Semi-ripe tea, raw-ripe blends, and lightly fermented ripe pu'er all sit somewhere between raw and ripe, yet the national standard recognizes only raw and ripe. Learn how each is made, how lightly fermented ripe pu'er differs from raw, and who these teas suit.
Under GB/T 22111, ripe loose-leaf pu'er is graded Special Grade and Grades 1 through 10, 11 grades in all; "palace" and "gift tea" are market nicknames. We compare the raw material and flavor of each grade. A higher grade doesn't necessarily taste better, and compressed tea isn't graded.
Single-origin, blend, mountain tea, famous-mountain tea, and single-tree all describe where the raw material comes from and how much it's mixed. A blend doesn't mean lower quality, and you should ask how far "single-origin" really goes. Learn to break down the labels on the packaging so the price matches what's inside.
Raw and ripe tea have national-standard definitions; qingbing, new tea, mid-aged tea, aged raw, and dry-stored aged raw are customary terms in the tea trade. Here's what each name means and the vintage ranges commonly attached to them, so terms and years don't trip you up when a seller is pitching a tea.
Yunnan large-leaf tea can be made into pu'er, Dianhong, Yunnan green tea, and Moonlight White. Dianhong and ripe pu'er both brew red but are different tea categories, baked green tea can't count as pu'er, and Moonlight White is a white tea. We compare their processing and flavor, and whether Dianhong can be aged long-term like pu'er.
Pu'er was originally a place name in Yunnan; the tea's name was settled only after Pu'er Prefecture was set up in 1729, and in 2007 Simao City was renamed Pu'er City. Understand how the place name, the prefecture seat, and the tea name relate, and you'll see that pu'er isn't necessarily grown in Pu'er City, and that it simply shares a name with Pu'er coffee.
Why is most pu'er pressed into cakes, bricks, and tuo? From transport and measurement on the Ancient Tea Horse Road to storage, we compare compressed and loose-leaf tea in handling, flavor release, and aging speed, and explain why the national standard grades only ripe loose-leaf tea, not compressed tea.
Ripe pu'er goes through wet piling and counts as dark tea, but opinions differ on where raw pu'er belongs. From the six major tea categories and the framework of the GB/T 30766 tea classification standard to the argument that pu'er is a category of its own, here's a clear look at where pu'er fits.
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