This tea has an amazing floral scent and taste to it. If you’re not familiar with pu-erh teas, these are fermented, condensed tea “cakes”. You put one in your tea pot, add water, and then serve. One tea cake has made about 4 pots of tea before it got a bit of a bitter taste to it. Steep it for about 1 minute and use a ceramic tea pot.
Jasmine Pu'er tea
Puer teas come from Yunnan province and will improve with age. Some are still drinkable at age 50. They come in green, black, white and brick tea. These are teas that have medicinal qualities and are highly prized by the connoisseur. The tea leaves are withered, then, still slightly moist, they’re heaped into piles where a bacterium creates a reaction. The leaves are then dried loose or compressed into tea bricks or cakes. According to a Song dynasty scientific reference, the peoples of the Yunnan-Tibet border have drunk Puer since the Tang dynasty. The troops of Kublai Khan, “pacifying” the southwest after the 13th century Mongol conquest, are said to have introduced Puer to the rest of China for its medicinal value. Bricks of Puer tea constituted the first medium of monetary exchange used by nomads beyond the Great Wall of China, recorded in Chinese records as early as A.D. 476.
