Maocha has to be refined before it can be pressed into cakes or sold as finished loose tea: sieving grades the leaf by size and length, winnowing removes light flakes and dust, and hand-picking takes out yellow leaves, stems, and debris. How clean it gets depends on the kind of tea being made.
After rolling, the leaves stick together in clumps, so they're first broken up and shaken loose, then spread in the sun to dry. On a sunny day it takes about half a day to a day to dry them to below 10% moisture. On rainy days, drying sheds or indoor spreading are used; baking would turn the tea into hongqing. This sun-drying step is why pu'er's raw material is called shaiqing.
Pu'er maocha is kill-greened in two main ways: hand-firing in an iron wok and the drum machine. Hand-firing relies on the master adjusting to the leaves, with wok temperatures commonly said to be around 200°C; drum machines run continuously at a stable temperature. A scorched smoky taste from over-firing, and the greenness and red stems of under-firing, both stay in the liquor and the infused leaves.
After picking, pu'er's fresh leaves are spread thinly to shed heat and some moisture, until moisture content is about 70%, before kill-green. Spreading and withering look similar but have different aims: spreading only softens the leaves, while withering starts them down the road toward black tea. A Yunnan group standard lists withering as a step sun-dried tea shouldn't have.
The most common plucking standard for pu'er is one bud with two or three leaves: the bud and young leaves bring aroma and freshness, while slightly more mature leaves give the liquor its body. Learn the differences from a single bud to one bud with three or four leaves, and what hand-picking, machine-picking, and climbing ancient trees are really like.
Huangpian are the older, coarser leaves picked out when maocha is refined; they don't roll into strips and are yellowish in color. Low in bitterness, noticeably sweet, and affordable, they're great for brewing by the mug and for boiling, and many tea drinkers' secret everyday tea.
Crab claw (pangxiejiao) is a parasitic plant that grows on the branches of ancient tea trees. It belongs to the genus Viscum (mistletoe) in the Santalaceae family, with flat, jointed stems that look like crab legs. It isn't tea and isn't part of the tea tree, and when drinking tea it should be kept separate from pu'er.
Understory tea comes from tea trees grown beneath the forest canopy, and the thousand-year-old tea forests of Jingmai Mountain are the most famous example. Traditional management of ancient gardens relies on shade from forest trees, fallen leaves returning to the soil, and moderate picking; overpicking, trunk-cutting, and chemical inputs weaken old trees.
Nannuo Mountain's 800-plus-year-old cultivated tea king tree died in the 1990s, the Bada wild tea king fell in 2012, the Qianjiazhai wild great tea tree is estimated at about 2,700 years, and Xiangzhuqing's Jinxiu Tea Ancestor is signposted at over 3,200 years. Get to know these famous trees, and understand why tea king trees die and how they're protected.
Wild great tea trees deep in Yunnan's mountains are often identified as Camellia taliensis, Camellia crassicolumna, and other sect. Thea species, not the pu'er tea type. They differ from cultivated large-leaf tea in form and composition, which is why pu'er's national standard specifies sun-dried Yunnan large-leaf tea as the raw material.
Ecological tea, wilderness tea, and free-range tea are all customary terms in the tea world, mostly meaning gardens managed more loosely. Wilderness tea comes from old gardens left untended for years, not botanically wild tea; free-range tea is terrace tea that's no longer pruned or fertilized. None of these names has an official definition, so ask carefully when buying.
Yunnan classifies tea trees as ancient if they're 100 years or older, or have a base diameter of 15 centimeters or more measured 10 centimeters above the ground. Tree age is mostly estimated from base diameter, historical records, and interviews; ring counts and carbon-14 are rarely used. Most "thousand-year trees" are estimates, and understanding the methods tells you how to read the numbers.
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