Sheng (raw) Puer Tea Xiaguan Tuocha 2011 100g

The sheng (raw) puer tea Xiaguan tuocha 2011 is produced by a famous Chinese factory called Xiaguan which, following his recipes, blends and presses different maocha coming from all the Yunnan region to obtain a unique and complex taste in their products. This factory was established in 1941 near the city of Dali in the homonym prefecture and, since the beginning, it used a lot the shape called tuocha (bowl shape) to press their leaves. The brand Xiaguan grown up a lot through the years also because of their geographic position where they can have an optimal climate to aged their teas.

Talking about the aging process the infuse of this sheng puer will show a lot of characteristic flavors that the leaves tend to assume during the years. Since the first sips, in fact, you can feel a flavor of young wood together with a slightly cellar’s humidity character due to the years of aging. Going deep into the flavor profile of this puer you can feel a smoky incense like feature followed, in the end, by a delicate sweetness which will increase its intensity till becoming a persistent presence in the aftertaste at the back of your palate. This final characteristic flavor has quite a fruity connotation and it can reminds you a young cherry or a black cherry.

Place of origin

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 10 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.