2008 "Taste of Hong Kong" Raw Pu-erh Tea Cake. Traditional Cellar Storage

Pu-erh Tea: Famously produced in Yunnan China and popularised after the early days of storage of raw Pu-erh tea in Hong Kong. We've developed this Pu-erh tea with the Forever Tea Factory (永年茶廠) to capture the essence and to tell a story of the early glory days of "Traditional Hong Kong Stored" Pu-erh tea.

In the 70s and 80s, before there were industrial furnaces, Pu-erh tea produced in Yunnan were sprinkled with buds, roast dried over a coal fire and steamed to soften the tea for processing. During this process, the smell of smoke from the coal fire is infused into the tea given Pu-erh tea from this era a distinct aroma.

The "Taste of Hong Kong" teacake is made the same traditional way using the popular spring tea Qizi cake recipe from the 70s with added spring buds and stored and post-fermented in our traditional Hong Kong basement warehouse for the past 12 years. We've developed a product that is faithful to the "Traditional Hong Kong Stored" Pu-erh Tea of the 70s and 80s.

This tea is full of vitality and can be enjoyed immediately or with further aging for better results. The tea cake reveals rich golden yellow young tea buds and smells of flowers, camphor and smoke. The tea taste is complex and rich in layers. The tea soup has turned into a clear chestnut red. In the beginning, there is a refreshing floral fragrance. Then early infusions have a strong fragrance of camphor, wood and smoke: long-lasting aroma and robust sweetness in later infusions. Spent leaves are soft and thin, pig liver coloured and multi-stalked. Tea leaves of grade 4 to 6.