Pu'er or pu-erh (Wade-Giles p'u-erh) is a variety of fermented tea traditionally produced in Yunnan Province, China. In the context of traditional Chinese tea production terminology, fermentation refers to microbial fermentation (called 'wet piling'), and is typically applied after the tea leaves have been sufficiently dried and rolled. As the tea undergoes controlled microbial fermentation, it also continues to oxidize, which is also controlled, until the desired flavors are reached. This process produces tea known as 黑茶 hēichá (lit. 'black tea') (which is different from the English-language black tea that is called 红茶 hóngchá (lit. 'red tea') in Chinese). Pu'er falls under a larger category of fermented teas commonly translated as dark teas.
Two main styles of pu'er production exist: a traditional, longer production process known as shēng (raw) pu'er; and a modern, accelerated production process known as shóu (ripe) pu'er. Pu'er traditionally begins with a raw product called "rough" (máo) chá (毛茶, lit. fuzzy/furry tea) and can be sold in this form or pressed into a number of shapes and sold as "shēng chá (生茶, lit. raw tea). Both of these forms then undergo the complex process of gradual fermentation and maturation with time. The wòduī (渥堆) fermentation process developed in 1973 by the Kunming Tea Factory created a new type of pu'er tea. This process involves an accelerated fermentation into shóu (or shú) chá (熟茶, lit. ripe tea) that is then stored loose or pressed into various shapes. The fermentation process was adopted at the Menghai Tea Factory shortly after and technically developed there. The legitimacy of shóu chá is disputed by some traditionalists when compared to the traditionally, longer-aged teas, such as shēng chá.
Pu’er can be stored and permitted to age and to mature, like wine, in non-airtight containers before consumption. This is why it has long been standard practice to label all types of pu’er with the year and region of production.
Name
Pu'er is the pinyin romanization of the Mandarin pronunciation of Chinese Pu-erh is a variant of the Wade-Giles romanization (properly p‘u-êrh) of the same name. In Hong Kong the same Chinese characters are read as Bo-lei, and that is therefore a common alternative English term for this tea. The tea got its name from the ancient tea-trading town of Pu'er (普洱), which is today's Ning'er Town (宁洱镇) in Ning'er County, Pu'er prefecture-level city of Yunnan. Pu'er County had its name changed into Simao, after Simao Town, the new county seat in 1950 following the Communist victory. The County of Simao became a prefecture level City and had its name changed to Pu'er in 2007. Although the urban center of the modern Pu'er City remained in Simao, the whole Pu'er region is now sometimes considered the appellation for pu'er proper.
Pu'er (and all tea) terminology varies from language to language. For example, pu-er is known in Chinese as a type of 'dark tea' (heicha) while in Spanish it is considered ‘té rojo’ (red tea) and, conversely, what in Chinese is called 'red tea' (hongcha) is known in Spanish as 'té negro' (black tea).
History
Fermented tea leaves has a long history among ethnic groups in Southwest China. These crude teas were of various origins and were meant to be low cost. Darkened tea, or hēichá, is still the major beverage for the ethnic groups in the southwestern borders and, until the early 1990s, was the third major tea category produced by China mainly for this market segment.
There had been no standardized processing for the darkening of hēichá until the postwar years in the 1950s, when there was a sudden surge in demand in Hong Kong, perhaps because of the concentration of refugees from the mainland. In the 1970s the improved process was taken back to Yunnan for further development, which has resulted in the various production styles variously referred to as wòduī today. This new process produced a finished product in a matter of months that many thought tasted similar to teas aged naturally for 10–15 years and so this period saw a demand-driven boom in the production of hēichá by the artificial ripening method.
In recent decades, demand has come full circle and it has become more common again for hēichá, including pu'er, to be sold as the raw product without the artificial accelerated fermentation process.