Chinese Pu-erh tea

By Valley Green Tea

Posted On August 17, 2015

Chinese Pu-erh teaI have ordered some premium loose pu-erh tea for the family recently. My young child has got right into an aged raw pu-erh, describing it as ‘not green, not black, but the perfect balance of the refreshness of the un-fermented tea and smooth texture of fermented tea’. Three kilogram of the loose teas is taking up a box of the storage space, which fortunately is available at our residence. 

A flash of thought came into my mind: it would be only seven cakes if this was cakes. A further reflection of the advantages and disadvantages of pu-erh teas being in their traditional ‘cake’ form came up with following summary. 

Advantages of the cakes: 

  1. Less storage space
  2. easier to transport
  3. less likely to be damage (crushed as loose leaves) 
  4. facilitating the post-fermentation

Disadvantage of the cakes:

  1. needs to be breakup

Four to one, the Chinese have got it again. 

From many years of tea drinking and trading, I have noticed over and over again that there are little but practically meaningful aspects like these that the Chinese have fine-tuned over their long history of tea consumption, from planting the tea bushes/trees right to the end of making a perfect cup of tea. Call it perfection or obsession, this is how the tea masters were born, a nation full of them.  

 

 

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