Sheng Pu-erh

Sheng pu-erh (sheng cha, 生普洱 — “raw pu-erh”) is the liveliest tea of Yunnan. Leaves from broad-leaf, often ancient trees are withered, pan-heated, sun-dried and pressed into cakes — and from then on the tea lives and changes on its own, year after year, like good wine.

Taste and character

Young sheng is bright and ringing: flowers, meadow herbs, dried fruit, a pleasant astringency and a long returning sweetness. Age smooths the edges: mature sheng grows round, honeyed and deep, its energy calm. The same cake tasted in different years is, in effect, a different tea.

In the Chinese tradition

Pu-erh is called the tea you can drink together with its history: cakes are inscribed, stored, given and passed on. In traditional thinking young sheng is “cooling” and invigorating, while aged sheng is gentler and closer to the warming teas. For sheng lovers the mountains of Yunnan — Menghai, Yiwu, Wuliang — sound like the names of great wine estates.

How to brew

Sheng opens up in short infusions: water at 90–95 °C and many quick steeps. The first pour is usually discarded — it “wakes” the pressed leaf. A good sheng holds ten steeps and more, changing from cup to cup.