Pu'er is the name of both a town and a category of tea. The tea is made from the large-leaf variety of the tea plant that grows in southern Yunnan, in Xishuangbanna, Pu'er and Lincang, and it comes in two forms: raw, which is simply dried and pressed and ages slowly, and ripe, which is fermented in a controlled process that turns it dark, earthy and smooth in a matter of months.
The old tea forests
The distinguishing feature of this region is that tea is not grown in neat terraces but in forests, as part of a mixed canopy of trees. The tea bushes are often several hundred years old, with thick trunks and broad leaves, growing under shade trees with other crops beneath them. The ancient tea forests of Jingmai Mountain in Pu'er were inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage list in 2023, recognised as a cultural landscape created and maintained by the Dai and Bulang peoples over many generations. Walking through one is unlike walking through a plantation: taller trees, dappled light, moss and lichen on the branches, and picking baskets hanging from the trunks.
A tasting session
A formal tasting is a sequence, not a cup. Water is boiled, the leaves are rinsed once and discarded, then several infusions are poured in quick succession from the same leaves, each one slightly different. You are looking for aroma, the clarity of the liquor, the sweetness in the throat and how the taste develops across the infusions. Ripe teas taste of earth, wood and dates; young raw teas are bitter and astringent but leave a long sweet aftertaste; aged raw teas are somewhere in between and can be very expensive.
Buying
Pu'er is normally sold pressed into flat cakes, bricks or small bowls, wrapped in paper stamped with the mountain, the year and the producer. Ask for the year and the mountain, and be sceptical of claims about great age - genuinely old cakes are rare and costly. Prices range from thirty yuan for an everyday cake to thousands for a well-known vintage, and a mid-range cake from a specified mountain and year is the sensible purchase.
Practical notes
Tea mountains are reached by road from Jinghong, the capital of Xishuangbanna, usually with a driver; the roads are winding and distances are long. Spring, from late March to April, is the main picking season and the best time to visit. Tea rooms in Kunming and Dali will also pour a proper session if you do not want to travel to the source.
