Puerh (Raw / Sheng)

Purple varieties

Zi Ya (Purple Bud) and Zi Juan (Purple Beauty) are Yunnan cultivars with elevated anthocyanin content that turns the fresh leaf purple, particularly in cold temperatures, and produces a visually striking dry and wet leaf. The extra anthocyanins add a distinct astringency layer and a slightly different flavor register from standard Yunnan assamica, making these small-volume, harder-to-source teas of genuine interest to collectors tracking cultivar character within the puerh type rather than just mountain origin.

teabert, the tealytics teapot, keeper of the kettle

Purple Yunnan cultivars are the eye-catchers, tinted by extra anthocyanins that add an astringent twist, and they are small-batch, so they are mostly for collectors chasing cultivar character. The leaf tends to colour more in cold, bright weather, so it reacts to a chilly morning in roughly the same way as your nose.

Styles in this family

Zi Ya (Purple Bud)

Zi Ya, or purple bud, is naturally occurring purple-budded tea material: buds that turn purple from anthocyanin pigment, picked from ordinary Yunnan tea trees…

Zi Juan (Purple Beauty)

Zi Juan, often translated as Purple Beauty, is a distinctive Yunnan cultivar whose buds, leaves, and even stems run deep purple from a high concentration of…

How it's made

The steps overlap in practice; this is a reading order, not a set of separate stages.