The leaves of sheng (raw) puer tea Ba Da Shan 2010 comes from the Ba Da area in the region of Yunnan in the South of China. In order to understand this product it is necessary to know more about the area where its leaves come from because, most of the time, the place of origin commands the name and the organoleptic features of the tea. This puer is specifically made by an harvest coming from the mountain area of Ba Da in the most eastern part of Yunnan. The leaves of this batch were then carefully selected and pressed in spring 2010 by the Yunnan Yipintang Tea factory located in the Menghai County. The specific about the factory where these leaves arrived is useful to underline that, behind this puer, there is a definite style or research studied by an apposite group of tea masters in order to exploit the terroir characteristics in the product.
This puer is mostly characterized by woody and mineral tastes. By smelling the leaves is already possible to sense a light smokey feature that, in the infuse, together with the aromatic woody element, releases a flavor similar to an incense. Through the tasting time it arrives a vegetal flavors resembling to some fresh herbs like nettles and a mineral sensation in the back of the tongue with a slight pungent character. In the aftertaste it emerges also a certain sweetness together with bitter note giving, in the end, a sensation of tasting a kind of rhubarb.
Place of origin
Ba Da – Yunnan, China
Production
After the harvest the leaves whither under the sunlight for a certain period of time depending on the tea masters evaluations before going into the “killing of the green” phase which is similar to the practice adopted for green teas. In this case, however, the leaves are heated in the iron wok with a lower temperature than the usual standards for a green tea so it is possible to preserve some enzymes capable of changing the the taste of the tea through the time. After being pan-fried the leaves rest during the night time before the last drying phase under the sun in the next day. In this stage the product is called maocha and it is ready to be (eventually) pressed in order to have the best conditions to being transported and aged. To press the leaves, the producer exposes a certain quantity of the product to a strong steam jet for few seconds in order softened the vegetal mass and then wrap all up in a kind of sock or sac to imprint the final, usually discoid, form. To maintain the desired the form the sac is putted under an heavy stones for several hours or under a mechanical press while the leaves loose the residual moisture caused by the steam in the previous phase.
Preparation
We invite you to brew this tea in the traditional Chinese style (gong fu cha) in order to extract more from your leaves. Following this preparation you could use 5.5 grams of leaves (about 3 teaspoons) in a gaiwan of 100 ml so you can obtains more infusions with different flavors. After a brief rinse of the leaves in a 100°C water you can go with a first infusion of 10 seconds and, after that, at the same water temperature, you can do multiple infusion adding 5 seconds every steeping time (10 – 15 – 20…)
These leaves could be steep about 12 times.
To prepare the tea in the western style we suggest 3 grams of leaves (about 2 teaspoons) in a 150 ml cup with 100°C water for a steeping time of one minute and a half.
The tea could be filtered if you want to avoid some little piece of the leaves during the tasting time and also the steeping time we recommend here could be modify on your personal preferences.
We recommend you to store this tea in a dry and cool place avoiding the direct sun light on the leaves.