Tag Archives: Puer tea

Conversations – on Wilting Shai Qing Mao Cha

The issues of wilting Puer tea, good and bad tea making processes, and the consequent suitability of a tea for ageing are perennial.

Tan Lao Shi is probably in her 50’s. She’s already retired. She grew up in Luo Shui Dong where her family have been tea farmers for several generations. Her childhood, up until her early teens was spent at Luo Shui Dong.

I asked her about how the tea making process of Puer now varies from when she was young and specifically about the weidiao process; Could she confirm that wilting fresh leaves before frying was a recent introduction in the Puer making process.

The idea, she said, is only from the late 80’s or early 90’s. Prior to that there wasn’t that thinking. But of course, the tea was wilted. Not to wilt the leaves; “zhe shi bu ke neng de.” – ‘It’s impossible the tea was not wilted.’ she says.

She went on to describe a typical day and the tea making process; after breakfast, around 8 a.m her family would go to their tea garden to pick leaves. “The garden was as far as from here to the school. Not far.” (Jinglan cha cheng to the local primary school – perhaps 100 metres) “They would pick tea until around 2pm, putting it in big baskets, then they would bring it back to the house. In the afternoon, they would go again and pick tea, up till maybe 8 at night.”

Tan described how only when the afternoon’s tea was brought back to the house, and the morning and the afternoon tea was put together would it be fried and rolled. In her estimate, at the very least, tea was left for 5 hours before frying; so, whether it was done unwittingly or not, the tea was wilted. In fact, the idea of picking a relatively small amount of tea and taking it back to the house to process immediately seemed implausible to her.

Her explanation for lack of historical evidence is that people wilted the tea unknowingly. They were just putting it to one side until they were ready to begin frying. There was no specific aim. She challenges me to find the words weidiao or tan qing in any literature. “There’s no mention of it because no one recorded the information, but it still happened.”

She went on to talk about how the tea was piled up and not spread out on mats as is the manner now and how, as children, they would jump into the big piles of tea which was fun, but because they were worried about their parents being angry when they returned to the house, they would sweep all the tea back up into a pile prior to their parents return. So this tea was most certainly oxidised.

She talked about how, prior to the early 50’s, they would pick tea fairly crudely, picking older leaves along with younger ones. After that (probably 1952-53) they would still not be selective in their picking, but when they took the tea back to the house they would separate out the older leaves from the younger tips and leaves – up to maybe tip and three leaves.

The tea made form these older leaves would be put in baskets after rolling, bamboo skins were placed on top and stones ( she described the kind of large stones that were used for sharpening knives) were placed on top of the bamboo skins to weigh them down. As a consequence the leaves were tightly compressed. This tea was left for two nights. “We used to put eggs in the tea. After three days the eggs were cooked.”

She also described making autumn tea and how the weather in Luo Shui Dong could be quite cold, but when they put their hands in the tea it was hot. On the third day this tea would be put out to dry. After handling it, their hands were ‘black’ from the tea.

I asked her what the tea broth looked like. “Not black like shou cha is now.” she said. “About the same colour as that.” and pointed to some tea in a ‘piao-yi-bei’ that had the colour of say a 4 or 5 year old raw tea – a brownish, ruby-red.

This ‘fermented’ tea was sold to an export company for export to Russia. Tan describes when she was a child how Russians came looking for tea. She said the Russians knew the difference between spring, summer and autumn tea, and would not buy the summer tea.

The tip and leaf formations from the process described above were not treated in the same way. After rolling they were shaken out and left till the next morning to be sun dried. This tea was typically given to local officials and the like.

Where’s it from? – Part 4

Despite a number of friends coming round several times to taste the tea and HM making a trip around Man Nuo and Pasha to see if we could identify where this tea actually comes from – everyone agrees it’s excellent – we still haven’t nailed it down. On the way, we did come across some very nice tea from Man Nuo though.

In the meantime, a customer who has tasted a sample of the tea, has offered to put up enough funds for us to be able to think about buying it!

We’re now waiting for more samples of the tea to arrive – maybe tonight, so we can see if it really is as the seller says….

Old Tea (Let's go and have lunch)

We were drinking tea in the shop yesterday morning with a tea-friend when someone he knew walked past. His acquaintance was carrying a brick of  ‘thirty year old sheng cha’. A piece was uncerimoniously broken off for us to try. 

HM brewed the tea, poured us all a cup  then, after one mouthful,  “It’s not that old!” he  pronounced.  “Lets go and have lunch!”.

Later he conceded that the huigan was not bad but the cha qi, xiang qi, yun  were all lacking.  It also had that kind of flavour that I can only associate with shou cha. 

HM said ” I’m not sure how they made this stuff “.  Concluding it was wet-piled for a week or two to lighlty ferment it such that it could still be called (by some ) ‘sheng cha’, then after pressing, wet-stored and aired.  “That’s the kind of rip-off you get with Puer tea.” he declared with a sad expression.

More "Where's it from?"

Provenance

The issue of provenance in Puer tea circles is a tricky one.  That we be concerned with where our food and drink comes from is not irrational.  Perhaps as a result of increasing industrialization, supermarkets, globalization, etc. in the latter half of the 20th C many western consumers became dissociated from the sources of their food.  Provenance has been an aspect of the wider ‘real food’ (organic/fair-trade/slow food, etc.) movement. Knowing where something comes from, how it was made, who it was made by is important to us.

 

It appears there is some kind of correlation between price, provenance and expectations. We are often willing to forfeit knowledge if the price is right. No one is going to ask  where a 2€ bottle of ‘Vin de Table’ in Miniprix came from, but if one’s buying a nice ‘Cru Artisan’ Medoc from a vintners one may well want to know the who, when, what, where, etc.

 

Also, nobody in their right mind is going to ask where say, Dayi 7552 or Menghai 7572 comes from. They probably couldn’t tell you anyway without looking it up in a book as these are blended teas from a variety of sources. But with small producers this question becomes relevant and, to varying extents, important.  A small producer (particularly if they are lacking a reputation) who neglects or declines to state the origins of their tea is typically seen as suspect, which may be valid if a little irrational.

 

The error here is twofold;

1.  Assuming larger producers are the best upholders of standards.

2.  Assuming that small producers are not easily capable of producing better tea than the large name-brands.

 

One problem with Yunnan’s Puer tea is that the government and tea industry are a long way from achieving the kind of controls that the French government has in place for wine -there is currently some semblance of nomenclature according to regions/mountains but it’s not regulated and it’s far from water-tight. *

 

There are some generalizations that can be made about teas from different mountains, different seasons, etc. but within that there are seemingly infinite variations. So, one may have an understanding of what Yiwu tea normally tastes like, but it’s broad, and there are always going to be teas that defy the norm. The reality is there are fairly few people, even after years of experience, who on inspecting and tasting a Raw Puer can tell with any degree of accuracy where it came from. There are people who have a profound knowledge of the teas from one, two, three areas, but rarely all of them.

 

Let’s take an example: Borne out of curiosity or the belief that you can circumvent the ‘middlemen’ many a Puer merchant or enthusiast’s dream is to go into the mountains to find their own maocha and press it into cakes or whatever. This, on the face of it seems feasible.  Since it’s easily accessible, many people will head for Nan Nuo Shan where there is a long tradition (a thousand years or more) of Aini tea cultivation but, possibly because of their location, they are also rather adept business people.

 

Some villages in Nan Nuo Shan will take in tea from other villages on the mountain which they then sell on to outsiders.  So in this case one might go to a village and assume that the tea was from that village, but quite likely it would be a blend from a variety of sources. All of this is without considering different types of tea trees: Ancient trees, Old trees, Tea bushes, that might be in the mix.

 

Nan Nuo Shan’s tea farmers will also trade with farmers from other areas so it is quite possible that if one went on-spec and was not paying attention, one could unwittingly buy some tea that was from somewhere else all together. It wouldn’t make it bad tea. It might be very good tea, but it wouldn’t be Nan Nuo Shan tea. One of course would put one’s hand on one’s heart and say it was just that, after all, that’s where you bought it.

 

So does this matter? Well, it does and it doesn’t: One hopes that everyone is honest about where their tea comes from, but part of the loss of confidence in Puer a few years ago was precisely because it was found that people were passing tea off as coming from places other than where it actually came from, mostly with the aim of getting a higher price. But that aside, if one buys tea under the impression that it comes from Ban Po Lao Zhai but it actually comes from Ban ma, one hasn’t been badly duped, but if one then drank some Ban Po Lao Zhai tea one might, assuming one can tell the difference between the two, be unsure who to believe, this guy, or the last guy. Lao Ban Zhang is similar: Lao Ban Zhang and He Kai Shan are both considered to produce Lao Ban Zhang tea, but they are quite different. So within the broader nomenclature of Nan Nuo Shan or Lao Ban Zhang there are many variations.  Both of these by the way, despite their obvious differences, could also be called ‘Menghai’ teas as both mountains are in Menghai County. There are a couple of reasons why someone may refer to their tea as Menghai tea:

 

1.  They believe it be very good tea and want to try to limit others from figuring out exactly where it came from

2.  They can’t tell you anything more precise about it – mostly likely because it’s a blend.

 

Looking at the tea and drinking it will confirm which is the case.

 

So the far more important question to which “Where’s it from?” is secondary is “Is it good tea?”. Or perhaps “Is it a good example of ‘Whatever Mountain’s tea?”  The first question is easily within any interested tea drinkers reach.  The second accessible to a much smaller number of people who will likely focus their attention on one or two tea mountains and explore them thoroughly in order to get a deep understanding of their teas.

 

 

*In recent years apparently, some small French wine producers have bucked the system in preference for their own standards which they believe to be higher than those stipulated by the government. Lack of classification doesn’t always mean a poor product – indeed, these wines can bring a higher price than those with a seemingly more prestigious classification.