Blended Puer Tea or pure leaf? There's no absolute answer. The advantage of blending Puer tea is to combine strengths and compensate for weaknesses, resulting in a full-bodied tea with a well-rounded profile. Pure leaf tea, on the other hand, highlights the unique taste of a specific region. Whether blended or pure leaf is better depends on an individual's preference for the taste of the tea.
What is Blended Puer Tea?
What exactly is blended Puer tea? A more formal definition of blended tea is: mixing teas of different qualities in specific proportions to create a determined grade that meets a specific quality standard.
In Zou Bingliang and Lu Guoling's article “A Brief Discussion on Puer Tea Blending,” they summarize the technical requirements of blending Puer tea in 12 words: “Highlight strengths, avoid weaknesses, show advantages, hide disadvantages, balance highs and lows.” As one of the key technologies in Tea processing, it plays a crucial role in stabilizing tea quality and increasing production volume.
What is Pure Leaf Puer Tea?
Pure leaf refers to tea made from leaves harvested at the same time, from the same variety, and at the same grade, without blending with leaves from other regions, and then directly compressed. In simple terms, Puer tea made from sun-dried raw tea leaves of the same grade, picked from the same tea tree species within a season, can be called pure leaf tea.
Blended or Pure Leaf Puer Tea?
Many people misunderstand blending, thinking that all blended teas are inferior. However, if a tea is to exhibit a rich and layered taste in its color, aroma, flavor, and mouthfeel, blending is essential.
In terms of taste: Pure leaf tea can highlight the characteristics of a specific region, variety, and harvest period, offering a unique and distinctive style. However, this also results in some limitations, such as a relatively singular aroma and taste profile, lacking complexity and variation in layers.
Blended tea, due to the combination of multiple types of tea, offers a richer and more layered aroma and taste, achieving a harmonious balance by combining strengths and compensating for weaknesses.
In terms of quality: True pure leaf tea is extremely limited in quantity and non-renewable. It is also greatly affected by environmental factors like climate, so the quality of tea from each region varies from year to year and season to season. Drinking two identical batches of pure leaf tea is almost impossible.
Blended tea, with the strict control of experienced tea masters, ensures stable quality and consistent production over many years.
Tea blending aims for a synergistic effect greater than the sum of its parts, where the teas complement each other, highlighting their best qualities while minimizing their weaknesses.
The teas used in blending often have distinct characteristics, so finding a way to harmonize these characteristics to provide a balanced tasting experience upon brewing is important.
Traditional classic Puer teas, such as Red Seal, Blue Seal, 7542, and 88 Qing Bing, are blended. This means that after blending, Puer tea undergoes a transformation that becomes richer and more layered.
Pure leaf tea stands out for its unique style and clear identity; blended tea offers stable quality and satisfies the needs of the masses over the long term. There is no superiority between the two.