Blending has always been a tradition in Pu'er Tea production, serving as one of the most critical technical supports. It is also the “secret manual” that has enabled century-old companies in the industry to create their classic products and a technical pathway that best showcases the individual styles of masters within the industry. Blending involves the scientific combination of raw materials from different regions, seasons, grades, storage durations, and fermentation degrees according to needs. Simply put, blending is a process of combining raw materials with different characteristics in the vast sea of tea.
Why Blend Pu'er Tea?
Blending is one of the three key processes in a tea refining factory, alongside raw tea acceptance and grading, and refined processing. The quality of the product and the utilization of the raw material's value are both reflected through blending. Blending ensures that the color, aroma, taste, and shape of the tea meet the standards, trade samples, and agreed samples. Through blending, the consistency and stability of product quality can be achieved, allowing for brand creation and increased benefits. Unlike Black Tea or Green Tea, which are slender and tightly rolled, Pu'er tea has a robust and full-bodied appearance. When blending, it is essential not only to apply conventional blending techniques but also to highlight the strengths of Yunnan's large-leaf sun-dried rough tea, emphasizing the bold and full-bodied style and flavor of Pu'er loose tea. The guiding principles of blending Pu'er loose tea can be summarized in twelve words: “highlight strengths, avoid weaknesses, showcase advantages, hide inferiorities, and balance highs and lows.”
“Highlighting strengths and avoiding weaknesses” primarily refers to enhancing the product style of Yunnan's large-leaf variety, characterized by its robust and full-bodied appearance and intact tips, ensuring the maximum economic value of the raw material. “Showcasing advantages and hiding inferiorities” primarily refers to the adjustment of the “superior” and “inferior” qualities of semi-finished products. “Balancing highs and lows” means adjusting high-quality products to lower standards and vice versa, based on standard samples or trade samples and agreed samples, to achieve balance.
Blending applies to both raw and ripe teas, but it has a more significant long-term impact on raw teas because artificially fermented ripe teas are suitable for immediate consumption, while raw teas require natural post-fermentation over time. Therefore, during the blending process of raw teas, consideration must be given not only to the current taste but also to the direction of aging in the future.
Thus, in addition to adjusting the flavors between regional raw materials, the blending of raw teas also places great importance on the mixture of older and younger leaves and the inclusion of tea stalks. Pu'er tea must have coarse and large leaves, old, sturdy, and substantial. Although higher-grade, tender raw materials offer good freshness, they do not age well and are prone to carbonization in the leaf base. Tip-heavy teas are often used as a surface layer to make compressed teas appear flatter and more aesthetically pleasing, but they do not represent the entirety of Pu'er tea.
The “tea stalks” in Pu'er tea are often perceived as foreign objects in the tea leaves that affect the appearance of the cake and are usually removed before pressing. During production, many tea stalks are discarded along with yellow leaves and other impurities. However, in aged teas, the content of tea stalks is relatively high, not due to poor production techniques but because, during long transportation processes, tea stalks serve as the “framework” of a seven-son cake. Therefore, a certain amount of tea stalks is significant for Pu'er tea mainly because they enhance the durability of brewing, intensify the aroma, and increase sweetness. Tea stalks are the nutrient-conducting organs of fresh leaves and contain high levels of amino acids and Theanine. Most of the aroma substances in Pu'er tea are found in the stalks and main veins of young leaves, and these substances are mostly water-soluble. During processing, the aroma substances transfer to the leaves and combine with effective substances in the leaves to form higher and richer aroma components. In the later stages of aging, the substances in the stalks also transform into components that add sweetness to the tea.