - 生普洱, shēng pǔěr. Shu pu'er - black, ready, mature, aged or aged - 熟普洱, shú pǔěr.

Chinese puer tea is one of the few teas that gains strength and fortitude over time, like a fine wine. The older the puer, the more expensive it is. Therefore, you can buy puer for investment purposes. This primarily applies to sheng, as it ages naturally. After picking, the tea leaves are dried, withered, roasted, twisted to squeeze out moisture from the leaf, and in most cases pressed, but sometimes sold in bulk. There are many pressing options, but the most common is the pancake or flat cake form. You can read about other pressing options in a separate article: "Puer pressed into "different"".

Production of Puer

First, farmers grow and process the raw material (called mao cha – 毛茶, máo chá), then the factory produces the final product. Raw material for pu-erh grows in the south of China in the Yunnan province. Specifically for the production of pu-erh, an important aspect is not only the location of the farmer's plantation - high in the mountains or in the lowlands near the road, but also the age of the tea trees. The older the tea tree, the more expensive the raw material for pu-erh can be. The tea trees themselves can also be divided into two types: wild and plantation. Wild pu-erh trees are not processed by anyone, but it is believed that being deep in the mountains, far from civilization among other trees, they absorb the strength and energy of clean mountain air and the leaves of such tea trees receive more nutrients. Trees growing on plantations are regularly processed, fertilized and watered.

More valuable and expensive raw materials are always collected by hand, while ordinary cheap tea is cultivated by machine picking. After harvesting, the tea leaves are dried in the sun, or lightly fried in metal pans or woks. The next stage is twisting, and this stage again differs for expensive and cheap puer: hand twisting is used for expensive raw materials, machine for cheap. After twisting, the leaves are dried again, this is how mao cha or raw material is obtained. Thus, initially collected by hand or machines from trees or bushes in different conditions and at different times of the year, differently prepared raw materials are the first and one of the most important aspects affecting the quality, richness and price of the final tea product.

Dried and rolled mao cha, getting to the tea factory, is again processed in several stages. The raw material is steamed, pressed into forms (bin cha, to cha, etc.) and packed. Since 2006, each cake has been stamped with the date of pressing and packaging. Also, an interesting detail: many factories put an insert with the factory logo into the raw material before pressing, which is pressed directly into the cake. In this way, famous factories that maintain a quality brand are protected from counterfeiting. The cakes are stacked in piles of 7 pieces and packed in large sheets of tropical bamboo, or in branded boxes with a logo - such a package of seven cakes is called Tong.

Sheng Puer

Young sheng puer made from good quality raw materials has a light color of infusion and a fairly mild taste, sometimes reminiscent of prunes. Cheaper shengs made from low-quality raw materials are characterized by strong bitterness, but it is precisely by the fact of bitterness that one cannot determine how high-quality sheng puer is. In fact, each tea region gives its own aroma and flavor to tea, and much also depends on how the tea is brewed. You can read more about brewing puer in the article: " Science - how to brew puer correctly ." You can also read separately about tea regions on our website.

Over time, the tea leaf oxidizes under the influence of oxygen and sheng puer undergoes natural fermentation. Thus, the older the sheng puer, the darker, stronger and tart it is. The color of the infusion also becomes darker, and changes in the taste and aroma of the tea will directly depend on where this puer is stored. Twenty-year-old wet-stored sheng puer is strikingly different from sheng of the same age stored in a dry warehouse.

So, everyone wants to try at least once, and it is better to drink every day expensive, like the best old cognac, old strong black puer, but not everyone has money for this pleasure. Manufacturers decide to speed up the aging process and get an artificially fermented product "of the same quality, only cheaper." The Chinese are very talented people and they can apply this rule to any product. Just remember that this phrase is always put in quotation marks. Simply because you cannot get the same product, the same quality, but at the same time reduce its price. If you want to spend less money, get a cheaper and lower-quality product. This, of course, does not mean that artificially fermented puer is worse than naturally fermented - they are just different. Of course, there are other explanations for the invention of artificially fermented puer, but you can read about them in the article: "Puer - legendary".

Thus, in 1973, in the Yunnan province, at the Kunming tea factory, an experimental batch of artificially fast-fermented puerh was first produced, which was called...

Shu Puer

Since 1975, the Menghai Tea Factory has been mass producing shu puer. It is produced in the following way: after picking, drying and roasting, the tea leaves are stored in a damp place, doused with water, gradually heated and rotted. The fermentation process is accelerated by microorganisms. The tea leaves rot and darken. For about one and a half to two months, the wet piles of tea leaves are mixed so that the fermentation process is uniform, but still, compressed lumps of tea form at the bottom. Gradually, a new subspecies of puer was developed: "Geda Tea (疙瘩茶) or Tea Heads (茶头)".

The color of the shu puerh infusion is black and thick, like oil. In general, shu puerh is often compared to it. Many call the taste of shu puerh "earthy". By the way, I would like to sympathize with those who know what earth tastes like. In low-quality puerh, many notice a repulsive smell of fish or shrimp, although many people like shrimp themselves. Good shu puerh can be soft, velvety or tart, rich.

Collectible Puer

Due to its production, shu puer leaves the factory ready (熟 – shu – ready). It is believed that for puer, age is the most important determining factor that is responsible for its quality and price. This is not entirely true for sheng puer, and for shu puer it is completely wrong. The determining factor here is the raw material and the manufacturer. Therefore, when you buy shu puer, the last thing you should ask about is its age.

Of course, the older the collectible puer, be it shu or sheng, the better it is. But shu puer has over-fermented tea leaves and its taste will change slightly over time, as will the price. Sheng puer, a naturally fermented tea, increases in price significantly more each year. But then again, if you store homemade alcohol for decades, the composition of which is obviously dangerous to health, then nothing good will come of it.

The same situation is with sheng puer! It makes sense to store for many years only such a cake that is made from good raw materials. If maocha was used in the production of a sheng puer cake, then in 10-20 years it will of course become more expensive, but not by much. If an expensive and high-quality cake by default can gain 15-20% in price every year, then a cheap cake can go up in price by five percent in a few years.

Puerh culture

All this created a separate culture associated specifically with tea – Puer. How much is in this word! It is collected like good wine or cognac, and aged for decades. A cake of good sheng is considered an excellent gift for a wedding or the birth of a child.

Next, puerh is pressed not only into standard forms, but also into paintings, watches, medallions, keychains. You can find medallions of pressed puerh in the form of symbols of the Chinese calendar. A real watch, with a dial made of puerh, but with a working mechanism - isn't that an original gift? A painting depicting a three-dimensional sailboat and all this is made of pressed puerh tea. Small puerh keychains on strings are hung on the rearview mirror of a car.

It is necessary to immediately stipulate a certain subtlety that, as a rule, cheap mao cha is pressed into such gift forms and these things are purely gift-giving, decorative in nature. In any case, puer is definitely a universal successful gift, but if you have such a product and you want to store it correctly, it is important to pay attention to the following aspect...

Storing Puer

The first and perhaps one of the most important points on this list will be a reminder that tea is a product that very strongly absorbs any odors. Keeping a cake of good sheng puer in the kitchen would be a critically wrong decision.

The second point is humidity. If you store sheng in constant dampness, for example in a bathroom or unheated garage, the tea will become damp, acquire completely different smells and properties that are extremely rarely associated with good sheng.

It is also worth remembering about oxygen - do not pack the pancakes in airtight packaging, for example, tied cellophane bags. Sheng pu-erh tea must breathe in order to continue to oxidize properly.

The most successful storage options for this tea are: a pancake wrapped in its original paper packaging, placed in a special pu-erh box, and languishing peacefully on the top shelf between books by recognized literary classics.

There are also products such as puer resin and white puer. We will talk about them in more detail later.

Menshikov-Salyuk Dmitry and Kahansky Artem