Yunnan post-fermented dark tea, pressed into cakes or bricks and aged. Earthy, mineral, gets better for decades.
Made from Yunnan large-leaf assamica, named after Pu'er town on the old Tea Horse Road. Sheng (raw) cakes have been pressed since the Tang; modern shou (ripe) wet-piling was developed at Kunming Tea Factory in 1973.
1970s Hong Kong wet-storage created the market for shou. A 1950s Red Mark (Hongyin) sheng cake from Menghai sold at Sotheby's HK in 2019 for HK$1.18M. Drink the leaves 3-4 brews in; the flavor inverts after the first rinse.
Sheng young: astringent, smoky, bitter into long sweet aftertaste. Aged sheng or shou: dark mahogany liquor, earthy, mushroomy, with old-wood and damp-cellar notes. No milk, no sugar — drink in small gongfu cups.
Microbial post-fermentation. Shou: 45-day wet pile at 60°C+ inoculates with Aspergillus niger, mimicking decades of aging. Sheng: slow aerobic aging in dry-warm storage flips polyphenols into theabrownins over 10-30 years.
Variations
Sheng (raw, sun-dried, ages slowly), Shou (ripe, wet-piled, drinkable young), Menghai factory style (smokier, robust), Yiwu mountain (sweeter, softer), tuocha (bowl-shaped, Xiaguan), 357g bingcha (standard cake).
On the Palate
Where Pu-erh Tea sits in the Chinese flavor cloud
Ingredients
Serves 1How it's made
4 steps · 1 min active + 32 min waiting
- 11 min
Rinse 6 g pu-erh by quick first infusion with 100 °C water; discard.
Watch outThe first quick pour is just a rinse to wake the leaf and wash off dust — dump it, don't drink it.
- 21 min
Brew with 200 ml 100 °C water, infusion 1: 15 seconds.
Watch outKeep the first real infusion short, around 15 seconds — pu-erh gives up colour and body fast, and over-steeping turns it thick and muddy.
- 31 min
Pour through gaiwan into pitcher; serve in small cups.
- 430 min
Increase infusion time by 5–10 sec per round; ripe pu-erh holds 10+ infusions.
