Whole tangerine · ripe pu-erh · Menghai, Yunnan
A whole small tangerine, hollowed out and packed with ripe pu-erh, then dried. You brew the fruit, not just the leaf.
Dried tangerine peel → soft woody pu-erh → a clean bitter lift that turns sweet
Top, middle and finish are a way of organising time, not a standard term or a promise. Re-tasted against each lot; weight and brewing are below.
Aroma and palate, in the order they reach you.
Typical of the style · re-tasted against each lot
The peel stays on the fruit through drying, so its oil sits in the same vessel as the tea. Drying rather than candying is what turns fresh citrus into the marmalade note; the producer describes an eighty-hour sun-dry rather than machine baking.
Ripe pu-erh is wet-piled and already settled, which is why the body is soft rather than brisk. The bitterness here is not a fault — it is the peel, and it is the part that turns sweet a moment later.
The peel outlasts the leaf: it gives up its oil slowly, so the character of the cup shifts from tea-forward to peel-forward across the session. That is why one fruit keeps going for many infusions.
Orange peel left to dry. Old books. A cup of black tea gone smooth with age. Nothing here needs a vocabulary you do not already have.
The peel supplies the aromatics and the tea supplies the body. Steeped together they read as one drink, which is why the combination has been sold this way for well over a century.
The producer describes an eighty-hour sun-dry and three to five years of resting before packing. That resting is why the peel smells of dried citrus rather than of fresh orange.
The producer states the tea's region — Menghai — but not the peel's. Most ganpu uses Xinhui tangerine. This page does not claim it, because the paperwork does not say so.
What you can see
One fruit is a self-contained portion, which makes it easy to check before you brew. Three things to look at.
Dull olive-brown peel, not bright orange. Pitted oil cells you can see, a faint bloom, and a hand-cut opening at the top with the lid removed.
Deep amber-red and clear. Rinse once before the first pour — the peel holds dust from drying, and the rinse is not optional.
Licence SC11435052406127, a Fujian packing licence held in Anxi. Read this as a packed lot, not an estate one.
Brew it whole, or break the peel and stretch it. Same fruit, two entirely different cups.
Parameters stated for this product · adjust to taste, then keep them
One whole fruit in 150 ml of boiling water, ten to fifteen seconds on the first steep, adding a few seconds each round. Rinse once before you start. It will keep going for many infusions.
The first steep after the rinse is thin. The second and third are the ones to taste.
Break the peel and use a spoonful of the mixture in a mug for about a minute. It gives you a lighter, more citrus-forward cup and makes one fruit last several mugs.
Shorten the steep if it turns bitter. The peel gives up its oil faster once it is broken.
A number is an identity, not a stock code. Where a field is unknown, it is left out rather than guessed.
One leaf, six fates. Nothing here is blended across regions.
