We developed a new tea blended between Gong Ting grade ripe pu-erh and Yunnan black tea. We wanted to create a tea that gives sweet flavor with thick and mellow drinking sensation.
Collaboration between ripe pu-erh tea and black tea
Since some time ago, I have discovered that the combination between naturally farmed black tea and the naturally farmed pu-erh tea (Gong Ting grade) works extraordinarily well. In last winter, it became my favorite cup of tea. It is not just about adding the flavor of black tea to pu-erh ripe tea but then the synergy effect. I have tried to recommend this combination to many customers and friends. However, many people are not willing to try this blend due to the following obstacles:- Need to get two types of tea
- Not very easy to blend two types of tea since not certain about the proportion of each tea
- The compressed pu-erh and loose black tea have different speeds in extraction. The loose tea release the taste and flavour in a faster speed than the compressed pu-erh tea.
We made mini tuo-cha in order to achieve a consistent ratio
We wished to solve the above three obstacles so that everyone can enjoy as the same flavor and taste as what I’ve enjoyed very much.
At first, we faced technical problem in blending. The mao-cha of Gong Ting ripe pu-erh tea is very short as it mainly consists of young buds, while the leaf of black tea is bigger since it is made of the whole leaf. Due to the differences in size, it is hard to evenly blend two teas. So we decided to produce compressed tea instead of loose tea. However, we were reluctant to compress tea into 200g or 357g. It is not a good idea to break black tea leaf when we break the cake. We also worried if the blending would not be consistent. Thus, we decided to compress tea into mini tuo-cha at about 4-6g. Customer can just pick one piece of mini tuo-cha and brew it. It is so simple and easy.
Black tea is made from one bud and one leaf We selected Yunnan black tea that leaves were plucked on around 20th of March. The plucking standard is one bud and one leaf. For making black tea, I prefer one bud and two leaves because of the taste. However, I purposely selected one bud and one leaf in order to get a mellow mouth-feel. The tea is collected from the natural tea garden located at 2000m in Lincang. Tea was grown without pesticide and fertilizer. The farmer did not even remove weeds from the gardens.