Pu-erh tea

Pu-erh is a dark, post-fermented tea from Yunnan in southwest China — the only major tea family to undergo true microbial fermentation, in which moulds, yeasts and bacteria work on the leaf over months or years rather than the leaf's own enzymes alone. Most famously sold as compressed cakes, bricks and "tuo" nests, it brews to a deep red-brown or near-black liquor that is smooth, earthy and mellow, often described as woody, damp- forest, camphor or aged-wood, with very little of the astringency of younger teas. It comes in two distinct forms: raw (sheng), which is sun-dried and slowly aged, and ripe (shou), which is artificially fermented to mimic decades of ageing in a few weeks.