Guest blogger: Elliot Knapp
Take a casual look around the online tea community and it won’t take too long before you come across puerh tea there are numerous tea aficionado blogs solely dedicated to it, and there are even vendors that sell only puerh. If you’re unfamiliar with puerh, it’s as easy to wonder what kind of tea can inspire such fascination as it is to want to take the plunge and start trying some.
I first encountered puerh at a point in my tea drinking when I was trying as many new and different tea types as I possibly could. I think one of the most attractive aspects of puerh is that it can improve with age. A lot of casual tea drinkers are aware that many wines improve with age and wonder how the same principles can apply to a tea. What you probably won’t guess, though, is that your first sheng puerh is probably going to taste vastly different from any other type of tea you’ve ever had. My first pu-erh was a one year-old Xiaguan sheng tuo cha. Since I didn’t know what to expect, I assumed that the bitter, smoky taste was par for the puerh course. I’m partial to a strong cup of tea, so it wasn’t too difficult to acquire a taste for the strange brew.
The real epiphany came when I started trying different types of puerh. I found out that young sheng puerh is often quite bitter, but that that bitterness isn’t always the same sometimes it lingers heavily after the tea is swallowed, and sometimes it transforms into sweetness. I also learned that not all young puerh is smoky; some can be delightfully floral and contain flavor notes not unfamiliar to green tea and oolong lovers. Just like any type of tea, puerh has a range of quality. I learned that sometimes you get what you pay for, that sometimes there’s a great value to be found and that sampling a tea before committing to a whole cake allows you to try a greater variety and better develop a sense of what tastes good to you.
The plot thickened even more when I first started tasting aged teas. It’s not only possible but very easy to become infatuated with unaged sheng puerh, considering the range of flavors and experiences available. I’d even venture to say that a lot of the western puerh lovers out there consume (almost exclusively) tea that’s less than 10 years old. After trying my first few well-aged sheng puerhs, though, there was no going back. Experiencing the earthy smoothness, gentle sweetness, durability and mellow buzz of a good aged puerh in full knowledge of what the tea used to be like is a truly enlightening experience. The transformation from unaged to mature is an astounding one, though many characteristics of young puerh are recognizable in an aged example. Although unaged puerh connoisseurship has its rewards, becoming acquainted with aged puerh took me to the next level. Ironic that it took me so long to become familiar with aged puerh, considering the fact that I first become intrigued by puerh after hearing that it’s “an aged tea.”
Although it’s readily available and there are plenty of delicious examples to be found,I think I first appreciated shou (cooked) puerh after gaining a small familiarization with aged and unaged sheng puerh. Since the shou processing was originally invented to artificially age puerh in a much shorter amount of time, it’s instructive to compare aged tea with artificially aged tea. In some ways, the approximation is a success – a good shou puerh is smooth, sweet and mellow like an aged sheng puerh. In some ways the invention is even more than a success, as shou puerh has characteristics that aren’t present in sheng. Though I still prefer well-aged sheng puerh, the occasional shou is a welcome, less expensive way to achieve a similarly rewarding experience.
In my tea life there have been some tea genres that I’ve found interesting but haven’t felt the need to continue pursuing after grasping a basic understanding. What makes puerh a continually fascinating tea type (aside from the pure pleasure of drinking it) is getting to collect and re-experience it over time, especially as it continues aging. Puerh collecting is a hobby that goes beyond merely drinking tea – if you find a tea you like and want to age, how much should you buy? Do you want to remain in supply for the rest of your days, or just have enough to drink it occasionally? How best to store your puerh collection to facilitate its aging, especially in a non-Asian location? Keeping and aging teas is particularly exciting because there’s always a chance to return to a tea after years and find its character noticeably changed—the element of potential surprise and the effort to understand a puerh as a continually-changing individual has always interested me, and revisiting teas over the course of time is a process to which I always look forward.
The world of puerh is a wide, deep and often baffling one, and imagining myself into the place of a newcomer reminds me of the curiosity I first felt on my first puerh encounter -you’re in for an interesting ride!
Tags: elliot knapp, puerh, xia guan