Theme - Pu-erh

„The next place to focus is feel­ing in the throat. Tea here can be cool­ing or warm­ing, rough or wet. Often drink­ing good tea will give you the sen­sa­tion of a ball in your throat. It is good to con­sider how far down the tea goes — in other words, where the sen­sa­tion is no longer appar­ent. If the tea slips down with­out any notice, it is just a drink. Many good teas will stop some­where in the mid­dle of your throat. If it gives a pleas­ant feel­ing all the way down to your core, it is truly some­thing special.“

„Ripened or aged raw pu-erh has occasionally been mistakenly categorised as a subcategory of black tea due to the dark red colour of its leaves and liquor. However, pu-erh in both its ripened and aged forms has undergone secondary oxidization and fermentation caused both by organisms growing in the tea and free-radical oxidation, thus making it a unique type of tea. This divergence in production style not only makes the flavour and texture of pu-erh tea different but also results in a rather different chemical makeup to resulting brewed liquor.“

„The process used to convert máochá into ripened pu'er is a recent invention that manipulates conditions to approximate the result of the aging process by prolonged bacterial and fungal fermentation in a warm humid environment under controlled conditions, a technique called Wò Dūi (渥堆, "wet piling" in English), which involves piling, dampening, and turning the tea leaves in a manner much akin to composting.“