Puerh Tea

Factory Display of Puerh Cakes

Have you heard of Puerh tea?  It can be spelled multiple ways but it’s all the same tea.  People tend to think that only green tea is healthy for you, but studies are showing that other teas, especially this one, are just as good for you.

Puerh and Cholesterol

The most eye opening of these studies was conducted in France several years ago. A blind study was conducted with 500 hyperlipidemia patients (individuals with advanced cholesterol conditions, usually controlled with medication). Half of the controlled group consumed 3-4 cups of Puerh daily, while the rest of the participants were given something else. After a 30-day period the results showed that drinking Puerh on a regular basis could significantly lower cholesterol and further research confirmed that Puerh was as effective as the most advanced cholesterol lowering medications available.  (source: http://www.innteas.com/teas/puerh.htm)

Is it a black tea?

So what exactly is Puerh? And how did it get its name? The name “Puerh” comes from the name of the town in Yunnan Province in China where the tea is processed and sold, not from where the tea is actually grown.  Because the transportation of goods in the mountainous area was very difficult, it took a long time to transport the tea out of Yunnan by horseback.  The tea was transported inside burlap bags.  It began as “Sheng cha” green or raw tea and after the long journey often times a year or more, it naturally evolved into “Shou cha” or dark finished tea.  The high moisture content in the raw green leaves naturally promoted fermentation inside the burlap bags.  The result is a dark tea with a full bodied, deep red liquor with many layers and complex flavor (Puerh information obtained from Roy Fong of the Imperial Tea Court’s OMG Tea Class).

Puerh can be found in both loose leaf and compressed forms. It is not a black tea but rather its own type.  When you think of tea on a spectrum with green being the least processed to the most processed, Puerh falls at the end of the spectrum.  To find out more about this fascinating tea, stay tuned for Babette’s upcoming blog posts on Puerh teas and her experiences picking and processing her own tea cake.