| I'm sure you've often come across pu-erh pancakes, on the packaging of which you could find four numbers among the hieroglyphs. What do they mean? More about this in this article! |
The numbers on the packaging of pu-erh indicate which factory it was made at, in what year it was made and from what raw materials. Even without knowing Chinese, you can understand which pu-erh is in front of you. However, not all pu-erhs have numbers - only pancakes from state factories.
Let's analyze the packaging using the example of this pancake:
The first two digits are the year of the recipe (1985 - for the puer in the picture, that is, this particular recipe was first developed in 1985. Please note - this is not the age of the puer.)
| What does this knowledge give? The puer recipe is certain proportions of mixing different types of leaves by region/variety/type to obtain a characteristic, stable and recognizable taste. To some extent, this guarantees that puers from the same factory, produced according to the same recipe in 2008 and 2010, will taste more or less the same. Over the years, new recipes appear, some disappear, but especially successful ones are used. |
The third digit is the grade of the leaf (from small to large, the number 9 in the picture shows that a rather large leaf awaits us inside with all the consequences that arise in terms of taste.)
The fourth digit is the factory code (in the picture it is the number 2 - the pu-erh was made at the Menghai Tea Factory.)
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Factory codes: 1 — Kunming Tea Factory 2 - Menghai Factory 3 — Xiaguan Factory 4 - Feng Qing Factory 5 - Pu-erh Tea Factory (Now Pu-erh Tea Group Co. Ltd). 6 - Six Great Tea Mountains Factory 8 - Heiwan Factory 9 - Lange Factory |
Tea Leaf Grade
The grade of most pu-erh is indicated by a number from 1 to 10 (grade 1 being the highest). The higher the grade (and the lower the number), the more tea buds and fewer cuttings, the smaller and more tender the leaf.
Special varieties of pu-erh (sometimes written in the name of the pu-erh):
- Gong Ting - Palace or Imperial pu-erh (very small, young and tender leaves)
- Lao Shu - pu-erh from the leaves of old trees
- Jin Ya (Jin Hao) - Golden buds (Golden fluff). It speaks of a large proportion of tea buds in the recipe.
- Lao Cha Tou - Old Tea Heads, pu-erh in lumps
Classes (sometimes written in the name of the pu-erh):
- Ti Ji - Top grade
- Jia Ji - A-class
Year of production and batch number:
Also, some "recipe" pu-erhs have three additional numbers that are listed separately on the label.
The first number is the year of production of this pu-erh, and the following are the serial number of the batch of this year, which helps to find out when exactly the raw materials were collected - is it the first harvest or the tenth in a row (the first, of course, is the best). In the picture you see the code 701, which means the pu-erh was made in 2007 from the raw materials of the first harvest.
Now from an incomprehensible set of numbers you can learn a lot about pu-erh, even if you don't understand Chinese:)
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