This is a small orange stuffed with ripe puerh tea. This is an aged fermented tea.

Puerh strikes me very much as a whole tea area of its own.

I bought this from a Chinese tea shop in Cho Lon, Saigon’s Chinese sister city of half a million diasporan Chinese.

The flavour notes are similar to camphor, wood, damp forest, smoke, citrus.

The dark mysterious liquid is also extremely appealing. It is thick, bright and dark red.

You can add the peel to the brew to increase the orange. The orange note adds an extra warmth to the brew and tasting. The Chinese call this a Chenpi puerh. Chenpi means dried orange peel.

The tea label had 2011 on it.

Picture of tea liquid to go here. I’m finishing an oolong now so it’ll be a few hours or a day.

I haven’t drunk very much puerh tea at all. I first tried the real thing it when I was lucky enough to stay in Kunming three years ago.

There they have the renown Menghai factory and a fabulous tea market, with few actual walk-in customers in it. Most are stocked to the roof and dealing wholesale. There must have been at least 50 tea businesses there.

I am happy in the knowledge that I have all those different teas to explore later in time.

It’s a nice moment.

Happy tea drinking!