We define aged Puer tea as Raw Puer that has been properly stored for a number of years and has acquired the characteristics typical of an aged tea i.e. the tea has mellowed, the original fragrances have been replaced with a more or less obvious chen wei or 'aged fragrance' that might be reminiscent of old books, maybe leathery or earthy, carry hints of humus, and may have notes that we typically might associate with a good aged brandy. The tea should have a good velour and feel very smooth in the mouth and throat. The tea should not appear or smell mouldy and should not have any errant flavours, including mouldiness.

Ageing cooked Puer tea can help develop its flavours, but we are not concerned with that here.

Here we will consider three things;

i) What kind of tea is suitable for ageing?

ii) How should Puer tea be stored?

iii) When is aged Puer tea aged enough?

 

There is a scool of thought that says that to make a good aged Puer tea, the young tea needs to be bitter, astringent, even rough. This is based mostly on the experience of those who bought or later acquired tea from the 1980-90's or earlier which had, according to those who drank it at the time, all of the aformentioned characteristics. At that time, after earlier extensive replanting programmes, distinctions were not made between bush tea and old or ancient tea trees: they were all picked and processed together, which goes some way to explain the qualities of tea from that period. Some of those teas have, with time, matured into teas that are very drinkable and this has given rise to the logic that Puer tea, in order to mature into the kind of tea that some tea drinkers now appreciate, must start out as bullish, aggressively bitter and astringent in order that, once the initial fragrance has gone, there will be something left.

All Puer tea will have some degree of ku se or bitterness and astringency, but the quality of this ku se in old tea tree tea is quite different from that in young or bush tea. The reality is that bitterness will not per-force abate significantly over time and, when selecting tea for Zhi Zheng Tea Shop, we do not subscribe to this view as we believ there are other factors which are more important.

As tea ages, the initial fragrance which can often be floral, fruity, honey-like, will certainly diminish and the tea may go through a kind of awkward 'adolescent' period where it has lost some of it's youthful qualities, but has not yet acquired any discernable 'aged' characteristics. As the ageing process continues these aged aromas will appear and what will accompany them is something a little less easy to define - sometimes referred to as yun (韵 - appeal,charm,allure), thickness or body, etc. What we are talking about here are characteristics of the tea which cannot be apprehended by the wu guan (五官 - 5 senses), but are none-the-less perceptible.

An appropriate analogy might be with music where the aromas, the volatile compounds, are equivalent to the high frequencies which will attenuate with time (distance). What will penetrate more are the lower frequencies, which may have been initially less obvious, but which serve to support and give sense to the higher frequencies and which will endure for a much longer period, create some movement, give some driving force, some impetus.

The bitterness and astringency are analagous to the timbre of the music, and perhaps the loudness. The tempo of the music, the cadence, the polyrythms, etc. might be likened to other more complex, yet still obvious, quailities in the tea associated with the flavour and maybe the qi, but the emotion, the way a piece of music makes you feel, moves you, whether physically or emotionally, lures you in, is yun.

So in looking for a tea that will likely age well, we are looking for tea with yun, with body, appeal, guts, something that penetrates much deeper, psychologically and somatically, that will persist and hopefuly mature over time. This is not antithetic to a tea that is drinkable when it is young, the two can co-exist.

Puer tea that has been oven dried is probably not a good candidate for ageing as the compounds in the tea which assist in the ageing process will likely have been killed or at least adversley affected by the temperatures reached in the drying process. So it is important that the tea is made from sun-dried maocha.

 

1) So many factors can affect the ageing of Puer tea that it is not helpful to be too prescriptive about it. The climate: temperature, humidity, seasonal variations, the place where the tea is kept, the amount of tea, how tightly the tea was pressed (assuming it is in compressed form), how frequently the tea is accessed, will all affect the ageing process. However, we can make some broad generalisations which are helpful;

2) The tea should ideally be kept in a moderately high humidity of 60-80%, but more importantly it should be stable. Higher humidity is also risky, especially where there is insufficient airflow - so the bathroom is not a good choice. Some people go so far as to use humidors to create a stable humid evironment, but it may be as well to accept the limitations of the environment you live in and come to terms with the fact that the tea will age more or less slowly because of the ambient conditions.

3) It should be stored at a moderately high temperature - upper 20's to mid-30's would be ideal, again stability is important. With both temperature and humidty, be aware of the likely effects of air conditioning and de-humidifying; de-humidifying in the summer and heating in the winter may risk drying tea out. Air conditioning, if the tea is remote from the air-conditioner should not have a substantial effect if it is used judiciously. Both cooling and heating that create large temperature fluctuations are not good.

4) It should be stored where there is a circulation of air. i.e. not in a sealed box which will slow the ageing process, but also not in a draught which will risk drying the tea out. So not by an open window. If the tea is kept in a container, albeit a box, cupboard or jar, airflow needs to be maintained.

5) It should be kept away from strong smells - including cooked Puer tea. So the kitchen is not the place to keep it, nor the bedroom or bathroom if one is inclined to use strong smelling soaps and perfumes.

6) It should be kept out of the sun

7) One should consider the amount of tea one has and what plans you have for it. The more tea there is together, the better it will age, and the size of the receptical it is in should be appropriate to the amount of tea. So if you only have one cake of tea, best not keep it in an empty room on it's own. If one has a small amount of tea, consider an unglazed earthenware jar, or perhaps a wooden box or cupboard - be aware that the tea will pick up any aromas from the wood if it has any. In both of the above cases, the box or cupboard needs to have good airflow.

If you intend to drink a cake of tea in the near future, it may be worth breaking it up into smallish, 'pot size' pieces ans storing in a pourous earthenware container. If you have several cakes that you intend to keep to age, then again an earthenware storage jar is worth the investment. Complete tongs in their bamboo wrappers, should not be opened until you wish to start drinking the tea, and then, it is good to re-wrap the remaining cakes in the bamboo skin as best as possible.

8) If the amount of tea stored is considerable, and if it is tightly packed, it may be worth considering rotating the tea so that the tea nearer the source of air is moved away from it and tea that was further away from the source is brought nearer. i.e. tea at the bottom of a jar is brought upward and tea from the top moved down.The more porous the container is, the less important this factor will be. The way the tea is stacked may also have some small effect on the uniformity of the ageing process, so, although some people suggest storing cakes upside down etc, this is a less important issue.

 

This, as suggested above, will depend on the conditions in which the Puer tea has been kept - a warmer, more humid environment will cause the tea to age more quickly, a cooler, dryer climate more slowly. The variation can be considerable. There is no clear distinction to determine when a tea is aged. To some extent it is also a matter of personal taste and attempts to stipulate a number of years are arbitrary.

All Puer teas will, like wines, have different qualities which will determine the time at which they 'peak'. One tea might reach its best in 7 years, another in 20. The only way to tell is to monitor the tea, check its appearance, smell, and above all, taste it. If one is afforded the luxury, keeping some cakes in storage whilst keeping another, or perhaps part of a cake, in the same environment so that one can brew a sample from time to time will provide an indicator for how the tea is ageing. Cakes that are stored singly will age more quickly than say, 7 cakes kept in their bamboo skin 'tong' wrapper as more of the tea is in contact with atmoshphere; the fragrances will dissipate more quickly, but in this way a sample of tea can act as a barometre for the stored cakes.

What we can say with some certainty about ageing Puer tea is that it is an ongoing experiment. Storing and ageing Puer tea will require some research and experimentation. It will also require some perseverance, but, if done conscientiously, the outcome will undoubtedly prove rewarding.

see here for a small collection of aged raw Puer tea