Pu er tea has achieved widespread popularity in the West in recent years, partly because of its purported health benefits, which include weight loss, its rich, earthy flavor, and its ability to improve with age. As such, it has found itself, like goji berries and Himalayan salt, at the center of a galaxy of dubious facts and outright myths about its history, benefits, and cultural context. I myself labored under a host of fanciful misconceptions, acquired over the years from hippy folklore and the black hole of the Internet, that were only set right by going to Yunnan and discussing the topic with the people who have been growing, selling, and drinking pu er tea for generations. My intention is merely to lay out, as plainly as possible, my own understanding of pu er tea based on my experiences in Yunnan and my own research into this somewhat opaque and confusing topic.
So, what is pu er tea, exactly? It is something very simple, but explaining
it is inconceivably complicated.
In short, it’s a variety of tea from Yunnan, in the
southwestern corner of China, picked from large-leafed tea trees and aged. The varietal is Camellia sinensis x assamica, meaning that it is the same species as green tea, black tea, oolong, white, and yellow tea, but is a distinct varietal.
People often use pu er as a category to refer
to aged tea in general, probably because by and large the only aged tea
you’ll come into contact with in America is pu er – some fancy places also carry other aged teas
like liu bao and Tibetan brick tea, which, together with pu er and a few others,
comprise a class known in China as heicha - teas that mature over time as a result of microbial processes.
Heicha translates to “black tea,” while what we call “black tea” in
English is known in China as “red tea “ (hongcha). To make matters worse, many sources will
refer to hongcha, as well as oolongs, as being “fermented’ when they are in
fact “oxidized”.
Pu er, and other hei
cha, can more properly be called “fermented” because fermentation does occur
during the aging process, but more precisely the leaves are subject to a host
of aerobic and anaerobic metabolic processes by various fungi and bacteria in a
delicate microbial ballet that is more similar to, say, composting than making
wine. Or aging cigars – let’s go with
that.
Trying to describe the tea itself is no easier; because of
its dynamic aging process pu er does not have a single consistent color, smell,
taste, or even shape. Broadly, there are
two kinds - sheng and shu - and they can both be loose-leaf or pressed into
cakes of various forms. Sheng means “fresh”
and that’s what it is – fresh leaves are picked, roasted, dried, possibly
pressed, and then allowed to age naturally.
That fascinating process described above happens slowly, such that, over
the course of a decade or two, the leaves darken from green to black (hence the
name heicha), and the flavor mellows from a bright, fragrant fresh taste to a
mild tobacco/oak/dried fruit sort of neighborhood, finally settling into a
deep, rich, earthy flavor, which grows more profound and nuanced with age.
The other variety is called “shu” pu er. Shu means “ripe”, and it’s made through a
modern process (invented in the seventies) called “wo dui” whereby the leaves
are piled and repeatedly moistened so that they mature more quickly. The result is that you can drink it straight
off the line and it will already have that earthy, velvety profile like old
sheng – and that’s why it was invented in the first place.
I once asked a tea farmer what the difference between fresh
sheng pu er and green tea was. Both are
fragrant, grassy, and sweet. He said “You
can also call it green tea”. So,
apparently, if you’re drinking fresh tea leaves from the ancient trees of
Yunnan, it’s green tea, but as soon as you start considering its age as a
positive factor in the quality of the tea, it’s raw pu er. This demonstrates that tea is quantum in
nature, and will change states depending on the observer.
It also demonstrates that categories and nomenclature are
artificial designations invented to classify a dazzling array of teas that arose
organically. Not everything fits neatly
and unambiguously into one box or another.
Scholarship is noble but don’t let it ruin your day – the farmers who
grow it certainly don’t waste their time classifying their tea. In Yunnan, the predominant philosophy is, and I quote: "good tea is good tea; if you like it, drink it.
Very simple."
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