On September 10th, the well-known tea master Mr. Zou Jiaju came to the tea evolution theory as a guest.
Mr. Zou Jiaju is currently the president of the Yunnan Provincial Tea Industry Association and is a well-known Pu’er tea expert both at home and abroad.
Published “Talking about Pu’er Tea·Distinguishing Pu’er Tea from Forgeries” and “Talking about Pu’er Tea·Golden Iron Horse and Big Leaf Species”, and a variety of excellent works have been published in various publications at home and abroad.
Teacher Zou Jiaju chatted with us about his views and opinions on Pu’er tea, and we sorted out the topics mentioned. This is one of them.
1
Keywords in the definition of Puer tea
The tea standards in Yunnan Province start with the earliest definition of Pu-erh tea in Yunnan.
In 2003, Yunnan Province came up with a definition of Pu’er tea—a large-leaved species within a certain area of Yunnan Province, which is processed by sun-dried greens and then fermented.
Let’s break down the keywords one by one.
- A certain area: within the scope of Puer tea production areas on both sides of the Tropic of Cancer
- Large-leaf species: Yunnan is not all large-leaf species. For example, Yiliang has medium and small-leaf species. In northern Yunnan, for example, Zhaotong has small-leaf species. The former Huize Tea Factory produced small-leaf species.
- Dry green processing: dry green tea
- Post-fermentation: Pu-erh tea is defined as post-fermentation tea, which is first dried and then fermented. The demarcation point of post-fermentation is to ferment after finishing, so it is called post-fermented tea. For example, black tea is not processed, so it is called pre-fermented tea.
(Black tea has not been greened, so it is the change of enzymes during the fermentation process. In fact, it is not fermentation in the accurate sense. It is an enzymatic oxidation. The change of enzymes promotes it to produce this tea product.)
It’s also “fermentation”. What’s the difference?
2
Discovered the problem: the more the ripe Pu-erh tea is put, the more bitter it becomes?
The definition of Pu’er tea, the above four points are indispensable. One of them is sun-dried green tea. Why is it emphasized that it is sun-dried green tea?
When the standard was set in 2003, I was the chairman, so I always insisted that the standard must be sun-dried green tea.
I discovered this after following decades of follow-up, so I have always insisted that the sun-dried green tea cannot be removed. Now I will tell you the reason.
In the early 1980s, around 1982 or 1983, I went to the trade fair to sell a batch of tea. I sold a batch of 7581 tea bricks, a batch of more than five tons. When I went to the trade fair the next year, the customer who bought this batch of tea came to me and asked me: “Mr. Zou, where is the batch of 7581 tea you sold to me last time?”
At that time, there was no such thing as a mountain top in the planned economy. Tea in the planned economy was purchased and sold by the state, and all tea was purchased by supply and marketing cooperatives in various places.
For example, the supply and marketing cooperatives in Nannuo Mountain receive the tea from Nannuo Mountain. After the supply and marketing cooperatives in various places collect the tea, they will be dispatched by foreign trade and distributed to the tea factories below, all according to the plan. So there is no such thing as what kind of tea, what region, what mountain top, and there is no such concept at all.
Because the choice of tea at that time was based on the documents under the tea number, such as what is the formula of 7572 or 7581? What level accounts for how much? What area accounted for how much? When making it in the future, keep the taste and use tea from this area to make it. But generally speaking, the area will not change after the plan is made. For example, which areas the tea factory transfers tea to will not change. There are only increases and decreases in numbers, and very few regional changes.
Then why did this Hong Kong person come to ask me about this matter? It was because he found that the tea was bitter after drinking, and had a bitter base, which was different from the Pu-erh tea he bought in previous years. He suspected that the tree species had changed, so he asked where the tea was grown.
I just said it’s impossible.
So I told the Hong Kong businessman that you bring me a piece of tea (at that time, 7581 tea bricks were 4 yuan each, and they were not loose, which happened to be one kilogram). After I drank it, I found that the tea was really bitter. .
I don’t doubt the problem of raw materials, because I know that it is impossible for the tea in any region to change to cause this special bitter taste, which I don’t believe.
3
Found the reason: there was fried green mixed in during fermentation
Then, in order to find out the bitter taste of this batch of 7581, I went to the Kunming Tea Factory.
Because the task of 7581 tea bricks was given to the Kunming tea factory, before other factories did not have tea bricks. The reason why Menghai produced a tea brick was because Nantian Company came in and added a brick tea, which arranged the production of brick tea for Menghai. There were none earlier, only Kunming Tea Factory had 7581 and 7811 tea bricks.
I went to the Kunming tea factory to find the director Li Xijin. He came from the army and didn’t know the situation. He told me to go to Wu Qiying. I asked Wu Qiying, but I couldn’t tell why. Later, I found a workshop director, a lesbian named Qin Ruiyao.
I asked her if there was any change in your raw material processing, and then she told me one thing:
Because in addition to making pressed tea, her workshop also produces some roasted and fried greens for the local market in Kunming.
After the tea leaves are mixed, there is a process that needs to go through, that is, to sieve the tea leaves and pick out the broken pieces. Because after consumers buy tea, they will comment and say that you are cheating when they see that there are too many broken pieces.
Every time I sieve the broken bits, I pile them up in small bags in the stairwell of the workshop, and then the piles are full. Qin Ruiyao went to the factory leader. The factory leader said that it is green tea anyway, so you put it in the fermentation 7581. put in.
These powders cannot be sold, and the document stipulates that a certain amount of foamed tea (3% or 5%) is allowed to be included when making pressed tea, because foamed tea is sticky, and pressed tea is tighter. knot some. The document itself has such regulations, and that batch of scraps is disposed of in this way.
This is the first time I suspect that the reason for the bitterness of cooked tea is due to roasting green tea.
4
Verification again: the processing technology must be sun-dried
After this matter was over, in order to age the tea, I did the tea aging test all the way, and I did it many times.
The first experiment was at the Yiliang Tea Factory. It spent 5 million yuan to build a workshop, and the rooms were made into small rooms.
It failed in the first year, because around the Spring Festival in Yiliang, there will be a low temperature of minus 3 to 4 degrees, and the microorganisms will be frozen to death, so the quality of the tea put in every year does not improve, and then it was abandoned.
After this failure, we rented out all the air-raid shelters in Kunming, pushed in one or two thousand tons of Pu-erh cooked tea (called cooked tea at that time), and took it out after a year or two. Although the inside of the cave was warmer in winter and cooler in summer than outside, it was useless and failed again.
In 1989, I bought a 6,000-square-meter building in Shenzhen, and put Pu’er tea in it. After a year or two, it was removed. Why? The smell of the tea leaves is too strong, because it is close to the sea, the sea water evaporates a lot, and it doesn’t dry out in winter, which is a problem all year round.
When I arrived in Shenzhen, I mixed a few boxes of roasted green, that is, Dian green, and left it to see if it would become bitter. After drinking the tea from that Hongkonger in the early 1980s, I suspected that roasted green tea would be bitter, so I mixed a few boxes and put it there. It was put in in 1989, but I didn’t care about it.
In the end, in 1990, I went back to Yunnan to look at the terrain, and found that Yuanjiang had better climate conditions in many aspects. That place belongs to the river valley Bazi, with a low altitude and abundant rainfall. There are a lot of farmland in the dam. In spring, water is used to plant rice, and the evaporation is large and relatively humid. In summer, the temperature is relatively high, and in autumn, the farmland is relatively dry due to the withdrawal of water. It is dry or wet, and it is much better without the smell of warehouse.
So at that time, the tea import and export company rented out that place, and I also put some Dian green in it.
I just looked at the tea (Dian green) all the way, and took a sample every one or two years. The more it was released, the more bitter it became. I understand why the ancients did not keep the old tea from those places in the northwest, and only the sun-dried green tea from Yunnan It was kept.
Because only sun-dried greens can make it sweeter and more moist.
So when the standards were set in 2003, a sentence was added, “Must be sun-dried green tea”, that is, Pu-erh tea can only be made after drying in the sun.
