Guangxi pu'er?

snipped-for-privacy@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com5/5/05

Only your mouth and nose will know for sure.

Michael

Mydnight wrote: snip

Dysentery),

Strange, I thought I replied to this from home.

Anyway I too have some of this, see

It is quite tasty but not exactly a puer. My cakes are shaped like a hockey puck rather than the traditional tuocha birds nest shape. They are very good. The only thing I dont like about them is that they are made from chopped leaf rather than whole leaves, the only reason I dont like it is because it is too easy to hide things in chopped leaf. They are well worth having but I would not pay a premium for them.

As for 1980s well you know how that goes.....

Mike

Indeed, but if it's valuable, I'd like to keep it wrapped up.

My LiuAn comes in 500g baskets wrapped by bamboo leaf. One basket is loose leaf. The other slightly compressed but flakes easily. The loose basket is expensive $25 the compressed cheap $6. The taste I describe as mild shu with strong notes of sheng. My notes say LiuAn is a single fermentation and puerh a double. Fermentation will produce gas as a byproduct and oxidation can't.

Jim

If it is true 80s then it is of value, but not of the same crazieness that Puer brings because Liu Bao is not as well known.

Mike

Liu An isn't Liu Bao.

/Lew

LiuAn is the fermented tea specialty of southern Guangxi province. I'm not talking about Lu-An Gua Pian. So far it seems LiuAn is the loose leaf version and LiuBao the compressed. Maybe not.

Jim

Lewis Per>

produce

Jim,

Liu An is not the loose version of Liu Bao. They are not even from the same province. Liu An is from Ahnui while Liu Bao is from Guangxi.

SEb

That agrees with what I've read too. (Minor quibble: that's "Anhui", not "Ahnui".

/Lew

Then somebody better have Roy and ITC change their webpage indicating the location of Liuan as such:

I have a similar looking basket from Chinatown with the Liu4An1 characters. It even came with the Zhong logo. We both agree there is a femented tea from Guangxi. I get hits on Liu4Bao3 and Cang1wu2. The translation software shows Cantonese Lok Poa or Six Forts tea. The ripe tea is called litchi sinensis. I don't see Anhui producing Puer because of its geographical isolation from Yunnan and Guangxi. There is an 'old bamboo' area but the description of that tea doesn't seem to be fermented. I think Liuan is a marketing name for puer from Guangxi and not geography until someone who should know can categorically state the puer bamboo baskets come from Anhui. The ITC site isn't the only one which states the baskets comes from Guangxi.

Jim

SEb wrote:

Here is another interesting post on this debate. Dejavu all over again....

Mike

Liu An tea is originaly from Anhui province, its producing area is the Huo Mountain, which was belong to the Liu An County before, that is where its name came from. Liu An basket is used the same green tea leaves as the Liu An Gua Pian (which is from the same producing area) but was plus steamed then stocked tightly inside the bamboo bastket.

Liu An tea is in fact a green tea (hui qing = Anhui chao green tea), it is like the green pu-erh tea from Yunnan, is a post-fermented green tea. The older it is the better (purer, more mellow) it will be. And usually (what they did in the old time), this tea will be kept inside the garage 2 to 3 years before selling on the market.

Liu Bao tea is originaly from Guangxi province, it got the name also from the producing area, which is the Liu Bao village, Wu Cang County. Liu Bao tea has loose form, compressed basket form (which the basket is bigger than the Liu An tea from Anhui), beeng cha from, tuo cha form, and different sizes brick form. Liu Bao tea is in fact a fully fermented black tea, it can be drunk fresh or aged, and the aged one is usually used as the medicine by the local people.

So they are not the same tea at all, one is green and the other is black. What similar is they are both sold inside bamboo baskets which are not the same size nor same shape. And neither of them should be called pu-erh tea since the new definition of "puerh tea" is only used to refer to the tea that is produced with using the "shai qing" leaves that are harvested from the yunnan "dayeh" tea tree race.

Jing

Thanks Jing. You probably know. However I wished I could find one website in Chinese that even mentions the Liuan bamboo basket process. Unfortunately no matter what search string I get the Liuan melon seed. There are websites that detail Anhui tea production but no mention of this. As mentioned before my Chinatown Liuan came with the Zhong sticker. My mainland basket came from GuangDong. I haven't seen these baskets on TaoBao. I just opened up a kilo bag of Yunnan Black Gold. You'll need a dust mask. The light and wispy whole leaf is more gold than black. It is the darkest red brew I've seen in a tea almost non transparent. It tingles the tastebuds. It has a glorious sweet smokey taste unlike a piney LS. I got one of those BoNay heavy plasticwrap cakes from HongKong. I think I see characters similar to CangWu LiuBao but not exactly. I'll give it a try soon to see if it taste more like nut than grass. I'm still learning even when other interests have faded from memory.

Jim

SEb wrote:

County.

Sorry, I'm not sure I understand you completely here. Are you saying Liu Bao is fully oxidized (hong cha) that is post-fermented?

/Lew

ITC is in some ways an excellent vendor, but this isn't the only questionable information on their site. They recommend 3-5 minutes as a steep time in gongfu preparation of oolong:

/Lew

Lew,

Red tea (hong cha) is oxidized while black tea (hei cha) is fermented. So that would make the liu bao and the cooked pu erh black tea as they are fermented.

SEb

Lewis Per>

basket is