Spreading Fresh Leaves: To Wither or Not to Wither

When fresh leaves are carried back down the mountain, the first thing isn't to throw them straight into the wok but to spread them out to "breathe." This step is called spreading (tanliang, also tanfang). It looks like nothing more than laying leaves on bamboo trays, but it's the first checkpoint for whether sun-dried maocha comes out clean.

What Happens to Fresh Leaves After Picking?

Freshly picked leaves are still respiring, continuing to give off heat and lose moisture. Left piled in a basket too long, the leaves in the middle heat up and begin to turn red and develop a stuffy smell. So as soon as fresh leaves reach the workshop, they need to be:

1. Spread thin: On bamboo trays, bamboo mats, or spreading racks, generally just a few centimeters deep.
2. Ventilated and kept out of the sun: In a cool, airy place, to shed field heat and some moisture.
3. Turned at the right times: Turned gently so the layers are even, without squeezing hard.

Yunnan's pu'er processing technical code recommends spreading fresh leaves until moisture content is around 70% before kill-green. At that point the leaves are soft and the grassy smell has faded, so they're less likely to end up "cooked outside, raw inside" in the wok, and they roll into strips more easily.

How Spreading and Withering Differ

Both make fresh leaves lose moisture and soften, but the degree and purpose differ:

Simply put, spreading protects the green-tea foundation; withering deliberately lets the leaves begin oxidizing, heading down the road to black, white, or oolong tea.

Can Pu'er Be Withered?

According to the Yunnan Tea Circulation Association's 2021 group standard Sun-Dried Tea (Large-Leaf Variety), sun-dried tea processing should not include withering, and it also excludes early-fermentation practices such as low-temperature, long-duration pan-firing for kill-green, yellowing (menhuang), red fermentation (wohong), and tossing (yaoqing). The reason is that pu'er's raw material is sun-dried green maocha, which must keep its "green-tea foundation" to have the capacity for long-term transformation later; if it's withered and oxidized from the start, the resulting tea may have a lovely aroma and high sweetness, but it has already drifted from pu'er's true character.

That said, there are indeed some raw teas on the market with "high aroma, sweetness, and a golden liquor" that come from spreading for longer, close to a light wither. Tea drinkers are divided on these: those who like them find them delicious young, while those who are wary believe their room for later transformation is limited.

What Is Hongshai?

"Hongshai" or "shaihong" (sun-dried red tea) is a different tea: fresh leaves are withered and rolled and allowed to oxidize fully into black (red) tea, then dried in the sun instead of by baking. It has a sweet aroma with floral, fruity, and honey notes, and it's been a popular category in Yunnan in recent years, often made from large-leaf or ancient-tree material.

Hongshai falls under black tea, not pu'er. It and raw pu'er both look like "sun-dried large-leaf tea," but one has been withered and oxidized and the other hasn't, so the dry leaf color, liquor color, and aroma all differ: hongshai's dry leaf is reddish brown, its liquor bright red, its sweet aroma obvious; raw pu'er's dry leaf is dark green or grayish green, and its liquor ranges from yellow-green to golden.

In the context of pu'er, "hongshai" is also sometimes used to describe maocha that was over-spread and turned red, a processing defect; see Withering, Hongshai, and Menhuang: Common Processing Defects in Pu'er.

What Happens if Leaves Are Spread Too Long?

• Red stems and red leaves: The leaves start oxidizing, and leaf edges and stems turn red, which shows in the infused leaves.
• Aroma leaning sweet and floral-fruity: A bit like black tea or oolong, losing sun-dried tea's freshness.
• A stuffy smell: Spread too thick with poor ventilation, the leaves in the middle heat up and develop a stuffy, muddy smell.
• Difficult kill-green: Leaves that are too soft and unevenly dried tend to scorch at the edges or not get fired through.

Conversely, if spreading is insufficient and the leaves hold too much water, steam builds up during kill-green and the liquor tastes green and astringent. So tea masters feel the leaves' softness with their hands and smell how the green aroma changes to judge when they're ready for the wok.

The Next Steps

Once spreading is done, kill-green and rolling follow; details are in Kill-Green and Rolling: The Two Pairs of Hands That Shape a Pu'er; the overall sun-drying process is in Sun-Dried Maocha: Where Pu'er's Flavor Begins.

FAQ

What happens to fresh leaves after picking? They're first spread thin in a cool, airy place to shed heat and some moisture, and kill-greened once moisture content reaches about 70%.

Are spreading and withering the same? No. Spreading only softens the leaves a little and keeps them green; withering makes leaves lose a lot of moisture and begin oxidizing, a step in making black, white, and oolong tea.

Can pu'er be withered? Yunnan's group standard for sun-dried tea lists withering as a step it shouldn't have, because pu'er needs to keep the foundation of green maocha.

Is hongshai pu'er? Hongshai (shaihong) is black tea that's been withered and oxidized, then dried in the sun; it isn't pu'er.