pu-erh tea

type: black

origin: china

caffeine: strong

price level: $$$$

Stash Pu-erh tastes smoothly sweet and distinctly earthy, with a lingering, deep flavor. It brews a red liquor. Pu-erh, known in old Chinese as "black tea", is tea that is actually fermented. The particularly large leaves can be either oxidized ("cooked") or nonoxidized ("raw"). Pu-erh can be loose-leaf or compressed into the traditional round cakes (known as bing cha).. The leaves can also be infused several times. The large leaves used in the manufacture of highest-quality pu-erh are plucked from the long-lived tea bushes that grow abundantly in southern Yunnan Province. The leaf used to make both cooked and raw pu-erh cakes is sun-dried leaf. To achieve the distinctive flavor and aroma of pu-erh, the tea is heaped into piles and a controlled amount of moisture is introduced to the leaves. As the bacterial process begins to affect the nature of the tea, the piles are carefully turned and monitored as heat begins to generate within the pile. The heat combined with moisture encourages the natural bacterial fermentation integral to the tea's character and flavor.