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Old School & New School Pu’erh
Pu’erh is an unusual and highly unique tea. It is a tea genre accompanied by both a long rich history as tribute tea and also closely associated with the wild and dynamic nature of modern China. Pu’erh cha is frequently marketed as “traditional” and often accompanied with marketing buzzwords like “Ancient”, “Wild” and claims (many…
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The Price of Menghai Tea Factory Recipes: Taobao & Other Purchasing Options
Menghai Tea Factory. The gold standard of ripe pu’erh and the producer of famous benchmark raw pu’erhs from the 1980s and 1990s. If you purchase legitimate Menghai, it is usually thought of as a safe buy. Dayi has the reach to make these recipes consistent year to year and while there is a higher price…
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Nannuo Pu’erh [June 2014 Tea Drinking Report]
Every month, I dedicate it to one type of tea. This means I drink that genre of tea in some form at least once a day. This could mean gong-fu, grandpa, or even a cold-brew. I’ll still consume other teas, but the primary focus is understanding and building a palate for a specific type/genre/region of…
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Pu’erh Factories: Why Buy from a Big Factory? Feat. Menghai, Xiaguan
Pu’erh brands play an important role in the marketing and selling of samples, cakes and tongs of pu’erh tea. This is far more pronounced in the Yunnan-based pu’erh when compared with their Fujian-based Yancha selling counterparts or Taiwanese oolong selling merchants. This has resulted in some fascinating convolutions within the pu’erh scene… CNNP sold their name…
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2005/2014 Manzhuan White2Tea Raw Pu’erh [Episode 60]
The first of a three episode series on White2Tea and their selection. This episode is a comparative tasting featuring TwoDog’s 2005 Manzhuan (Xiangming Factory) and 2014 Manzhuan (a White2Tea production).
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Ripe Pu’erh Concepts
Depending on who you ask you will get dramatically different reactions to ripe pu’erh. Ripe pu’erh, also shu, shou, or cooked pu’erh, is preferred by many as an easy, smooth drink. It is also often shoved aside by tea people as an inferior or simply uninteresting tea. In Zhang Jinghong’s fantastic Puer Ancient Caravans and…
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Yiwu Pu’erh [May 2014 Tea Drinking Report]
Every month, I dedicate it to one type of tea. This means I drink that genre of tea in some form at least once a day. This could mean gong-fu, grandpa, or even a cold-brew. I’ll still consume other teas, but the primary focus is understanding and building a palate for a specific type/genre/region of…
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Pu’erh Vendor Guide
Pu’erh is a hot tea. In the past 15 years it has moved beyond its longtime audience in Hong Kong and Taiwan into mainland China, the rest of Asia and more recently the west. With Ebay, Taobao, and the ever-growing worldwide marketplace, options for buying pu’erh online have exponentially increased in the last ten years.…
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80’s Wild Arbor Raw Pu’erh Origin Tea [Episode 56]
In episode 56, Denny and James review a great intro tea to aged raw pu’erh, Origin Tea‘s 80s Wild Arbor Raw Pu’erh. A reasonably priced, well-aged pu’erh. EDITED: Some additional notes after chatting with Tony. The earlier steeps are more affected by the storage rather than the tea itself (in this case the storage was…
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Pu’erh Compendium
White Tea. Green Tea. Oolong Tea. Black Tea. Yellow Tea. Pu’erh Tea? A weird outlier in the tea world, pu’erh is a weird, unntuitive name for an odd-ball in the tea world. Pu’erh represents both an ancient tradition of tribute tea, as well as a fast-moving, contemporary urban trend. So what is Pu’erh tea? Pu’erh…