A tea brick or tea cake is essentially a compressed block of tea. Long before the days of vacuum sealing, tea was compressed into these bricks to ensure longevity and facilitate transport by camels and horses along the Silk Road and the Tea-horse Road to Central Asia and Europe. In the day prior to currency, tea bricks were also used as both money and tea in many parts of the word. It is very popular among the Tibetan, Mongolian and Uigur for making yak butter tea or milk tea. Most of those cake teas are made from Pe-erh (pronounced “poo-ahr”) tea, since it is the only tea which is intentionally aged. These decorative tea bricks, embossed beautifully with Lucky Chinese characters or Zodiacal animals, make great conversation pieces and unique gifts.