Sheng (raw) Puer Tea Youle Mount 2019 200g

The sheng (raw) puer tea Youle Mount 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.

This puer arrives from the famous Yiwu area where there is a long and deep culture about the harvesting and processing of camelia’s leaves. The tea from this area was really appreciated since the beginning of the Twentieth Century and it was so popular to be even requested by the court of the emperor in Beijing. The sheng in our offer specifically comes from the mountainous area of Youle which is located close to the middle of Xishuangbanna in the Western part of the famous Yiwu area.


The taste of the Youle Mount 2019 well represents its origin showing, since the beginning, the typical savory vegetal taste of the camelia in this part of Yunnan. The infuse also gives a pleasant warm feeling in the mouth and a sweet drupe flavor in the aftertaste.

Place of origin

Youle – 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 4.5 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 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 11 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.