What is Puer?

Puer tea is a bit of an odd subject with many opinions and very little consensus. This is a dark tea from Yunnan and from what I can discern, in the past it was usually pressed into bricks or cakes for transport (some tea was also pressed to use as currency). The pressing was carried out when the tea was in a raw, unprocessed state and over-time it developed into a darker tea. This ‘ageing’ may have taken place during lengthy transport and storage times. In the 1970s a couple of tea factories began maturing the tea more quickly using a controlled process of fermentation. Accounts say that this matured tea is not the same as the aged tea but it is ready to drink.

So now we have three broad varieties of puer: There is the raw (Sheng) puer, the aged dark (aged sheng) puer, and dark (ripe or cooked) puer. To add a little confusion, the dark puer is also sometimes aged to mature. These teas can be found either loose or pressed into various shapes, predominantly bing cha (flat round cakes, which I know as burnt biscuits), and tou cha (which I know as burnt buns).

The value and status of these is all a little muddled and uncertain. There is a lot of mystery and romance woven into this part of tea culture over recent years, often comparing cakes of fine puer to fine wines, aging and improving and gaining in value as they do. This is a very, very poor analogy – the ageing and improvement of wine is well understood chemistry, while the maturation of puer tea very definitely is not – nobody seems to agree exactly what the processes are that mature the tea, nor even the best conditions for storage to facilitate it, some requiring dry conditions, others requiring humidity. There is also something a bit odd in pressing the tea for ageing rather than as a finished product – while that would make it easy for storage and transport, a compacted cake must surely not be the best state for maturation by any means – be that by oxidation or fungus, or whatever else gets suggested. For sure, genuine aged cakes of puer fetch stunningly high prices but you’ve also little guarantee of what you are getting – the risk of counterfeiting aside, you cannot know the conditions under which the tea has been stored so that you could have something with a taste worthy of the price paid or which just tastes of muddy compost.

As mentioned, counterfeiting is a growing problem, to the extent that some commentators recommend avoiding the best known labels, focussing instead on less well known factories that command a lower price and so present less incentive to the counterfeiters.

I have never sampled a tea matured over any significant period but I do enjoy both the ripened puer and young raw puer (both of which have the virtue of being rather more affordable, though still seldom actually cheap if you want something really nice).

The raw tea tends to be very astringent and some people talk about it having an adverse effect on their stomachs, though I’ve never had a problem with it – but I do brew it very lightly. The aged product is supposed to mellow somewhat and while 7 to 10 years is still thought to be fairly young by some, it has gained a new, softer flavour profile. As it gets older than this, the tea takes on the characteristics of a darker tea, with a full bodied mellow taste.

I have toyed with the idea of trying to age some tea myself – there is a cupboard at the top of the attic stairway that might be reasonably suitable. I don’t plan to waste a fortune on cakes to put away but I may collect a few samples to try out every five years or so just to see. I’m tempted to call them my retirement teas – but truth be known, with the way things are in this country, I suspect that I shall retire in a box carried out of the office. Instead, I shall just think of them as 60^th and 70^th birthday presents to myself. Or, if they end up tasting awful, I’ll just call them failed experiments, chalk it up to experience, and be satisfied that it’s a mistake I won’t have enough years left to repeat. At the end of the day, there are so many uncertainties with ageing tea that my feeling is that it’s best not to too risk much on it – if you have a good tea, enjoy it now. A bird in the hand...and all that jazz.

To end this entry, and worthy of note anyway, there are very many varieties of mini tou cha now. These little single serving cakes are individually wrapped and very handy as travel tea. Unfortunately, a lot of these tend to be made from very substandard product, with a rather composty flavour – but I have purchased some good ones, so do look out for reviews in the future.