Pu'er Tea

Pu'er tea (普洱茶) takes its name from the trading town of Pu'er in southern Yunnan, where tea from the surrounding mountains was gathered and sent on by caravan towards Tibet and the interior. It is made from the large-leaved Yunnan variety of the tea plant, Camellia sinensis var. assamica, grown by the Dai, Hani, Bulang, Yi and other peoples of the south-west, whose villages still tend old tea trees on the hills. Georgia Freedman, in Cooking South of the Clouds, places the tea within the food culture of Yunnan, a province whose cooking and drinking belong to its many peoples rather than to any single tradition. Pu'er is counted today among the dark teas, a category defined by microbial post-fermentation.

Pu'er is made in two forms. Sheng, or raw, pu'er is produced from sun-dried maocha, the rough leaf that has been fired briefly in the pan to halt oxidation, then rolled and dried in the sun, and then pressed into cakes or left loose to age slowly. Shou, or ripe, pu'er is the same leaf put through an accelerated, moist piling fermentation called wo dui, which gives it the dark, earthy character otherwise acquired only after decades. Both are sold as loose leaf or compressed into discs (bingcha), bricks (zhuancha) and bowl-shaped nests (tuocha), and a disc is broken with a tea knife or pick along the layers rather than cut across them.

In Yunnan and in Guangdong, pu'er is drunk with rich, fatty or fried food, notably at the dim sum table, where it is the customary tea and is served with the meal. The structural reason is the tea's depth and lack of sharpness: its earthy, mellow bitterness washes the palate between rich mouthfuls and does not compete with them. Raw pu'er, brisker and more astringent, suits lighter dishes, and ripe pu'er suits the heavier ones.