I've seen green Pu Erh mentioned several times in this group. My original understanding was that Pu Erh, like black or oolong tea, was a product of some kind of fermentation, and thus by definition something other than green. Of course the process seems to take it in a different direction than either black or oolong, but still... Can someone unpack this for me? Not a life or death matter, just curious.
Unlike black and oolong, which are oxidized, Puerh really is fermented.
For a good explanation, see
/Lew
Interesting you should mention that, because I was just browsing through the Upton tea catalog and they list green pu-er not in the pu-er section but in the 'chinese green teas' section and there it's only billed as "Yunnan Compressed Green" or "Yunnan Compressed Green Tuo Cha" tea.. so Upton at least doesn't consider it to be pu-er.
A tea can be compressed without being a Puerh. If you go far enough back in history, all teas were compressed.
/Lew
I e-mailed Upton about that green tuocha, and they responded that it was true green tea, not pu-erh at all. I'm somewhat sucpicious of that, as they don't seem to be the preeminent experts on pu-erh.
For green pu-erh, all the explaining I could do couldn't come near this website:
green pu-erh (upper-left corner of the screen, drop-down menu).
That's a really great site in general, BTW. Mike Petro really outdoes himself sometimes...
ZBL
You can go to Mike's website.
Hi Hugo,
To compare Green Puerh to Green Tea or Black Puerh to Black Tea is not really a fair comparison. Puerh is actually somewhat of a class unto itself.
There is a tremendous amount of misinformation surrounding puerh, often by the very vendors that sell it. There is a green and a black variation of it. It is subjected, either naturally or artificially, to a fermentation utilizing a strain of the aspergillus niger fungi and to oxidation also either naturally or artificially. In the case of black puer it is subjected to an additional "ripening" step.
For more information check out my website, I have attempted to document the differences and I suspect you will find most of the answers you are looking for.
Mike Petro snipped-for-privacy@pu-erh.net
Yes. And don't forget that the tea used in the Japanese tea ceremony was compressed before it was powdered.
/Lew
Oh, I tried one of the Upton Green Tea Tuo-chas and it was definitely not puery... just plain green tea.
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