2008 Sheng Pu-erh Raw Tea

A raw (sheng) pu-erh from Yunnan, made from sun-dried large-leaf tea and aged since 2008, long enough for the sharp edge of young raw pu-erh to soften. Expect camphor, dried fruit and a mineral, sweet aftertaste that changes from infusion to infusion. Brewed gongfu style at 95°C.

Origin & Story

Open a cake of raw pu-erh in the year it is pressed and the leaf is green, sharp and bitter, a tea that needs careful brewing. Leave it for years and it changes color first, then smell, then taste. That slow change is why sheng pu-erh is bought by the vintage, and why a tea can be sold simply as 2008.

Pu-erh is a tea from Yunnan, made from the large leaves of Camellia sinensis var. assamica and shaped by microbes as much as by the leaf. For sheng, the raw kind, the leaf is pan-fired, dried in the sun into rough maocha, steamed, pressed and then left alone to mature, while shou, the ripe kind, is hurried along by a wet-piling method developed in 1973.

The year 2008 has a story outside the cup. Between 1999 and 2007 pu-erh prices rose roughly tenfold on speculation, hundreds of new factories opened and quality slipped in popular brands, until the market collapsed in mid-2007 and aged tea that had fetched a fortune could be bought for a fraction of its price. Tea pressed in 2008 came out in the aftermath.

What the years do is described in much the same way by tasters and by researchers. In a study of raw pu-erh stored dry for one to ten years, astringency fell while the sweet and mellow notes rose, and the leaf turned from green to yellow to auburn. Sellers describe tea of ten to twenty years as camphor, aged wood, dried plum and dark honey, with the early bitterness turned into a sweetness that lingers in the throat.

Where the tea has spent those years matters as much as how many. Dry storage, in a well-ventilated room at moderate humidity, keeps the cleaner floral and fruity notes. Wet storage in a humid place such as Hong Kong or Malaysia ages the tea faster but can leave earthy, leathery or musty notes. Humidity of 60 to 85 percent is the range usually given for keeping pu-erh.

Break about 5 g from the cake, rinse the leaf once with water at 95°C and pour the first infusion off at 10 to 15 seconds, adding about ten seconds a round; in a mug, 4 g in 240 ml at 98°C for three minutes.

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