Yunnan Pu Erh Teas

What is pu erh tea?

Pu erh tea, also written a pu’er (普洱茶 in Chinese), is a special type of tea that originates from China’s Yunnan province. This tea category is named after the city of puer. It was around a 1000 years ago when the people and horses carried lots of tea bricks and cakes from pu’er to nearby regions including Bengal, Burma, Tibet and Central China. This trade link is also called the ‘Ancient Tea Route’ or ‘Tea Horse Road’.

Pu’er versus dark tea

Due to it’s popularity, pu’er has become the synonym for any tea that’s post fermented, though the term isn’t completely correct. The official term for post fermented teas is hei cha (黑茶) or ‘dark tea’. This term would be more fair as there are also dark teas produced in other provinces such has Sichuan.

Raw and ripe pu erh

Depending on the processing method, there are generally two types of pu erh: raw and ripe (or ‘sheng’ and ‘shou’ in Chinese). Raw pu erh tea is made the original way in which leaves are picked, dried, and roasted resulting in loose pu erh also known as ‘mao cha’. Afterwards, the lose leaves are compressed in to raw pu erh cakes. Because raw pu erh cakes can take years to ripe, a new type of processing method was invented. Instead of compressing mao cha directly into cakes, they’re first piled up for faster fermentation under controlled conditions. This additional step of processing results in what we call ‘ripe pu erh&rsquo, which is also known as 'cooked puerh'.

Buy pu erh tea online

Buying a good pu erh is challenging. Prices vary a lot simply because the quality can be very volatile. Luckily you can rely on Teasenz for curating the best pu erh teas from China, which can be shipped directly to your door. Most of our offerings are sourced direct from the producer, making sure it’s as authentic as it can be. Our collection of pu erh is diverse: you can get your tea in loose or compressed form. And for the latter, there are different shapes available such as cakes, bricks an tuocha. Moreover, we offer teas from small family farm producers as well as larger factories such as Xiaguan and Dayi.