Identifying from Aroma

Ripe Pu-erh tea develops a ripe odor due to wet-piling. Generally, only dry-storage ripe tea within ten years of aging, according to conventional说法, tea products that have not霉变ed are considered dry-storage tea, and a ripe tea smell can be detected from the surface of the shaped tea. After about ten to twenty years, that surface ripe tea smell disappears, and then the ripe aroma can be perceived from the tea soup.

Identifying from Soup Color

The tea soup of dry-storage raw Pu-erh tea is chestnut red, close to the soup color of heavily roasted Oolong Tea. Even aged raw tea, such as the Longma brand Tongqing Lao Hao Pu-erh tea with eighty or ninety years of history, has a tea soup color only slightly darker than that of the fifty-year-old Red Mark Pu-erh round tea. The tea soup color of ripe tea is dark chestnut, even接近 black. Therefore, in modern tea classification, Pu-erh tea is categorized as Black Tea, which is related to the soup color of ripe Pu-erh tea.

Identifying from Leaf底

The leaf底 of ripe Pu-erh tea mostly appears dark chestnut or black, with the tea strips being dry, thin, old, and hard. If the fermentation is heavier, there will be obvious carbonization, as if burned by fire. Some older leaves have cracked leaf surfaces, with veins separated one by one, resembling the broken appearance of dry leaves soaked in water for a long time.

However, if the wet-piling time of some ripe teas is not long and the fermentation degree is not heavy, the leaf底 can be very close to that of raw tea leaves. Conversely, some raw teas during the production process, for example, if the tea leaves cannot be dried immediately after rolling, delaying for a relatively long time, the leaf底 will also appear dark brown, and the soup color will be stronger and darker, similar to that of lightly fermented wet-piled ripe tea.