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Tea leaf from Yunnan, China

Raw pu-erh (sheng)生普洱

Raw pu-erh starts as sun-dried green tea (maocha) from Yunnan's large-leaf tea, made by spreading, fixing, rolling and drying the leaf in the sun. The maocha is steamed and pressed into cakes, and the cakes change slowly over years of storage, with no wet pile. Its aroma moves from fruity and floral to woody, smoky and sweet as it ages.

Fully documentedTea leaf12 months – 21 yearsGeographical indication product, GB/T 22111-2008 (Pu-erh tea)

Recipe

No fixed amounts recordedThe tea studied in Wenshan was made by the method in GB/T 22111-2008 (Xu 2025). No batch amounts are published in the sources read.
Fresh large-leaf tea, one bud with two or three leavesGrade III raw material is mostly one bud with two or three leaves[chen2022][xu2025]

Total time across the recorded steps: 12 months – 21 years

Start
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What changes: Picked leaves are spread out for six hours to wilt

Step 1 of 6
Pick and spread the leaves
Time
6 h
Reported
Temperature
Not documented
Salt
None given
Acidity
Not documented
Which microbes the steps name, step by step
Debaryomyces

Output: wilted leaf.

Flavour
Not documented
Texture
Not documented
Colour
Not documented

Microbes at work in this step

Not documented for this step.

Method

Measured measured in a studySet fixed by a specification or tested recipeReported one source reports itTypical a general value, not sourced for this fermentUnconfirmed not yet checked against a source

At a glance

Raw pu-erh starts as sun-dried green tea (maocha) from Yunnan's large-leaf tea, made by spreading, fixing, rolling and drying the leaf in the sun. The maocha is steamed and pressed into cakes, and the cakes change slowly over years of storage, with no wet pile. Its aroma moves from fruity and floral to woody, smoky and sweet as it ages. Made in 6 steps over 12 months – 21 years. The longest step, store and age, takes 12 months – 21 years (Xu J 2025) and runs at 20–30 °C (Xu J 2025). Debaryomyces and Penicillium (30.26 % of fungi) and Aspergillus (8.92 %) in raw pu-erh do most of the fermenting.

Key numbers
Main step12 months – 21 yearsReported[xu2025][liu2025]Store and age
Temperature20–30 °CReported[xu2025][liu2025]Store and age

What makes this one different

Raw pu-erh skips the hot wet pile of ripe pu-erh. The same sun-dried maocha is pressed straight into cakes and left to change slowly in storage over years.

Related ferments

Variants

  • Long-aged raw pu-erhKept for many years (up to 21 in one study). In one 1–10 year series, the volatile compounds turned around the third and eighth years of storage.

Safety

Keep it dry and ventilated; the warehouses in the studies were held at 70 % relative humidity or below. A 2023 review says poorly stored dark tea can be infested with harmful fungi that leave mycotoxins. It cites pu-erh tests that found aflatoxin B1 above 5 µg/kg in 7 of 60 samples, and at 3.1 and 7.5 µg/kg in 2 of 10, and it judges the aflatoxin risk in dark tea very low. A 2023 test of 31 stored raw and ripe pu-erh samples for six mycotoxins found the ones it detected below the official limits.

History and sources

Every number is labelled with how it is known. How this atlas is made

Wikipedia says the Bulang and Dai people have produced pu'er at Jingmai Mountain since at least the 10th century. Pu-erh tea is a protected geographical indication product of Yunnan (Xu 2025). Its national standard, GB/T 22111-2008, took effect on 1 December 2008.

Starter
The sources we found do not say how its fermentation begins.
  1. [dang2026] Dang X., Li Y., Lv Z. et al. 2026, Impact of processing techniques on chemical compositions and sensory attributes across five types of Yunnan large-leaf teas, Food Chemistry X 103825paper
  2. [chen2022] Chen C., Zhang W., Shan Z. et al. 2022, Moisture contents and product quality prediction of Pu-erh tea in sun-drying process with image information and environmental parameters, Food Science and Nutritionpaper
  3. [xu2025] Xu J., Deng X., Wu Y. et al. 2025, Characteristic changes and potential markers of flavour in raw Pu-erh tea with different ageing cycles, Foods 14:829paper
  4. [liu2025] Liu Y., Wang Z., Zhang X. et al. 2025, Characterization of volatile substances in Pu-erh tea (raw tea) at different storage times, Foods 14:840paper
  5. [cui2025] Cui P., Li J., Yao T., Gan Z. 2025, Fungal community composition and function in different Chinese post-fermented teas, Scientific Reports 15paper
  6. [xu2023dark] Xu W., Zhao Y.Q., Jia W.B., Liao S.Y., Bouphun T., Zou Y. 2023, Reviews of fungi and mycotoxins in Chinese dark tea, Frontiers in Microbiology 14:1120659paper
  7. [chau2023] Chau S.L., Zhao A., Jia W., Wang L. 2023, Simultaneous determination of pesticide residues and mycotoxins in storage Pu-erh tea using UPLC-MS/MS, Molecules 28(19):6883paper
  8. [wp-pu] Wikipedia, Pu'er teawiki
  9. [gbt22111] GB/T 22111-2008, Product of geographical indication, Pu-erh tea (地理标志产品 普洱茶), national standard of China, issued 2008-06-17, in force 2008-12-01 (register entry read; text not read)spec