How much do we really understand about the manufacture and marketing of Puerh tea? After a week in China’s Yunnan province in May this year, the author discusses the different types of puerh and how to choose a good one.
By Jane Pettigrew
Puerh tea is a relatively recent arrival on western shores and many of us still struggle to appreciate why the teas vary so much in character, quality and price. Many tea lovers still find it hard to understand the differences between authentic ‘aged’ puerhs, which develop and mature over many years, and ‘cooked’ puerhs which acquire their aged or ‘ripened’ character in just a few months.
For those readers not totally familiar with the different puerhs that are available, the options include ‘raw’ (sheng) puerhs sold young after a year or two; raw puerhs sold after longer periods during which the green character of the tea mellows and becomes smoother, more complex and mature; and ‘cooked’ or ‘ripened’ puerhs (shou puerhs) that attempt to replicate the character of raw puerhs without the long aging process. The teas are available loose or in compressed, nest-like shapes, or rectangular blocks, flat discs, small cubes, small nests, cylinders, blocks, or cakes shaped like flat-irons or mushrooms. Sometimes they are presented wrapped in tissue paper inside a box or are packed in bamboo leaves or hollow bamboo stems.
Raw puerhsThe large leaves and buds used to make puerh teas are typical of the yield from Yunnan’s tea bushes and trees and it is important to realize that the trees in the tea forests of Yunnan province are not, as one might have expected, varietals of the camellia sinensis sinensis but are in fact assamicas. This makes absolute sense when one recognizes that the trees grow on a sweep of land running around the curve of the foothills of the Himalayas from China and Burma into Assam.
To make fine, traditional, ‘raw’ puerhs, the freshly harvested whole leaves and buds are withered in the open air or in an airy room on bamboo baskets and are then pan-fried in a large, wood-fired wok before being rolled by hand. The leaf is then dried in the sun and stored for about a month in large bags. Then comes the vital part of the process during which the leaf (by this stage referred to as maocha) is steamed, compressed into cakes or left loose and then stored in special rooms or warehouses where the temperature and humidity are very carefully controlled. The absorption of humidity and the activity of microbes in the leaf during its slow maturation develops the familiar, complex, slightly earthy character of the aged teas. The teas begin to reach full maturity after 30 or so years and the conditions on which the tea is stored during this time is crucial to its final quality and character.
Some manufacturers store their teas in Yunnan while others prefer the humidity of Hong Kong, Taiwan or Canton. As Tim d’Offay or London’s Postcard Teas remarked, "Just as some wine buyers want to know where a wine has been stored and then taste it before buying, I want to know where the puerhs I buy have been stored and I want to taste it before buying. Regarding the UK market, the climatic conditions in the UK are not suited to storage and I would want my tea stored in Yunnan or Hong Kong and then sent over as required."
Companies such as Kunming-based Jin Damo (Golden Bodhidharma), whose teas are made from trees that range in age from 500 to 800 years, make their teas at the company’s garden in southern Yunnan province but then store them in special rooms in Kunming and control the humidity and temperature very carefully. The company makes 10-12,000 cakes a year (each cake contains 100g or 400g of tea) and these are stored in boxes that normally contain seven layers of nine cakes or seven layers of six cakes. Every couple of years, a sample cake is taken out and tasted in order to assess how the aging process is progressing and how the taste is maturing. Jin Damo customers can buy the teas at any stage during the aging process and can either ask the Liu family, who own Jin Damo, to store the teas for them or they can take them away and store them for themselves in the correct conditions to continue the maturation. Master Liu feels that by storing Jin Damo teas in the family facility, they have more control over the maturing process.
As with prices charged for good wines, the prices the Liu family (and other similar companies) charges reflect the development in quality that occurs in their teas during the aging process.
"Some customers who really know puerh and understand how the quality can develop over the years will often buy the tea when it is relatively cheap but will then store it for years, waiting for the quality and the price to go up," Master Liu’s wife, Dong Bi Lian, explained. Once the tea reaches an optimum quality and character, the cake of tea should be put into an airtight container to stop any further microbial activity.
The very best and most expensive raw puerhs are said to have been made from the leaves of ancient trees that have been growing in the forests of Yunnan for upwards of 500 years. The fact that it is forbidden to use pesticides, fertilizers and irrigation on these old trees means that their roots have to push much further down into the soil for sustenance and so suck up and absorb into their very being the true essence of Yunnan’s rich earth. However, some companies, in the words of Tim d’Offay of London’s Postcard Teas, "enthusiastically overestimate the age of the trees they use to gather leaf". It is quite common to come across claims that puerhs have been made from 1000 year old, wild trees but verifying such claims is almost impossible. Some of the old trees have a single trunk and climb to 34 meters or more and their height and girth are believed to indicate their great age. However, other ancient trees are much more stocky and short, growing to only 10 or 12 feet high and usually have several trunks, none of which has a particularly impressive circumference.
To help clarify matters, Sunsingtea in Hong Kong explains that "Yunnan has now divided the ages of the tea trees into 3 categories – Big Tree, Medium Tree and Small Tree according to their age. We can examine the size of the leaves, the thickness of the leaves, the thickness of the stem, the aftertaste … but of course we cannot tell the exact age, we can only give the approximate age – 50 years, 100 years, over 200 years, etc."
Extravagant marketing claims also beg a definition of ‘wild’. The forests of southern Yunnan are indeed home to tea trees which grow in a semi-wild state amongst other woodland trees and are not pruned and cultivated in the same way as happens at, for example, an Assam tea estate. But can these trees, which have been cared for, nurtured and plucked for hundreds of years by local villagers really be defined as wild? And the most ancient 1000 year old trees are carefully protected so it is questionable whether enough leaves are or ever were available to make all the very expensive puerh cakes that claim such provenance? Added to this is the fact that old trees flush slowly and when pluckers are gathering leaf, they must climb up into the trees and really search for young leaf sets. The work is slow and physically demanding and so, in some areas, farmers have cut down some of the old trees to make way for new bushes which give a better yield that is easier to harvest. The view from steep hillsides in the forests, where ancient trees grow in abundance, reveals new cultivated plantations in the lower valley areas. It is difficult to know if the leaf in certain puerh teas has been gathered from the ‘wild’ trees or from the cultivated bushes – of is perhaps a mixture of both.
Cooked puerhsCooked or ripened puerhs aim to offer the same aged character that raw puerhs develop over a period of up to 50 years but in a much shorter space of time. To make these teas, once the leaf has been withered, pan-fried, rolled and dried, the maocha leaf is dampened with water and then heaped and stored in controlled warm (usually around 34°C) and humid conditions to provoke the fermentation necessary to develop the required earthy taste and aroma.
The heaped tea is left for upwards of one and a half months, the tea being turned at intervals to ensure an even fermentation. The leaf is either left loose or compressed and then stored in the same way as raw puerh, or it is sent to market for immediate sale. The quality of the raw tea at the start of this process, the handling of the tea during storage, and the length of the ripening process obviously affect the quality of the made tea, and anyone who has tasted many different puerhs will know that the resulting teas can range from course, muddy and almost fungal to subtle, pleasantly earthy and complex. The best can be on a par with quality raw puerhs. Prices demanded for cooked puerhs vary but, since the aging process has been speeded up, they are never as high as that charged for older raw puerhs.
Cooked puerhs are generally made from leaf gathered from conventional tea bushes rather than ancient trees. Yunnan teas, by the very nature of the soil, the forests, the intense heat and the copious quantities of rainfall, tend always to have a lightly earthy character and this is accentuated by the aging process used to make puerh. With raw teas, the long, slow, gradual ageing process should develop a soft and sweet, aromatic, complex and mellow character with hints of wood and wet leather; with the cooked puerhs, the element of natural earthiness can be either pleasantly balanced and complex or, if badly made, overwhelmingly composted, harsh and unpleasant.
What are you buying?Until late 2007, when prices were still high, puerh teas were being purchased for their potential future value and the only factors that mattered to some investors was the age and provenance of the teas. But discerning traders and connoisseurs, while taking into consideration the age of the trees and the area in which they grow, use their experience and taste buds to select a high quality tea. As Sunsingtea, important puerh traders in Hong Kong explained, "We think experience with the tea is the most important factor. You need to see, smell, brew and drink the teas. Experience, the paper used to wrap the tea, and the color, character, smell and taste of the leaf, tells the buyer a lot about the teas on offer."
How can the wrapping papers help the buyer understand what is on offer? According to Sunsingtea, wrappers vary according to the history of the tea’s manufacture: "Before the 1950s, puerh was made by various tea shops on a small scale and they used their name for their brand. They did not use paper to wrap the teas but just included an inner ticket. All puerh from those times was ‘raw’. Then in the 1950s, all the famous puerh factories such as Menghai, Xia Guan and Guming were controlled by the government and the paper used during this period had a fixed design – you can distinguish the tea by the color of the ink, the thickness of the paper, etc. Also at that time, each puerh had its own serial number by which you could tell if the tea was raw or cooked. Between 1975 and 1996, puerh teas were still under government control, were produced for quantity, and were made from planted (cultivated) bushes – except for one 1985 cake which had some wild tea leaves in it. We can use those teas as a reference against which to compare wild teas. In 1996, the government changed its policy and allowed manufacturers to make their own tea with any design and weight – but with no serial number to denote raw or cooked."
Other puerh traders also explain that they base their judgments on experience and on their trust in long standing relationships with the companies they buy from. Dan Robertson of The Tea House in Chicago says "I trust my own tongue first and I have long-established relationships with vendors and I find in general that they treat me honestly. The markings on the wrappers can tell you who made the tea and when. As for the tree age, I still remain conservative. Sometimes I like to visit an old tea garden in Yunnan where the trees are 400 years old. The 80+ year old lady there still climbs the trees and has been caring for them her entire life. There is definitely old leaf out there but I suspect that there is much less than the amount of tea sold as such. Some people blend old with new so it’s hard to assess." Nigel Melican at Nothing But Tea also relies on trusted colleagues in China: "We stick to the less hyped puerh types purchased from a trusted vendor in China and do not rely on such stories as leaf ‘plucked by virgins from 1000 year old trees’". Edgar Thoemmes, who buys puerhs for the Canton Tea Company in the UK told me, "we rely on our trusted buying partners who live at the centre of the tea trade in Guangzhou – they are even after 10 years in the business – still mentored by a fifth generation Cantonese Tea Master whose family has been in the trade – specializing in puerh – since the Qing Dynasty." It is clear that successful buying really is dependent on years of experience.
| How to tell a ‘Raw’ puerh from a ‘Cooked’ puerh According to Sunsingtea in Hong Kong: Raw puerh • a young raw puerh has greenish/yellow leaves • puerh cakes are tighter • the wet leaf is soft and red brown • the taste is stronger with a stronger, more lingering aftertaste Cooked puerh • puerh cakes are looser • the smell is more fermented • the taste is thinner with less aftertaste |
| How to enjoy puerh tea If brewing cake puerh: Method1 Method 2 To brew: Surprisingly, the Chinese in Yunnan sometimes add creamy milk to their puerh to make a nourishing, warming, filling and comforting drink. |