"Four Measures" and "Six No Policies" of Pu 'er Tea
Four keys: clarity, purity, righteousness and qi.
The first trick is to smell it clearly.
Regardless of raw and cooked, old and new, good and bad, shape and price, the first thing to hear about Pu 'er tea is that after decades of aging and fermentation, tea will definitely have an old taste, but it should not have a musty smell (musty smell means that Chen Fang's space is wet or too humid and unventilated). The so-called old but not moldy, the old taste of tea will be scattered when you wake up. The moldy taste is the smell emitted by the deterioration of tea from the inside out. The moldy tea has lost its real beauty in such changes or seasoning (adding chrysanthemum to brew), so it is very important to smell it. If 50-year-old tea smells moldy and unnatural, even if it is put in 100 years,
The second trick is to distinguish its color.
Smell the tea before brewing to see if it is clean and clear (no odor, no odor), and then look at the bubbles. Pu 'er tea is stored in normal environment, even if it is stored for 30 years, 50 years, or even 100 years, the color of tea (tea soup) will never turn black and will not produce strange smell.
Nowadays, merchants or consumers in many metropolises have an illusion that the color of Pu 'er tea will turn black or black if it is kept for a long time. In fact, there is only one reason, that is, the older you get, the more fragrant you are. The later Pu 'er Chen Fang is fermented, the lighter it becomes, and the more fragrant it becomes. The tea has a slight oil rotation and will not turn black. When freshly brewed raw tea is brewed, it is as fresh and elastic as Taiwanese tea, but the soup is golden, bitter and slightly astringent, which means it takes time to wait for its fermentation and oxidation. The longer the time, the lower the irritation, the more mellow the tea quality (of course, the cost is relatively increased, and in the case of drinking less cake, the smoother it is, the better it is. Are there many good tea parties circulating in the market? I sincerely tell you once again that the quality of Pu 'er tea is by no means accidental, nor can it be known by age or price tag. Remember, drinking well, drinking comfortably and drinking without pressure is really good!
The third key is in its place.
The so-called "right" is an impartial "right". Once the finished Pu 'er tea is made, the most important thing is Chen Fang's space and time. Among the vast consumer groups of Pu 'er tea, few people really care about the aging environment and the time of oxidative fermentation of tea. I have been sparing no effort to promote the healthy and superior drinking of tea, so I want to emphasize some old concepts here, because the aging time of tea is not three or five years, but at least 20 to 30 years. If it is in the basement or in a place without ventilation and humidity, whether it is raw tea, cooked tea, new, old or left by grandpa, it will be of no help. Therefore, smart consumers, please use wisdom to ask the seller the questions in your mind, such as how to look at the age, how to distinguish between raw and cooked tea, how to distinguish between dry and wet warehouses, what is the difference and how to choose. I believe that some unscrupulous businessmen can be self-disciplined, the sustainability of Pu 'er tea can be passed down healthily, and future generations can understand the significance of grandpa making and grandson drinking or grandpa staying and grandson selling.
The fourth measure is to taste the soup with gas.
The spirit of tea is the same as that of anger, but the meaning is completely different. Anger is tangible ugliness, while tea is intangible comfort. Because this description can bring understanding, otherwise, tea fragrance is still a very vague concept for most tea lovers. It should be a well-known phenomenon that tea can absorb the nearby flavor. Therefore, it is very important to judge the aging environment and oxidation time of tea, and the aroma of tea also represents the authenticity of tea itself after years of environmental time and space in Chenfang.
Good tea with a good pot, good friends and a good mood, a cup of authentic and pure old Pu 'er tea, the fragrance of tea is refreshing and enters the human body and runs in it, which promotes the pores to emit slight sweat, warms the stomach and condenses comfortably in the bones, like a clean stream, and the whole body gradually becomes cool and refreshing, and the entrance is constant, floating and comfortable. This is really my artistic conception. I come from the countryside, from poverty and have little reading. In a word, good Pu 'er tea is a reflection of time and space. The longer the time, the better the space and the better the tea. You got it?
Six no policies
First, don't take the wrong year as a benchmark.
Because age often depends on the price, so nine times out of ten we lie about our age in order to sell more money, by the way, let the guests feel at ease and comfort themselves with their tea tasting skills and purchasing power. Again, the rotten tea 50 years ago will still taste good after 50 years of storage? Good tea 50 years ago, is it still valuable in case it gets wet or polluted during storage? Therefore, I solemnly say a word here: "You can only refer to your age, but you can't believe it. 」
For Pu 'er tea, the longer the time, the better (because the older Pu 'er tea is, the more fragrant it is), but the longer the time, the better. Avoid drinking "old" Pu 'er tea stored in a humid space, because remember one sentence: old Pu 'er tea is still sexual (tea-like), fragrant (tea-like) and rhyming (tea-like).
Secondly, it is not based on forged packaging.
It is said that there are at least hundreds of millions of counterfeit banknotes circulating in the market, so can't the packaging of tea be completely used as a basis? It must be! Because of scientific progress, printing technology, artificial intentional fraud, how to get to the bottom of the tea production process and packaging basis?
Listen to the price, year and packaging first to see if it is reasonable. There are many old teas from the 1950s. How many red seals are needed; Wholesale is cheaper; A red stamp is only a few hundred yuan and several thousand yuan. How much is negotiable? ! There is no logical concept of age, price and packaging, and the quotation is not in line with the market. If you were smart, would you still buy it? Moreover, the quality of sellers is uneven, and they are unscrupulous businessmen who want to make a fortune in Pu 'er and don't understand Pu 'er studies. They pack and pack, and then "pack". China has a good moral and an interesting image!
Third, don't use the color of the soup as an excuse.
Basically, as long as the raw tea is fermented in a clean and ventilated Chen Fang space, even if it is stored for 50 years or 100 years, the soup color of the tea is still impossible to become black or deep Bordeaux, and it is absolutely full of oil and gas, and the golden color becomes Bordeaux. At this time, some tea merchants will make up for it with some tricks, such as buying less tea and delivering water quickly, so that they can "cover" it more or less. Remember that there is only one truth, that is, the older the better. The soup color of tea is full of vitality, not the strange phenomenon that the mixed taste persists for a long time and the throat is not happy after drinking it. As the saying goes, a good cup of tea is refreshing, and two cups are what life wants. Can you experience such a wonderful state?
Fourth, don't take flavoring as an illusion.
Speaking of this, of course, we should pay special attention to the taste. The so-called taste, as the name implies, is judged by smelling the fragrance, and the frequency of the perceived fragrance is the so-called taste. Therefore, there is no standard. The public says it smells of camphor, while the woman says it smells of ginseng. The industry is "full of miscellaneous flavors". In fact, the only taste of raw tea is camphor, which is old and fragrant. Due to the seriousness of artificial fermentation, cooked tea products may cause controversy. The best way to distinguish is to pile up the tea products with less fermentation, and the shorter the steaming time, the better (because the stacking time is too long, the tea is completely softened and loses its meaning of getting more fragrant with age. ) mixing and steaming for a long time is like steaming vegetables too much to worry about being uncooked, steam more. I wonder, is it still meaningful to leave tea for a long time? Therefore, under the condition that raw tea is not fermented in heaps, the aged fragrance fermented by Chen Fang directly emits the fragrance of camphor trees, depending on whether the fragrance emitted is rich or not, and how smart consumers can experience and choose what they like.
Fifth, don't take musty smell as a title.
Soft-shelled turtle is the most important part that determines the quality of Pu 'er tea. The so-called Tibetan separation refers to the space in Chenfang after Pu 'er tea is picked and made, which is called Tibetan separation. So what's the difference? As shown above
It is not a loss to shop around. I believe that the world and future of Pu 'er tea will be wonderful with the theory of homogeneous price comparison and quality comparison at the same price. No matter good or bad, there is no luck, which is beyond the understanding of industries and consumers who love to listen to stories and make up stories.
Sixth, regardless of leaf age.
At present, most consumers think that big leaves are wild or arbor varieties, but many operators still believe that big leaves have a market. If the leaves are big, flat and thin, they must not be arbor species, let alone wild species (because orthodox Pu 'er tea is located in Yunnan, China, Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau, with extremely suitable growth conditions, which lasted for thousands of years).
It is particularly emphasized that traditional Pu 'er tea products do not need chemical fertilizers, let alone pesticides. Those fresh, big, flat and thin leaves are planted under the demand of commercial interests and can be harvested all year round. As long as there is soil, water, air, nutrients and sunshine, it will naturally come into being soon. Under the careful care of farmers, they are no longer as pure and real as the agricultural products such as guava in my childhood memory. Because they are all organic, there are no pesticides and fertilizers.
Pu 'er tea, an artificially planted shrub, is large, flat and thin because it naturally grows very fast under the irradiation of sunlight, nutrients and water through full photosynthesis, just like "boring" bean sprouts. The real Yunnan wild Pu 'er tea does not use chemical fertilizers and pesticides. After harvesting, the Dai people dried in the sun, and then made it in Chenfang, waiting for fermentation. The bitterness, astringency and theophylline in fresh Pu 'er tea are catalyzed by the flow of water in the air (aging and fermentation) based on the principle that it cannot be sealed. The longer the time, the less irritating the tea and the more complete the fermentation. Because of this, Chen Fang's cost, storage space, management technology and other issues are not willing to be borne by dealers with vested interests. In contrast, cases of fraud, aging and false reporting emerge one after another.