A Guide to Buying Puer Tea

Starting last year, 2010, we introduced a buying guide to assist our customers in their choice of Puer tea. We have been reviewing our teas based on four criteria which we believe are essential to Puer (as well as all other) teas; fragrance, taste, cha qi , or 'tea nature' and yun or rhyme/character. We give a score out of 5 for each of these sensory experiences. 1 denotes a lesser amount/quality, 5 represents the maximum.  We hope they will be useful to both specialist and amateur tea drinkers alike.

Raw Puer Tea Fragrance:

Puer tea fragrances, regardless of type (Honey, Orchid, fruit, camphor,  date, etc.), are pure, natural, strong and long-lasting.

The Flavours of Puer:

The dense and strong taste of Pu'er tea , it's aged mellowness, the huigan or sweet-aftertaste is, the number of times it can be steeped,  all reflect the quality of sun-dried green Puer maocha. Whether the tea comes from plantation bushes, small trees, old tea trees or is blended,  5 indicates the highest grade.

Cha Qi/ Tea Nature:

Tea nature or the energetic qualities of tea - cha qi can be defined broadly as follows: 

    1 External Qi; when brewing and drinking, the general olfactory experience .
    2 Interior Qi; any experience in the process of drinking tea, albeit oral, a pleasant feeling in the body, a comfortableness, an easy, smooth feeling, or any feeling in the arteries, veins, meridians are inidicative of good  'cha qi'.

Cha Yun/ The Charm of Tea:

Character/rhyme: New Pu'er tea has a fresh, clean quality, sun dryed maocha  has it's own character, old tea has a fragrant mellow character, each tea mountain or area has its specific 'mountain' character, teas made by different ethnic groups have their own character. Tea fragrance, flavour and qi are all fairly obvious aspects of tea. Tea yun can be distinguished as an aspect of tea which is fine and can bring benefit and transformation; from the physical to the spiritual. Each tea drinker, having their own standards, life experience and culture will have a different understanding of Puer tea, we hope however, that our suggestions are a useful aide to tea buying.