Sheng (raw) Puer Tea Wild Forest 2019 7g mini cakes

The sheng (raw) puer tea wild forest 2019 is part of a curated selection of products made for showing the great care and tradition linked to the camelia tree in the Autonomous Prefecture of Xishuangbanna. Tea soul, in particular, wants to enhance the producers who still pick and process the material by hand in order to communicate the value of craftsmanship in the tea.

The leaves of the sheng puer wild forest come from plants surrounded by a forest environment in the Nannuo mountainous area. The choice of pressing this tea in a seven grams weight little discs was made in order to give an easy-going format to such an important and complex product like a raw puer.

Thanks to its short maturation period the liquor of this sheng has a lower astringent presence and so a more rounded and floral flavor profile in the cup. The infuse, however, holds quite an evident vegetal presence because of the influence gave to the product by its place of origin. Anyway, after some sips, the more relevant taste in this mouth is a fragrant sweetness that persists also in the aftertaste.

Place of origin

Nannuo – 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 shape the sac is put 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 4 grams of leaves (about 2 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 15 seconds and, after that, at the same water temperature, you can do multiple infusion adding 5 seconds every steeping time (15 – 20 – 25…)

These leaves could be steep about 8 times.

To prepare the tea in the western style we suggest 3.5 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.