As Pu'er Tea becomes more widely known and accepted, appreciating Pu'er tea has turned into a healthy, fashionable, and refined form of leisure and entertainment.
The appreciation of Pu'er tea is a comprehensive sensory experience, primarily involving the integrated use of vision, taste, and smell to identify, perceive, and experience Pu'er tea with one's heart.
Pu'er tea comes in two forms: loose-leaf and compressed. Loose-leaf Pu'er is categorized into special grade and grades one through ten, as well as grade-outside teas. Compressed Pu'er can be found in shapes such as cakes, bricks, tuos, pillars, golden pumpkins, and heads.
There are several methods for identifying Pu'er tea: visual inspection, brewing evaluation, leaf base examination, and tasting. Among these, tasting is the most important. The identification of Pu'er tea mainly relies on sensory judgment, starting with observing its appearance and smelling it, then brewing it. After brewing, examine the liquor color, which can range from gemstone red, carnelian red, to tiger red, with gemstone red being the rarest and considered the pinnacle of tea quality. Next, inspect the leaf base (spent leaves), focusing on its softness, color, and uniformity. Finally, savor its taste.
Tasting primarily involves sampling the brewed Pu'er tea, smelling its aroma, and tasting its flavor, requiring it to be sweet, smooth, rich, and have an aged fragrance. This is because during post-Fermentation, microorganisms such as black Aspergillus, Penicillium, green-gray mold, and yeasts, particularly black Aspergillus and yeasts, act upon the tea.
Sweetness refers to the noticeable aftertaste that stimulates the tongue, cheeks, and palate, causing a refreshing sensation. This occurs during fermentation when large carbohydrate molecules are broken down into smaller sugars, and proteins are decomposed into various amino acids, creating the sweet taste of Pu'er tea. Smoothness means the tea broth is soft and smooth, with a genuine taste, refreshing and harmonious, not overly stimulating, and flows effortlessly from the mouth to the throat and Stomach. This is due to the reduction of polyphenols and catechins during fermentation and the increase in water-insoluble tea polyphenols, making Pu'er tea mellow and smooth. Richness means the tea broth is thick and not thin, with a fragrant taste that isn't bland.
The water-soluble extractives in Pu'er tea increase over time. During fermentation, large soluble sugars and soluble Pectin and their hydrolysates are produced, leading to a richer, thicker tea broth. Aged fragrance refers to the unique aroma specific to Pu'er tea, which is formed by multiple chemical components, primarily tea polyphenols, under the action of microorganisms and enzymes during post-fermentation, resulting in new substances that produce a composite aroma.