Category Archives: Puer tea blogs

Tea House Talk: ‘Gu Fa’

I was riding through a village when I realised I was almost out of petrol. I stopped and went into a house to ask where in the village I could buy some. (There’s pretty much always someone in a village who will sell you a bottle of petrol. Usually 1.5 liter old mineral water bottles). They were in the back drinking tea and also had some fresh leaves wilting on a bo ji nearby. The tea they gave me reminded me a little of a Darjeeling type tea. ‘hong cha‘ I commented. ‘No’ they said, ‘这是古法！’ This is Gu Fa!

What the heck is ‘Gu Fa’? I wondered. They explained the process to me: fresh leaves are wilted (for maybe 12-13 hours) then the tea is lightly rolled after which it’s put out to dry in the sun. No sha qing.

The proposition is that in ‘ancient times’, whenever they were, lao bai xing may well not have had access to a wok to fire tea in and would have found some other way to process tea to their liking.

A year or two before that I had been introduced to some tea folks in Menghai. The lao ban described a similar process to me. He too maintained that this would have been how local tea was made in the past. He reckoned he had several tons of it stashed away waiting for the day when it was aged enough to pull it out and sell.

Quite some time later while having a discussion with a friend about it, he told me he’d read something online on the same topic in which it was proposed that the term ‘sheng cha/raw tea’ was originally used for a tea that was made more or less in the same manor as the contemporary ‘gu fa’, i.e. not fired/’cooked’, and that ‘shu cha/cooked tea’ was used to refer to tea that was pan fired, somehow in the same way that sheng cha is now made.

Gu Fa sounds like a marketing gimmick, but the idea is not that outlandish, and the tea is actually pretty nice. It’s not Puer, and it’s not really bai cha. It’s something else. With some qualities similar to a lightly fermented black tea.

‘Wu Long’ Puer. Rolling, Rolling, Rolling

A while back I saw the term ‘Wu Long’ Puer recently re-appeared on the English language internet, so I thought it worth revisiting this old topic as it comes up from time to time. I’m not sure when was the first time it was raised on the internet but I remember seeing something from maybe 2005 or 06. It seemed like it could be an appropriate coda to my previous post about processing tea and the implications for ageing.

To be clear, this is an English language term with, as far as I know, no Chinese equivalent. So it’s describing something which is described in a different way in Chinese. The idea seemed to be formulated from the perception that there was a new style of Puer tea that had been oxidised in a way that a ‘traditional’ Sheng Puer wasn’t.

The suggestion was that the tea had been rolled more (more heavily/longer?) with the effect that the tea flavour steeped out much more quickly and the tea had qualities which were reminiscent of Wulong tea.

My guess at this point is that that’s a misunderstanding. I think it’s not likely to have the effect that some folks have suggested. Rolling more heavily, rolling twice, etc. are not new, and whilst, of course, bruising the leaves more is going to break down more of the cell walls and may well result in more oxidation, I somehow doubt it would produce the effect talked about.

If anything, over the last ten years or so, there has been a trend toward lighter rolling, 抛跳/pao tiao, rather than tighter, originally driven, it seems, by Taiwanese demand. People coming to Yunnan and demanding tea that was rolled in a way that they thought looked better. Some tea farmers have told me that Taiwanese customers wanted them to roll straight – backwards and forwards – as opposed to a circular motion to create rolled leaves that were more needle shaped. Less twisted. This is not standard Puer fare. Traditionally, if anything, people rolled tea more tightly pre 2000s, so this doesn’t easily fit with the proposition that post 2000s Puer was rolled more, creating an ‘Wu Long’ type flavour/aroma.

At least, if additional or heavier rolling is a factor, it’s more likely that any extra rolling in tandem with other factors produced the result talked about. Sure, it’s difficult, I haven’t drunk the tea that someone else drank that made them think it had been ‘wulonged’, but the variables in tea making are not infinite.

Another factor with heavier rolling is that the flavours will be steeped out more quickly, so the tea will be less ‘nai pao’ / 耐泡 and the flavour in the early steeps more intense. This is also another reason why there has been a trend to lighter rolling: to make early steeps less intense and to have the tea steep more slowly.

Of course, if other things are done in the processing of Puer, to reduce bitterness and astringency for example, then heavier rolling is not going to produce such a marked effect, and the tea will generally have poorer structure, and steepability.

The only time I have heard a term in Chinese which I would say is referring to the same thing was many years ago when someone referred to a raw Puer as ‘fa jiao cha’/发酵茶/fermented tea. As now, the understanding was that it was tea that had been processed in such a way as to cause it to ferment in a way similar to other types of fermented tea: Wu Long, black tea, etc. and not proper Puer processing.

But even fairly excessive wilting – with autumn tea this is not that uncommon, where the tea is picked in the afternoon and then left overnight to be fired early the next morning – if the tea leaves are piled at a correct depth, it will not on its own produce an ‘Wu Long’ kind of fermentation. So it seems that it’s more likely a combination of factors of which excessive wilting may be a part.

One thing that can cause a light ‘fermented’ aroma is if the sha qing is not done well, or a combination of tan qing and sha qing are not managed properly, which can result in the stems of the tea leaves, which typically have more moisture in them, not being ‘fired’ properly, and enzyme activity not being arrested sufficiently. The result being that once the tea comes out of the pan it continues to ferment, producing an aroma in the dry tea that is reminiscent of a fermented tea -‘hong shu wei/红薯味/sweet potato taste, as some people call it. Personally, I wouldn’t think it was similar to Wulong, but who knows.

‘King of Tea Trees’ A Sequel

I don’t recall, a decade or so ago anyone much thought of picking tea from single trees. ‘单株/dan zhu’. It’s a thing that started in the last few years. Perhaps as Puer tea has become more expensive and as tea drinkers have been exploring the world of Puer more deeply. I guess it’s also a marketing thing: selling exclusivity. But since every ancient tea tree is unique, there is some logic to it also: even trees in the same tea garden can be quite different. Sometimes there can be a number of sub-varieties or forms of sinensis assamica growing next to each other: one more bitter, another sweeter. It’s done with larger, older trees where a single tree might only flush once a year in Spring, and may typically yield say five to ten kilos of fresh tea, which might produce a couple of kilos at most of maocha.

Xishuangbanna, Menghai Ancient tea tree No 46.

A few weeks back a tea farmer friend took me to see a tea tree which is clearly quite old: the girth at the base is probably getting on for 100cm and the trees branches cover an area of at least 10㎡, helped by the fact that it must have been polarded a long time ago. Let’s say it’s six to eight hundred years old, judging by other trees in the vicinity that are of known age.

‘Have you drunk tea from this tree?’ I asked. He hadn’t, but a few days later he called me up. ‘I’ve got some.’ he said. ‘Some what?’ I asked. ‘Some tea from that tree.’

I was busy and It was nearly a month before I managed to get round to visiting him. When I did I was expecting the tea to be long gone, but he’d kept it.

The fragrance is excellent, with floral qualities and a hint of something I can’t put my finger on – vaguely citrus. The broth is rather fine, certainly compared to ‘da zhong huo‘ from the area. It has a very slight bitterness and good ‘hou yun’. The broth is clear and a little viscous. Apart from a very slight feeling on the tip of the tongue, which is frankly not enough to detract from its attributes, its really a very nice tea. I brought a handfull back to drink with some friends who at first thought it was a Xiang Ming xiao ye zhong tea. Not at all like the Menghai tea that it is.

The processing looks like it was pretty good. Very even and no red stems.