Mengku Arbor Tree Ripened Puerh Cake Tea ZhenMu LingYa 2007

Pu-erh tea was made of Mengku arbor tree, by fixation, rolling, drying into dian qing, and then made into this specific tea with particular crafting method. This unique progress brings Pu-erh tea the flavor of sweet, smooth, mellow and heavy, and the quality of getting better for longer time. The material of this ZhenMu LingYa, Mengku arbor tree of high quality, comes from Lantsang River in Yunnan province. Made by the progress of fixation, rolling and drying, Pu-erh is a healthy drink that is helpful for stomach, weight loss and refreshing your mind.

This ZhenMu LingYa Pu-erh Cake has been kept over a year by TeaVivre.

Despite the gentle quality and health benefits of Pu-erh, you may observe the cake carefully. It’s easy to find that the dry leaves are covered with golden pekoe. They are in auburn bloom color, tight and neat. The dry tea has strong fragrance. When brewed, the liquid is mellow and bloom in dark red color. We recommend this ZhenMu LingYa to every tea lovers.

Original Place of this Palace Pu-erh Tea - Mengku

One kind of great pu-erh tea needs one great source land of tea leaves, and Mengku is just the one. As one of the main tea-producing county in Yunnan, it is located in the north of Shuangjiang and is subordinate to Lincang tea-producing area (Lin means approaching to; Cang means Lancang River; Lincang got its name from approaching to Lancang River). Close to the Tropic of Cancer, it is the source land of national sexual fine-breed Mengku large-leaved tea and belongs to subtropical three-dimensional climate. There are almost 667 hectares of wild tea tree group in the virgin forest of Mengku Great Snowy Mountains at an altitude of 3228 meters (longitude 99°46’degrees east—latitude 23°42’ degrees north) . At most, the tea trees can be 22 meters high, and the root can be 3.25 meters thick. Most of them are 2500- 3000 years old. The wild tea group is the largest one with the highest elevation in China. It is very rare to discover such a large ancient tea tree group in the history of tea leaves’ development, which further proves that Mengku is one of the source land of tea trees in the world and the active gene pool of biological diversity.

The Three-dimensional climate creates the excellent material of Pu-erh tea: the Tropic of Cancer passes across Mengku. In this place, solar altitude ranges between 90º to 43º 06′. It will rise to 66 º33′ in spring and autumn, while in summer it will be at its maximum altitude of 90º, and in winter at its minimum altitude of 43º06′. The percentage of sunshine in Mengku is 49%. The sunlight has three features in distribution based on time and space. Firstly, it increases by degrees from mountain areas to river valley. Secondly, it differs in dry season and rainy season; dry season has much more sunlight than rainy season. Thirdly, it varies greatly every year; high elevation area has more while low elevation area has less; the duration of sunshine in winter is longer, which could help the tea trees pass the winter safely, as well as stock nutrition in cold weather.

Brief Health Info

Pu-erh tea has been touted for many years as a great weight loss tea because of its ability to help us burn fat and shed pounds, as well as having a deliciously mellow and deeply earthy flavor.

Pu erh has a mild, gentle nature to it, and so is great to drink if you have a delicate stomach or trouble drinking other teas.  People in south western China usually drink this tea during meals, to help with digestion.
Of course, like the health benefits of all tea , it contains antioxidants!

About Mengku Large-leaf Species

Let us have a look at the composition of Mengku Large-leaf tea.

Mengku large-leaved tea is also called Big Black Tea. It is planted in Mengku and belonging to large-leaved tea tree. Originally produced in Mengku, Shuangjiang, Lincang, it was judged as No. 12 Chinese Tea in 1984.

This tea specie is sexual reproduction, propagated by seeds. It belongs to arbor, and has tall plant which could reach the height of 6 -7 meters. The leaves are large with length between 13.8 to 21.9 centimeters, and width between 5.8 to 9.0 centimeters. They grows upward or downward. The leaf is oval with longer and dull tip. It has heavy green color, fat and soft blade.

Ripened Pu-erh Tea and microorganisms

Pile fermentation is an indispensable step in the process of Ripened Pu-erh Tea and is also the essence of Ripened Pu-erh Tea. Pile fermentation refers to the process of piling up the sunlight-dried primary tea to a certain height, watering, covering it by hessians, fermenting around 24 hours in the wet and warm environment.

From the microcosmic perspective, there are such main microorganisms in the mysterious process of pu er tea’s pile fermentation: Aspergillus niger, Penicillium, Rhizopus, Aspergillus gloucus, Saccharomyces, and Bacterium.

Aspergillus niger has laid a solid material foundation for the enhancement of the beverage’s fragrance and the quality of stickiness and smoothness, richness and mellowness. Rhizopus also can help puerh tea be sticky and smooth, rich and mellow.

In the process of pu erh tea pile fermentation, the heat-moisture effect has created a good environment for the metabolic activity of Saccharomyces. The quality of stale flavor, mellowness, sweetness and smoothness presented by pu’er tea is inseparable with the microbes in the process of fermentation.

Researchers in Yunnan Normal University once did this experiment as follow. Firstly, they took 1 gram tea sample from fresh-leaf tea, deactivated tea, rolled tea, sunlight-dried tea and pile-fermented tea. Then they tested the change of microbes in quantity in the process of pu-er tea pile fermentation.

The most important things decide the Puerh quality:

1 Place: The high quality Puerh should use the Yunan Large-leaf variety.  The main traditional Puerh production areas are Xishuangbanna, Pu’er (Simao), Lincang and Baoshan.  The tea from different area has different characteristic.  And each place also has their own representative places, for example, the representative places in Lingcang are: Fengqing and Mengku.

2 The quality of tea tress: Although all the Puerh tea trees are Yunnan Large-leaf tea trees variety, this variety also has many subcategories.  There are many ways to distinguish the tea trees.  In order to understand easily, we can judge the quality by the age of the trees.  The older the tea tree is, the deeper the root is, so it can absorb more nutrient and mineral substance which can ensure the high quality of the tea.  Generally speaking, the 60 years old tea tree (also called big tea tree 大树茶) is better than the 30 years old tea tree (also called arbor tea tree 乔木茶) which is better than 10 years old or less than 10 years old tea tree (also called tableland tea tree 台地茶).  Of course, there are also some tea trees more than hundred years old which is quite rare.

3 Plucking time: Moistened by abundant rainwater in spring, the fresh tea leaves are used to make sunlight-dried primary tea, which is rather good for the production of high-quality pu’er tea.

4 The grade of tea leaves: The thick branches and big leaves don’t mean it is bad quality.  Usually the grade only means the tenderness of the maocha.  It can be divided into ten grades by the tenderness.  The super grade is the most tender which contains tiny buds with golden tips.  The worst is the tenth grade which contains big leaves with stalk.  The appearance of higher grade maocha is elegant and the also contains more inclusions.  But the higher grade also has bitter taste.  The lower grade taste roughly and clearly, and also contains much fragrant which make the tea rich taste.  So it is better to choose puerh by the taste you like but not only focus on the grade.

5 Storage time: Under the condition of dry storage, the taste changes with the length of time it stored; the longer it stored, the better it tastes.  With fine Pu-erh tea, the longer it is stored and aged, as long as it is stored properly, the more complex the flavor and the more valuable the tea gets.  But it need to note that it is under the condition of good place, tea tree and proper picking time, it can’t be only emphasis the storage time but ignore the tea inner quality.

Additionally, compare with Ripe Puerh, the Raw Puerh doesn’t have the wet piling process so it should be more focus on the tea resource quality.

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