Why Pu-erh tea is the most fascinating tea you can enjoy 

Interestingly, vintage is not emphasized much in the puerh tea world, and yet, there are noticeable variations each year. Maybe it will come in the future.

your wallet will thank you if you stay away from pu-erh tea :-)

Welcome 😅

You must have a very unique terroir in Hawaii, it's be great to know more about your findings.

otherworldly

i agree

I love yancha and dancong, but i can't have more than one or two sessions with them. On the contrary, I find pu-erh tea to flow easily and drink it all day, I remember it was harsh on the stomach at the beginning. The terroir idea applies well to yancha, that's a whole other rabbit hole.

Have you tried fermented pu-erh? It's fermented and thus less upsetting on stomachs.

You can use an oolong processing on yunnan assamica, but this style of tea really requires a clonal varietal to get the desired result. You can find roasted black teas, or at least dianhong with a high temperature drying, which intensifies the malty side and can even bring roasted notes.

@@farmerleaf61 Hi farmer leaf, I am very curious, could you please explain a little more why Oolong production needs clonal varietals for desired results? If clonal varietals are grafted rather than grown from seed, wouldn't this result in less powerful teas in general? Thank you so much!

I agree, there are a couple of other teas you can study in such a way. I find Darjeeling a lot of fun as well.

The gardens are established either from seeds or cuttings, with the former being prevalent. Even when cuttings are used, they don't come from a single clone, so there is still genetic diversity. Planting by seed is preferred on the long run because the trees grow a central pivot root which helps stabilize the tree in the soil. Plants grown from cuttings will have a weaker root system. There are clonal plantations in Yunnan: Bai Hao, Yunkang 10, Yunkang 14, Da Bai Cha... They are used for making green, black and white, Yunkang 10 and 14 are the preferred choice for fragrant teas (green and black) but will give poor results with a puerh tea processing: you get the green tea fragrance but no depth in the mouthfeel. Da Bai Cha and Bai Hao have very large and furry buds. Da Bai Cha is typical from Jinggu area, they make impressive pure bud black and white teas from them, they look great and taste boring, pesticide use is also a concern with this kind of tea. I really don't know of any good pu-erh tea made of a clonal varietal.

Not all pu-erh teas are grown from seed. It's much cheaper and large-scale to produce tea from plantations. If a tea is seed-grown, the taste will go way deeper into the root of your tongue, whereas if it's plantation, the taste will get stuck in the front or middle of your tongue. If it's low quality tea, or chemical pesticides or fertilizers were used, then it leaves you with a dry mouth feel.

it's a 吉谷 k kou kettle. www.jd.com/pinpai/760-262163.html

Yes, sure