"Unlike other varieties of tea, Pu-Erh Tea is traditionally made with older leaves (not the first flush or budding leaves) from tall and old trees. These trees are of a type only found in Yunnan Province, known as broad leaf tea. The leaves are covered with fine hairs, are larger than other tea leaves, and have a different chemical composition. The leaves are then left green or moderately fermented before being dried. Often times the tea is then formed into cakes or bricks, wrapped in paper or pomello rinds, and stored outside exposed to moisture, air, and heat for order to further mature. Then the tea is stored underground for several years before taking on the darker, mellower characteristics that make Pu'erh tea. This type of tea originated from the natural aging process that happened along the ancient caravan routes, and the tea bricks were at times used as a form of currency. The tea bricks developed a unique flavor that was then refined by aficionados. One of the most expensive and rare Pu'erh teas is made from the droppings of worms that eat stored Pu'erh bricks."
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Well, is it true? I don't see worm dropping puerh actually brewing into tea, just sludge...
This has been discussed at length and to much amusement on at least one other tea list, there may be something on it in this one if you search under pu pu puer or pu. Or poo poo. Also see Mike Petro's site
The civet cat coffee of the tea world! I couldn't imagine that something could be more disgusting than coffee made from cat poop, but worm poop basically trumps all! :-)
It's a myth among pu'er drinkers that when the tea gets really old that some insects can get inside of the tea and then die. Some people say worms...some people say moths. In my experience, I've never seen it in reality; only in some old men's rambling fables (usually in Cantonese). heh.
"worm excrement tea" used to be listed for sale on the CNNP Yunnan Branch website (i think!) in the same section as loose leaf puerh.
---------------Mydnight wrote: It's a myth among pu'er drinkers that when the tea gets really old that some insects can get inside of the tea and then die. Some people say worms...some people say moths. In my experience, I've never seen it in reality; only in some old men's rambling fables (usually in Cantonese). heh.
I found a small stone in one of my bricks of 2004 "1336th Anniversary of the Thai Calendar" that I bought via Ebay on Mike Petro's recco. I'm kind of ticked ... it's got to weigh at least a gram, which means I got 249 grams of tea in this brick, tops.
Oh well ... I just tell myself it's my "lucky puer stone". Maybe I'll get it tumbled/polished and put it on a chain someday. I just hope I don't find more stones in the other three bricks ... won't find out for at least ten years.
Risking that others have already said this, I am tasting some
*extraordinary* young green Pu'erh, with what some believe has excellent aging potential, composed of the bud plus three leaves from big leaf wild old Pu'erh trees.
I'd fear underground stored Pu'erh. Most storage of excellent Pu'erh is most likely done in climate controlled buildings. Caves are good.
I tasted one recently. It didn't taste bad, but it's not my cup of tea. The taste itself is somewhat sludgy, as Marlene suggests. That's my opinion and experience.
As for the rest of my contributions to this thread, they are but my opinions as well.
Mydnight, are you saying that evidence of insect infestation in a well maintained, old sheng cake is not a good thing? (Please take this question seriously, as I ask it in good faith.)
stePH, I've yet to get the brick, tuo, or bing that was exactly the advertised weight. This includes some damned old cakes. I chalk it up to variation unless I'm buying a small number of grams. Lucky Pu'erh Stone, eh? I'm almost jealous that I didn't get one.
Should I tell you how realitors measure square footage in apartments and in houses for sale?
Like the Innuits and their meat stashes up in the frozen north, when they come to one that has become a mass of writhing maggots they eat them with relish and look at our distaste by explaining that all they ever ate was caribou so they are caribou too. Of course it might be a days trek to the next cache in a very hostile envoirnment but I will attempt to keep grain moths and larder beatles away from my tea.
My wife wonders if it's not because there's some moisture in the tea at the time of pressing, that later evaporates out and makes the gross weight of the tea lighter. I weighed the other three bricks and they were all between 5 and 7 grams light. Is she on to something?
The thing is, the leaves are not weighed each time they are pressed in bricks, nor after. A general average is taken from the total weight of the consignment. Take for example a brick that says it weighs 250gm. This figure is based on the average of one dozen of 5 bricks each in one bundle, which is 30kg. (250gm X 5 X 24 = 30kg).
Some bricks will weigh slightly more and some will weigh slightly lesser. Not all are at 250gm exact. The same goes for the bingcha.
On the other hand, when the bricks are fresh out of the factory, the moisture content is at about 6-11%. Over time in an arid environment, the cake will lose the moisture and weight less, while in a highly humid condition, the cake will weigh roughly the same as the one it was shipped out.
There are 2 types of Worm Dropping pu'er. One is the real pu'er, the other isn't.
The real worm droppings are the by products of small whitish worms that appear on aged ole pu'er. This ocurs mainly in the warehouse where the teas are kept, before you buy it home. There are mainly 2 types of pests on the pu'er : one is the whitish worm, very tiny, which grow into ant-like insects (greyish-white and tiny) that scuttle all over the cake, and the last is the silverfish. But silverfish eats only the wrapper.
Leaving the cake in the shade of the sun in summer for a couple of hours will usually rid the cakes of these pests.
The by-products of the insects (worms) are seen mostly on the inside of the wrapper, they are tiny pellets with a slightly thread-like thing to hold them in a line of some sort.
Some people will remove these and throw them away, some will brew them right from the wrapper, some will sun them for a couple of hours before brewing them. I prefer the last method, the brew tastes slightly better, though I must say there is nothing much to it.
The other type of Worm Dropping tea is cultivated from the worms of a moth found in Guangxi. This tea is much tastier and interesting. The locals will collect the leaves from mulberry trees and keep them in a dark room. The moths will gyrate to these leaves, and lay their eggs there, and the wormds will feed on the fermenting leaves. The locals will collect the droppings, and fry them, sometime they mix it with honey. The droppings are then taken like a thrist quencher on hot summer days as it is believed to cool the body.
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