What Is Raw Pu-erh Tea?

There are two types of Pu-erh tea: raw and ripe. Both are called Pu-erh tea, but they are completely different teas. The difference is as large as that between green tea and black tea.

Raw Pu-erh is made in a way similar to green tea, and after brewing, the spent leaves are yellowish-green to green. Ripe Pu-erh, on the other hand, is made from raw Pu-erh through fermentation by various microorganisms, and its liquor is brown like coffee.

When people hear the words Pu-erh tea, many of them picture dark brown ripe Pu-erh. However, the Pu-erh tea that was actually carried along the Tea Horse Road was raw Pu-erh. Raw Pu-erh has a history of 700 to 800 years, while ripe Pu-erh is a young tea, developed in Guangdong Province in the 1970s.

The Tea Horse Road was a trade route used from the late Tang dynasty until the mid-20th century to carry tea produced in Yunnan and Sichuan to Tibet and other regions by horse and mule. In Yunnan, tea mountains such as Yiwu were the main starting points, and the tea was carried to Tibet via Pu-erh, Dali, and Lijiang.

At that time, major tea-producing areas such as Yiwu were under the jurisdiction of Pu-erh Prefecture. The tea produced there was gathered in Pu-erh and traded as "tea from Pu-erh," which is how it came to be called Pu-erh tea.

What Does Raw Pu-erh Taste Like? Aroma, Mouthfeel, and Astringency

Freshly made raw Pu-erh has a gentle but memorable natural aroma reminiscent of flowers and citrus, and a very smooth and soft taste. As it ages, the aroma becomes more vibrant, shifting from flowers to fruit, and then to dried fruit. The way the aroma changes and grows more vibrant over the years is one of the pleasures of raw Pu-erh.

However, the taste of raw Pu-erh depends greatly on the quality of the raw material. Raw Pu-erh made from tea grown in low-altitude gardens, tea grown with fertilizer, or tea plucked in summer or autumn is astringent and bitter. On the other hand, tea plucked in spring from unfertilized, high-altitude gardens has a smooth mouthfeel and a long aftertaste, and you can enjoy a sensation of the tea soaking into your body.

The great thing about raw Pu-erh is that you can drink plenty of it every day in place of water. Water is the most natural and delicious drink, but it is not something you drink to enjoy its flavor or aroma. Strongly aromatic teas make a strong impression with the first sip, but you tire of them when you drink them every day. Raw Pu-erh, on the other hand, does not assert its aroma and flavor too strongly, so you can drink a lot of it as easily as water. At the same time, each tea has its own character, and once you get used to it, it becomes habit-forming and you never tire of it, even every day. You can drink it in place of water while also enjoying the quality and character of each tea, which makes it an ideal tea for everyday drinking.

Because of this gentle aroma and soft taste, raw Pu-erh is surprisingly popular with children. Children are more sensitive to aroma than adults, so they tend to prefer raw Pu-erh or white tea over strongly aromatic oolong or black tea.

How Is Raw Pu-erh Made? Processing Without Pile Fermentation

Pu-erh tea is often thought of as tea made by pile fermentation (wo dui) with microorganisms, but that is how ripe Pu-erh is made. The process of making raw Pu-erh is very similar to that of green tea.

Fresh leaves → Withering → Pan-frying → Rolling → Sun-drying → Mao cha → Sorting → Sold as loose leaves, or compressed into cakes

The steps are almost the same as green tea, but the pan-frying method is different. For green tea, the heat of the pan is transferred directly to the leaves and pan-frying is completed in a short time. For raw Pu-erh, pan-frying takes longer and also uses the steam generated when the leaves are heated.

While the leaves are pan-fried slowly, part of the leaves ferments as the enzymes are being deactivated. This partial fermentation during pan-frying, combined with the sun-drying that follows, creates the taste and aroma unique to raw Pu-erh, different from green tea. Each step is described in detail below.

Plucking

The tea is generally plucked at about one bud and three leaves. In some exceptional cases, raw Pu-erh is made from one bud and two leaves. Because the proportion of buds is high, the mouthfeel becomes creamy, but the aftertaste and aroma tend to be lighter.

Usually, the lower the altitude and the more fertilizer a garden receives, the earlier the buds appear. In unfertilized gardens at high altitude with old tea trees, even the first flush is not plucked until late May.

In Pu-erh tea as well, some people value Ming Qian tea, which is plucked before the Qingming Festival. However, Ming Qian tea is generally plucked from young trees at low altitude, so people like us who regard the aftertaste as the main measure of quality prefer tea plucked later.

Withering

The plucked leaves are spread thinly and left to wilt quietly for a while. This step is called withering. It gradually reduces the moisture in the leaves and promotes the changes involved in forming the aroma. The ideal withering time is about 8 to 12 hours, but many producers wither the leaves for only 2 to 4 hours to prioritize efficiency.

Even after plucking, the cells of the tea leaves stay active for a while. As water evaporates from the leaves, the cells lose water and firmness, and the whole leaf becomes soft. At the same time, the metabolism of aroma-related components inside the leaf also changes [1].

Tea leaves contain aroma compounds such as linalool and geraniol in the form of glycosides, bound to sugars. While they are bound to sugars, they do not evaporate easily and cannot be perceived as aroma. When an enzyme called glycosidase cuts off the sugar, these aroma compounds are released. Withering is involved in how these aromas are formed through the tea-making process [2].

Pan-frying

The pan-frying method also differs from that of green tea. For green tea, the temperature depends on the type, but on average a small amount of leaves is put into a pan heated to around 300°C and pan-fried in a short time while being stirred frequently. For raw Pu-erh, on the other hand, a large amount of leaves is put into a pan heated to 260 to 280°C all at once. Once steam starts to rise from the leaves, the pan temperature is lowered to below 200°C, and pan-frying proceeds slowly using the steam generated by the leaves themselves.

Because pan-frying takes longer than for green tea, partial fermentation proceeds, mainly in the stems, until polyphenol oxidase is completely deactivated. This is different from the browning of stems caused by insufficient pan-frying. It is fermentation that occurs within a certain range under the traditional pan-frying method. However, producers in Yunnan do not understand this mechanism and control the fermentation intentionally. The method passed down through experience results in controlled fermentation.

In this way, in addition to the aroma-forming fermentation during withering, partial fermentation also occurs during pan-frying, so raw Pu-erh can be regarded as a lightly fermented tea. This fermentation creates the gentle taste unique to raw Pu-erh, different from green tea. The compounds produced by fermentation also change over long aging into the complex aged aroma unique to raw Pu-erh.

Rolling

After pan-frying, the leaves are cooled and then rolled. Rolling can be done by hand or with a rolling machine, but in recent years rolling machines have become common.

Rolling with stronger pressure twists the leaves more tightly. It also breaks the leaf cells more severely, so the flavor and aroma come out strongly all at once when brewed, but the tea does not last for many infusions. Tea rolled with gentle pressure, on the other hand, releases its flavor and aroma slowly, so it can be brewed many times.

Sun-drying

After rolling, the leaves are tangled together and form many clumps. The leaves are therefore carefully loosened and spread thinly and evenly on sheets to dry in the sun.

The finish of raw Pu-erh depends greatly on the weather during drying. Tea dried quickly under clear skies has a good flavor and aroma. However, when humidity rises on rainy or cloudy days and drying takes longer, a stuffy, musty odor develops.

Pan-frying raw Pu-erh does not deactivate 100% of the enzymes. Therefore, when bad weather means drying takes 2 to 3 days, the enzymes remaining in the leaves act and cause partial over-fermentation. In good weather, sun-drying is finished in one day, and once the moisture content falls to about 8% or less, the mao cha is complete.

Hand Sorting

The finished tea is sorted by hand to remove foreign matter, coarse yellow leaves called huang pian, and dust.

Compression

After sun-drying, the leaves are sold as loose leaves or processed into disc-shaped cakes. Pressing the leaves into shape is called compression. It was originally done to compress bulky tea leaves and make them easier to transport.

To make a cake, the leaves for one cake are first weighed, put into a metal cylinder, and steamed. When the dry leaves become soft, they are moved into a cloth bag, shaped into a disc, and compressed with a stone or a press. They are then dried to finish the cake. Raw Pu-erh holds its shape even with relatively light pressure, so it can also be compressed by hand.

Compression is not simply a matter of shaping the tea. If too much steam is applied, the leaves receive excessive heat and the flavor and aroma change. The drying method after compression also affects the finish. At HOJO, we are careful about how heat is applied with steam, and after compression we let the cakes dry naturally with as little heat as possible. Even when we process tea into cakes, we make sure not to lose the flavor and aroma of the loose leaves.

The traditional weight of a tea cake in Yunnan is 357g. It is said to come from the old practice of wrapping cakes seven at a time in bamboo leaves. Seven cakes of 357g weigh 2,499g, or about 2.5kg, which equals 5 jin in the Chinese unit of weight.

However, the weight is not fixed at 357g. Cakes can also be made in 100g, 200g, 400g, 500g, and other sizes at the seller's request. Besides disc-shaped cakes, there are many other shapes, such as brick-shaped zhuan cha, bowl-shaped tuo cha and mini tuo cha, dragon balls, and apple shapes.

Raw Pu-erh Is Delicious Without Aging

Some people claim that raw Pu-erh is not drinkable unless it is aged. However, raw Pu-erh made from good raw material is delicious even when freshly made. I myself mostly drink new raw Pu-erh every day.

What determines the taste of new tea is mainly the raw material. Raw Pu-erh made from summer-plucked leaves is astringent. Raw Pu-erh made from spring-plucked leaves, on the other hand, has a gentle taste, and you can enjoy the flavor and aroma that only new tea has. In particular, raw Pu-erh made from leaves from high-altitude gardens, old tea trees, and unfertilized gardens is very delicious when freshly made.

Even with green tea and black tea, tea made from the second flush or later is astringent, and it is not unusual for it to upset your stomach. I think the idea that raw Pu-erh is undrinkable unless aged may come from experiences of drinking tea that is strongly astringent and bitter because of its raw material.

In fact, even in the producing areas of Yunnan, people in the Pu-erh trade mostly drink freshly made loose-leaf tea every day and rarely drink aged tea. Aging is not an essential step to make raw Pu-erh drinkable. It is simply a question of whether you enjoy the flavor and aroma of freshly made tea, or the change in aroma brought by aging.

Aging and Storage

Raw Pu-erh is delicious even when freshly made, but you can also enjoy how its aroma changes through storage and aging. The floral aroma of young raw Pu-erh shifts with aging to aromas reminiscent of fruit and honey, and then dried fruit.

However, longer aging does not make the tea better. What changes with aging is the character of the aroma. Quality comes from the raw tea leaves, so it does not change no matter how many years the tea is aged.

What matters in aging is not the number of years but the aroma the tea has developed. The tea is at its best when it has reached the aroma you like. The aged aroma usually forms from the third year onward. It may be surprising, but tea kept for 3 to 5 years sometimes has a more approachable aroma and tastes better than tea aged for more than 10 years.

What greatly affects the aroma after aging is whether the leaves are exposed to air during storage. When stored exposed to air, the floral and fruity aromas are lost, and aromas reminiscent of dead leaves, leaf mold, and soil become noticeable. When stored with air shut out, on the other hand, the tea keeps its original character while changing toward sweet aromas reminiscent of fruit, honey, and dried fruit. The latter is the kind of aging we aim for.

An important clue for understanding this difference is tie bing (iron cake). Tie bing is a traditional cake of tea leaves pressed with very strong pressure. Some are so hard that a knife cannot cut them and they can only be broken apart by shaving with a chisel. With compression this strong, air is pushed out from between the leaves, and afterward air hardly gets inside. Tie bing is an example of a traditional processing method that created an environment with extremely little oxygen inside the cake.

When a tie bing is stored for a long time, even the same cake smells different on the surface and inside. The surface exposed to air develops a stale, aged odor, while leaves shaved from the inside have a sweet aroma reminiscent of fruit and honey. Leaves with the same raw material and the same storage period develop different aromas because of their different contact with oxygen.

Why does this difference occur? On the surface exposed to air, oxygen is continuously supplied from outside. Oxygen reacts with many components of the leaves, so oxidation spreads widely. You cannot choose which components change. As oxidation proceeds without order, even the pleasant aromas the leaves originally had are lost, and the stale, aged odor becomes noticeable.

Inside a tie bing, on the other hand, no oxygen is supplied from outside, and widespread oxidation by oxygen is suppressed. Even so, the leaves inside still age. You may wonder, "How can oxidation happen without oxygen?" The word oxidation probably makes you think of reactions like iron combining with oxygen and rusting. In chemistry, however, a substance losing hydrogen or electrons is also called oxidation. When one component of the tea leaves passes electrons to another component, oxidation and reduction can occur even without oxygen in the air.

Without oxygen, reactions that depend on oxygen supplied from outside do not proceed, and the changes are limited to reactions that can occur inside the leaves. The tea changes toward sweet aromas reminiscent of fruit, honey, and dried fruit without losing the character of raw Pu-erh to air oxidation. This is what we consider the ideal mechanism of aging.

Some people claim that microorganisms or enzymes remaining in the leaves are involved in the aging of raw Pu-erh. However, when leaves that have been fully dried after processing are stored, this explanation does not hold up either microbiologically or biochemically. In a study using processed tea, a moisture content of 10% or less was not suitable for the growth of yeast and mold, and growth was observed when the moisture content was increased further [3].

As for enzymes, remaining in the leaves and actually driving reactions inside dry leaves are two different things. In a study on the storage of tencha, the enzyme itself still had the ability to react after storage, but inside the low-moisture leaves, the enzyme did not break down the components [4]. The change in aroma during storage of well-dried raw Pu-erh can be explained as non-enzymatic chemical change, not as fermentation by microorganisms or enzymes.

The idea of aging without continuously supplying oxygen from outside is not unique to tea. Bottled wine is kept from contact with outside air by its cork, and its aroma changes inside the bottle. With ham and cheese, the surface dries and hardens and separates the inside from the outside air, and aging proceeds inside. The reactions during aging differ from food to food, but they share the point that the whole food does not need to be kept exposed to air in order to age.

Today, compressing tea as hard as tie bing makes the leaves difficult to break apart, so tea is generally compressed relatively loosely. We therefore seal leaves finished to an easy-to-handle hardness together with an oxygen absorber. This creates inside the package, including the surface of the leaves, the low-oxygen environment that was traditionally created inside a tie bing. We apply what we learned by comparing the surface and inside of tie bing to our storage method today.

Temperature also affects the changes during storage. Aging proceeds more easily in a warm place and more slowly in a cool place. If you want to enjoy aging, seal well-dried leaves without oxygen and keep our bags unopened. If you want to preserve the floral aroma of young raw Pu-erh, store it in a cool place.

What Determines Quality?

We regard the length of the aftertaste as the most important measure of the quality of raw Pu-erh. So what determines the length of the aftertaste? As far as I have seen by comparing growing conditions in tea gardens with the taste of the leaves, leaves that grow slowly tend to have a longer aftertaste. One indicator of this is when the first flush is plucked. Comparing gardens in the same area, gardens where the first flush is plucked later tend to produce tea with a longer aftertaste. Growing without fertilizer, high altitude, and old tea trees all slow the growth of new buds and affect the plucking time.

Why do slow-growing leaves have a longer aftertaste? I think one reason may be the size and density of the leaf cells. When I compared naturally cultivated and fertilized leaves under a microscope at a friend's tea farm, there was a clear difference in cell size. However, I do not have measurement data from this observation, so it has not been proven that cell density determines the aftertaste. I also think minerals such as iron are related to the strength of the aftertaste, but confirming this by component analysis remains a task for the future.

On the other hand, we can confirm in our daily tea evaluation that the aftertaste has a different nature from the changes in aroma caused by processing and storage. Even with tea that failed in processing, tea that oxidized during storage, or tea more than 10 years old, the aftertaste lets us evaluate whether the raw leaves were good or bad. When the same raw leaves are processed into black tea, green tea, and Pu-erh tea, the aroma and taste change, but the strength of the aftertaste is common to all of them.

How Does HOJO Choose Its Tea?

Every year, we stay in the producing areas for nearly two months and check everything on site, from the condition of the raw leaves to the processing. While involved in production management, we taste the finished tea on the spot and decide what to buy by looking at the quality of both the raw material and the processing.

When obtaining raw leaves, if the area is near producers we work with, we can also get tea that they have bought by the garden. When we choose a particular garden ourselves, we narrow down the candidates using the "slowness of leaf growth" described in the previous section. We check that the tea is grown without fertilizer, at high altitude, from old tea trees, and that the first flush is plucked late compared with the same area.

Here, "plucked late" means comparing the first flushes within the same area. It does not mean the second flush plucked after the rainy season starts. The more a garden meets these conditions, the more likely it is to produce tea with a long aftertaste.

In Yunnan, there are also gardens called ye fang cha yuan (abandoned tea gardens) that have been left unmanaged for decades and have gone wild. Tea from these gardens has remarkable clarity and an unforgettable taste once you have tried it. We particularly like tea from abandoned tea gardens and actively buy it.

After narrowing down the gardens, we check the aroma of the finished tea. We look for processing defects using a point-deduction method, such as a burnt smell caused by pan-frying at too high a temperature, or an unpleasant, damp odor in leaves dried on bad-weather days.

However, among the teas we bought before 2014, some, mainly those made by ethnic minority producers, have a toasty aroma like something slightly burnt. Some customers like this toasty aroma, so we have bought such teas as well.

How Do We Protect the Flavor and Aroma After Processing?

When you drink freshly made raw Pu-erh in Yunnan, it has a gentle floral aroma and a smooth mouthfeel. However, when the same tea is shipped overseas and then tasted, these qualities are noticeably lost. Loose-leaf tea in particular clearly changes in both flavor and aroma between drinking it on site and after it arrives overseas. The tea was finished just as we intended through processing, so why does it change by the time it arrives? One of the causes we found was condensation during air shipping.

On a plane, the cargo hold cools to around 0°C. When the chilled leaves are exposed to outside air after arrival, condensation forms on their surface. Within a few days, oxidative deterioration proceeds, astringency increases, and the gentle aroma and smooth mouthfeel are lost. With loose-leaf tea, each leaf is exposed to air, so the effect is greater than with compressed cakes. In fact, tea brought back in carry-on luggage keeps the same flavor and aroma as when tasted on site.

Sea shipping has a different problem. When we once put an electronic temperature logger in a container to measure the temperature during transport, the temperature at sea reached a maximum of 55°C. When tea is exposed to high temperatures almost every day, the gentle character of freshly made raw Pu-erh is lost, and it turns into something like green tea made with high-temperature pan-frying. Whether we chose air or sea shipping, we could not deliver the taste we experienced in the producing area.

We repeatedly tested shipping methods and packaging, and we brought aluminum laminate bags and a heat sealer to the producing areas. We seal the finished tea with our own hands before sending it out. If the chilled leaves are not exposed to outside air, deterioration from condensation can be prevented. We do not leave packaging to the producers so that shipping is not delayed even during the busy processing season and the finished tea reaches you quickly.

This has allowed us to prevent quality changes during shipping, so you can now enjoy the gentle aroma, creamy mouthfeel, and clarity unique to freshly made raw Pu-erh outside China as well. Huodi Ancient Tree Raw Pu-erh, which we used to process into cakes, was sold as loose leaves in 2025, and we deliberately released Tangjia Ancient Tree Raw Pu-erh 2025 as loose leaves too. We want to deliver the tea we tasted and chose in the producing area with its taste intact. That is why we also take care over packaging and shipping after processing.

References

[1] Wang Y, et al. “Novel insight into the role of withering process in characteristic flavor formation of teas using transcriptome analysis and metabolite profiling.” Food Chemistry, 2019, 272: 313–322. DOI: 10.1016/j.foodchem.2018.08.013

[2] Wang D, et al. “Analysis of glycosidically bound aroma precursors in tea leaves. 2. Changes in glycoside contents and glycosidase activities in tea leaves during the black tea manufacturing process.” Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, 2001, 49: 1900–1903. DOI: 10.1021/jf001077+

[3] "Effect of Moisture Content of Made Tea on the Growth of Yeast and Mould." Thesis, Uva Wellassa University. Repository

[4] Shimada K, Takeshita M, Hisatomi Y, Horie H, Kohata K. "Changes in Vitamin C and Chlorophyll Contents and Stability of Chlorophyllase Activity during Storage of Tencha." Nippon Shokuhin Kagaku Kogaku Kaishi, 2000, 47: 254–259. DOI: 10.3136/nskkk.47.254