IMHO we are just wasting time here. The 1.5 billion Chinese will call it
what they feel like calling it disregarding of what rec.food.drink.tea
pontificate and anyone here educated enough to know what puerh is already
know what it is, so what is the point?
The worst we can do is the use term "black" in English in these discussions
because then it always a question "which" black youre you talking about -
the black that is hung or the black that is hei? So every time that term
"black" iz used in these discussions we know that we are discussing
phlogiston.
Western civilization has that propensity to lose its sleep over terminology
and classification. As I concluded after years of observing trainloads of
swords being broken over all kind of useless classification debates in all
corners of science and the behavior of primitive Siberian tribes - the
bottom of that infatuation with naming things lies a primitive shamanistic
belief that if you name something you are a master of it. But as long as we
all know what puer is and how it is made, what is the real purpose to assign
a "color" definition to it? And why invent "new" category when the Chinese
one has no confusion in it? The confusion arises with the double meaning of
the word "black".

Also all these classifications are nothing than just coarse schemas. Tea is
an art and a developing industry, with borderline products all over. There
is no "pure" definition of these things. But if someone cannot sleep well
before he classifies the crap out of this magic drink, at least do it right.
Basically there are several classification approaches - descriptive, genetic
and "degustative".

Descriptive should classify the tea according to its objective, observable
and measurable qualities where two observers armed with definitions will
call it the same thing more or less, such as
(observable):color, texture of the while and its parts, the classification
of the parts - which parts of tea plant, in what percentages and
combinations and
(measurable) size of particles, absorption spectra of standard brews, etc.

Genetic approach should take into consideration how this tea was made - the
geography, type of plant, year, crop time, processing sequence and history
(with details if necessary), storage history, etc.

Degustative classification would describe subjective (but most important)
characteristics if the tea - smell, taste, etc. Then combine your findings
into classes, subclasses, genes, species, etc.

And after you are done with this, start drinking coffee because you won't be
able to stand even a sight of tea.


Sasha.


"Falky foo" > wrote in message
...
> sounds good to me.. let's put pu in a class of its own. Of course then
> you'll have black pu and green pu within the overall class of pu. Why
> not.
>
>
>
> "Mydnight" > wrote in message
> oups.com...
>> It definitely ain't red either.
>>
>> The literature that I've looked at has stated that pu'er is indeed not
>> black tea but a tea class all to it's own. I'm not sure if I'm
>> repeating known knowledge, but it seems that this is a serious misnomer
>> in the tea world. Most bosses are now beginning to realize that it
>> isn't black tea as well and will argue with the consumer that claims it
>> is (happened to me a few times). Black tea is something completely
>> different.
>>
>> True, False?
>>
>
>