Tea & Tech (šŸµ)

Tea 201: A Pu'erh class with Victoria

March 01, 2020

Ever heard of puā€™erh tea? Most people havenā€™t. I may at some point publish a 101-level blog post on tea, but for now, please settle for this brief primer.

Tea Primer

Tea, the beverage, comes from brewing the leaves of plants in the Camellia genus. If itā€™s not brewed with tea leaves, itā€™s not technically tea.

Most people are at least familiar with green and black teas, and at some point I may hop up on a soapbox and tell you why brewing machine-harvested leaf scraps from plantations sold in bags that leak microplastics into your hot water is Not Good, but green and black are only two spots on a much larger spectrum.

Tea can be broadly classified into categories determined by leaf preservation method and (subsequent) oxidation level at time of fixing:

  • White tea (~5-15% oxidation)
  • Green tea (~15-40% oxidation)
  • Oolong tea (~25~80% oxidation)
  • Black tea (~70+% oxidation)

The numbers above are not exact, just rough generalizations. The oxidation level depends on a lot of factors, and the exact amount will change on a per-batch basis.

Oxidation levels are fixed by applying heat to kill the enzymes that oxidize the plant. How that heat is applied also varies, depending on the variety of tea being created. Even within a single category, oxidation strategies can vary wildly. Some green teas are fixed in giant iron woks, while others are fixed through steaming. Wikipedia has a cool graphic showing the processing steps for different teas:

Tea Processing Graphic A full resolution version can be found here.

Puā€™erh Tea

The astute reader may have observed that puā€™erh is conspicuously absent from the four broad categories I listed above. Thatā€™s because its oxidation level isnā€™t fixed! That, and it tends to be harvested from Camellia taliensis, a wild relative to the cultivated tea plant (Camellia sinensis) that grows into very tall trees (as opposed to sinensis cultivars, which tend to be shrubs or bushes).

Puā€™erh is prepared mostly like a green tea, but rather than killing off every single enzyme through a thorough fixing process, the tea is pressed into cakes (or heaped into piles) and allowed to age. As it ages, the flavor and health benefits evolve along with the appearance of the resulting brew. If youā€™re interested in learning how, I canā€™t recommend a better teacher than Victoria Wu of Meimei Fine Teas.

Tea Class with Victoria

On Sunday, February 23rd, I attended my second Puā€™erh Class with Victoria, which was the fourth class Iā€™ve taken with her. Classes are small ā€” Victoria caps them 8 members ā€” and students came from as far away as Pennsylvania and Maryland to attend. Truly, if you live in the DC area and have any interest whatsoever in tea, you simply must attend.

Victoria sources all her tea herself. She spends months travelling all over China every year to the difference provinces to source the best teas. And, having been pursuing tea actively as a hobby for a couple years now, I can say with confidence that her teas are the best Chinese teas that Iā€™ve been able to find (so far).

Thereā€™s also something really nice about knowing exactly where your teas come from. Victoria can tell you not only where your tea was harvested, but which village is the closest, who picked the leaves, who finished them, what flavors the terroir imparts to the them, and more. Knowing that my tea comes from wild forests in the mountains of China rather than plantations engaged in unethical or unhealthy practices is valuable enough, but the clean flavors are what really put Victoriaā€™s teas into a league of their own.

Tasting Notes

In the 2020 Puā€™erh Class, we tried 8 different teas, and only one of them was a repeat from the 2019 Puā€™erh class. We tried the sheng (raw) puā€™erhs first, from youngest to oldest, and then we had the shu (ripe) puā€™erhs.

Sheng (Raw) Puā€™erh

  1. 2019 - ā€œSingle Millā€ (Yiwu): I found this tea to be very light and refreshing ā€” not at all astringent like some young puā€™ers can be. I was originally surprised to find out it came from Yiwu, which I tend to associated with a more ā€œforest-yā€ flavor ā€” it came across and fruit-forward to me, with the wooded notes coming through with the hui gan. Subsequent infusions yielded subdued fruity notes and a more typical Yiwu flavor.
  2. 2017 - Tea Horse Road (Mengku): This was part one of an interesting exercise where we were given two teas from the same year and region to compare. This Tea Horse Road sheng puā€™erh had notes of licorice and a higher astringency than the other teas I tasted, and still had that ā€œforestā€-flavored hui gan.
  3. 2017 - Bing Dao Dragon Balls (Mengku): This one smells like a Lingcang puā€™erh, but it has notes of honey! It is sweet, and has a ā€œdeeperā€ flavor compared with the Tea Horse Road ā€” like I was drinking from a river instead of a creek. It was full bodied and complex. I bought 100g to take home with me.
  4. 2013 - ā€œEarly Springā€ (???): This was another tea from Victoriaā€™s private collection that surfaced shortly before class. She isnā€™t sure where itā€™s from, only that it was picked in the early spring of 2013. This tea was smoky! Smoky like a peat scotch. Victoria thinks that this is because some farmers will fire their tea in a wok over a wood fire, and sometimes the wood can impart this smoky flavor. Very different from all the other teas; almost couldnā€™t taste the tea for the smokiness. Definitely a puā€™erh though and not a Lapsang Souchong.
  5. 2010 - ā€œ100 Year-Old Trademarkā€ brand (Yiwu): This was a sheng puā€™erh from Victoriaā€™s private collection (not for sale). Itā€™s a famous puā€™erh brand in China, andā€¦ it was fine. A very average puā€™erh. I got a forest front and hui gan like I would expect from a Yiwu puā€™erh, and it was a bitā€¦ dry? It was fine!
  6. 1999 - Vintage Zhen Shan (Yiwu): This tea is one of my favorites. If youā€™ve never had 20+ y/o sheng puā€™erh, itā€™s a rare treat. It has notes of ginseng, and tastes like a forest in autumn. Itā€™s also really good for you. This tea was the one repeat from last year, and Iā€™m glad it made another appearance! Iā€™ve purchased a couple samples of this one because I couldnā€™t justify purchasing a whole cake, but the price keeps going up so I should probably do that sooner rather than later šŸ˜…. Though I suppose I could always go the route of purchasing a tong of young cakes and letting them age for 20 yearsā€¦

Shu (Ripe) Puā€™erh

  1. 2016 - ā€œClassic 1973 Formulaā€ (Fengqing): This ripe puā€™erh has a clean taste, akin to fresh straw? It smells much more complex than it is, and where most shu puā€™erhs tend towards ā€œtree barkā€ or (on a bad day) ā€œfunkyā€, this one hints at sweetness. I think it has really great aging potential and Iā€™d love to try it again in 10 years.
  2. 2004 - Vintage Menghai Bliss (Mengku): I canā€™t stop thinking about this one. Itā€™s been a week since Iā€™ve had it, and I regret not buying it. Itā€™s the first shu (ripe) puā€™erh that Iā€™ve ever really craved. Itā€™s got a very very clean taste, and the flavor is almost like maple syrup, but with none of the saccharine thickness youā€™d associate with syrup. Smells like a clean haystack, but the flavor is of sweet reeds. No funk or mushroom flavors in this one. Not bitter, either, just pure and sweet.

Conclusion

Itā€™s worth stating again: go and take a class with Victoria. Itā€™s highly educational (history of Puā€™erh, geography of China, preparation methods, etc.) in addition to all the teas you get to try. Plus, if you have questions about tea you canā€™t find the answer to (or find too many answers to) online, you can always come armed with a list of questions to ask an expert. No kickbacks or anything for me, I just really really feel like itā€™s an experience worth sharing. šŸ˜Š

Oh, and if youā€™re going to order tea from Victoria, I would use the website instead of Amazon. Meimei does some fulfillment through Amazon, and itā€™s good tea, but everything on the website is of the highest quality and is excellent.

Thanks for sticking with me on this one! Happy brewing šŸ‘‹


Andrew J. Pierce collects Jian Shui teapots and lives in Virginia with his wife, son, and Ziggy the cat. You can follow him on Twitter.

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