Shu (ripe) Puer Tea Wild Forest 2016 100g

The shu (ripe) puer tea wild forest 2016 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 ripe puer wild forest are fermented in Menghai County by skilled artisans who have many years of experience in controlling this phase of tea processing. The age of this shu, moreover, allow to obtain an extremely balanced flavor profile in the cup.

The infuse of this product firstly shows a sweet and slightly balsamic taste to the palate while, in the aftertaste, it reveals its vegetal character in all the mouth. The finish of the flavor profile of this tea remember the aromas of some wood and boiled vegetables. The fermenting process and the years of aging are the two factors that give to the puer liquor its smooth and really enjoyable body.

Place of origin

Nannuo – Yunnan, Cina

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 the cooking process big quantities of tea leaves are piled, dumped and covered with big sheets to allow the beginning of the fermentation. The producer here have to move and wet constantly the leaves in order to achieve an homogeneous fermentation on all the vegetal mass. When this process ends, generally after o period which can take from 20 to 70 days, the leaves were spread all over the floor to let the microorganisms who started the fermentation dry, and get loose. Now it is possible to (eventually) press the tea and so provide to it 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 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 9 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.