What Pu'er Are You Drinking

Puerh and other heicha
olivierd
Posts: 98
Joined: Thu Feb 18, 2021 5:20 am
Location: Paris, France

Tue May 25, 2021 11:45 am

@Balthazar There is not a single chance for me to venture on auction groups for a tea hunt. I'm sure I miss something, but I'd rather pay the foreigners' premium from known vendors. I'm really sick of drinking sh... stuff in sh... pots. At least something decent would do for me. Now I feel like buying one good cake for the price of two is ultimately worth it and I'm cleaning the shelves !
Whining on :
It's a pity because I realize I'm one of those that inflate the market price quite stupidly for regular to average stuff, but I won't take the blame. Both puerh and yixing markets are disorganised and left to "obscure" practices for westerners. Go and grab Japanese teas and teaware, I can tell you the price spot on, be it brand news, LNT, etc... I'm extremely comfortable buying Fujioka, Hayashi (both), Kamada, Miura, Jozan... name it, not even mentioning tea, while I just pull my hair for a 70s hongni or a 2000s cake ! And yes HT HK prices are... subject to negotiation ! Fine, I pass on this one too !
Whining off and apologies...
At least, I enjoy reading posts, thanks guys, and when good vibes come my way, I have something drinkable in my cup.
DailyTX
Posts: 882
Joined: Wed Jul 03, 2019 4:43 pm
Location: United States

Tue May 25, 2021 8:00 pm

@olivierd
I couldn’t agree more about yixing and puerh being disorganized lol. I don’t think it’s just for westerner. From a buyer’s perspective, a yixing teapot can easily cost double when you buy it in Hong Kong vs. China. :(
User avatar
Bok
Vendor
Posts: 5782
Joined: Wed Oct 04, 2017 8:55 am
Location: Taiwan

Tue May 25, 2021 10:15 pm

DailyTX wrote:
Tue May 25, 2021 8:00 pm
olivierd
From a buyer’s perspective, a yixing teapot can easily cost double when you buy it in Hong Kong vs. China. :(
Unless it's antiques, than the prices in HK will easily be half of the China price :lol:
User avatar
mbanu
Posts: 962
Joined: Fri May 03, 2019 3:45 pm

Wed May 26, 2021 1:02 am

Maybe I am misunderstanding, but it seems like the Yixing market is organized, just organized differently. It is organized as a market without strong legal protections.

Like an American buying a teapot would imagine the process to be going to a shopping area that has a few competing stores that have pots from all around the world, and then you either leisurely browse or tell a salesman what you want and they find it for you, while the salesman from the other store tries to pull you away by offering a better pot for the same price or the same pot for a lower price. Or the American-internet equivalent where they type in a few keywords and then get a ranked list by price from all the stores available. That sort of a system only makes sense if there are legal consequences for lying.

To get a Yixing teapot, you buy from the maker, taking pains to guard against hustles like selling you pots they have not made, as there is no legal recourse. If a pot you want is already made and already has an owner, you buy from that owner, keeping in mind that with every additional person involved, the chance of being cheated increases. People prefer to buy from those they know because that means they might have social recourse if they are cheated, even if there is no legal recourse.

...to stay on topic, I am still drinking the Nor Sun pu'er from a previous post. :)
olivierd
Posts: 98
Joined: Thu Feb 18, 2021 5:20 am
Location: Paris, France

Wed May 26, 2021 3:33 am

mbanu wrote:
Wed May 26, 2021 1:02 am

To get a Yixing teapot, you buy from the maker, taking pains to guard against hustles like selling you pots they have not made, as there is no legal recourse. If a pot you want is already made and already has an owner, you buy from that owner, keeping in mind that with every additional person involved, the chance of being cheated increases. People prefer to buy from those they know because that means they might have social recourse if they are cheated, even if there is no legal recourse.

It sounds like drug dealing at night in a car park :lol: !
Cakes are pretty much the same, I had a sample from a European vendor of 2006 Taipei, not a stellar tea for sure, but that one even with milk, sugar, honey, mustard and ketchup I would not have !
My best treat currently is Clouds 2004 Silver Jinggu, very straightforward one, no hype, no surprise. Just a clean, well semi-aged, mellow drink.
Andrew S
Posts: 706
Joined: Sat Jan 30, 2021 8:53 pm
Location: Sydney, Australia

Wed May 26, 2021 3:44 am

@olivierd: I think that there is plenty of merit to your approach. My approach tends to be the same as yours; try to find vendors who I trust, pay Western prices without complaining too much, and enjoy the best tea that I can afford, without constantly worrying about fakes, misrepresentations, or auctions.

For what it is worth, in my limited experience, places that list the price as something like "Negotiation" usually just mean that you just need to inquire about the price. It may be that that is to filter-out people who are not seriously interested or willing to pay high prices, as well as being able to offer different prices to different people (and possibly to avoid advertising their prices to their competitors), but if there is a particular tea that you're interested in, you may as well try to make contact with them. I don't think that it is an invitation to haggle over the price or anything as complicated and painful as that.

I think that there is nothing wrong with 'Western prices' as such. They reflect supply, demand, the cost of finding good teas and filtering out fakes, and the cost of running a business that I will never be able to run myself.

The only problem is fakes, misrepresentations and similar issues, and the best that we can do is find people we trust while we keep learning ourselves.

Andrew
olivierd
Posts: 98
Joined: Thu Feb 18, 2021 5:20 am
Location: Paris, France

Wed May 26, 2021 4:40 am

@Andrew S I agree with you, but while that approach somehow limits the risk, it also limits the ability to drink something uncommon. Say I'm ready to pay 1$/gr, I'm stuck with mostly semi-aged post 2000s offerings. Not saying it's all bad teas, quite the opposite in many cases, but any pre-2000 is almost out of reach... for me, though I don't believe it is for locals.
That's the game ! I remember reading a thread about tea price and comparing it to wine, and I was really shocked when a $100 bottle was mentionned as a benchmark : at $100 I get you an outstanding bottle of Chateau Montrose ! But I'm local... France with friends in the wine business.
Andrew S
Posts: 706
Joined: Sat Jan 30, 2021 8:53 pm
Location: Sydney, Australia

Wed May 26, 2021 5:09 am

@olivierd: a tea-for-wine swap sounds interesting... Especially if you can get cheap Bordeaux and someone else can get cheap old pu er.

My own preference is for older and more humidly-stored pu er instead of younger dry-stored pu er (because young and dry-stored pu er is poisonous to my constitution), so I enjoy drinking cheaper uninteresting but pleasantly-aged loose leaf pu er whenever I can find decent examples of it. I enjoy 1990s or earlier cakes on more special occasions (or at least when I have the time and when I feel like it), but my usual teas are just loose leaf teas from the 1990s or thereabouts.

I'm not sure if that matches your tastes, but if you do like trying older teas occasionally, loose leaf tea might provide a pleasant experience.

Andrew
faj
Posts: 710
Joined: Mon Oct 14, 2019 6:45 am
Location: Quebec

Wed May 26, 2021 6:07 am

olivierd wrote:
Wed May 26, 2021 4:40 am
I was really shocked when a $100 bottle was mentionned as a benchmark : at $100 I get you an outstanding bottle of Chateau Montrose ! But I'm local... France with friends in the wine business.
I will hazard a guess that 100$ does not buy you a 20-year old bottle of a good vintage of Chateau Montrose, though, and you won't get that easily by just showing up at any wine store, either.
sqt
Posts: 42
Joined: Tue Nov 06, 2018 4:14 pm
Location: Paris / Oslo
Contact:

Wed May 26, 2021 6:53 am

@olivierd It might be a while before we are comfortable having people over with the current circumstances, but once things normalize you are very welcome to come over for some tea.
olivierd
Posts: 98
Joined: Thu Feb 18, 2021 5:20 am
Location: Paris, France

Wed May 26, 2021 8:44 am

@faj You'd be surprised what you can find, not at the specialised wine store, but at the local supermarket in fall during wine fairs. And I'd be assuming the same occur in HK, Spore, Tawain for teas, though I don't know. I admire people with the kind of educational and confidence level that let them go and hunt for good stuff in the tea jungle.
Meanwhile I just received the Henry CP, so even at $163 a cake I'm thankful to those guys :) .
Image
Attachments
HKHd.jpg
HKHd.jpg (95.65 KiB) Viewed 3775 times
Andrew S
Posts: 706
Joined: Sat Jan 30, 2021 8:53 pm
Location: Sydney, Australia

Thu May 27, 2021 10:33 pm

I tried a sample of a 1990s Menghai cake of some sort today. It seemed appropriate for a day with a cool breeze but bright blue skies ("cool" by Australian standards, obviously...).

Pleasantly aged, rich and persistent flavour, with some of those 'perfumed' qualities that come with time, but still with an occasional hint of its younger days peeking through the smoothness of its age.

More of a contemplative and sedentary feeling to this tea than a sample of another 1990s cake of some sort that I tried a few days ago, which had a more forcefully relaxing feel to it, with a flavour that developed more slowly.

Not that these descriptions are particularly useful to anyone.

Andrew
Attachments
_MG_7320.jpg
_MG_7320.jpg (252.88 KiB) Viewed 3693 times
User avatar
Victoria
Admin
Posts: 3043
Joined: Sat Sep 30, 2017 3:33 pm
Location: Santa Monica, CA
Contact:

Thu May 27, 2021 10:52 pm

@Andrew S, enjoyed reading your description and seeing your silky swirly image too 🍃
Andrew S
Posts: 706
Joined: Sat Jan 30, 2021 8:53 pm
Location: Sydney, Australia

Thu May 27, 2021 11:23 pm

@Victoria: thank you; I'm conscious that it is hard to convey the feeling of an old tea, so I hope that a swirly image might convey a swirly feeling.

Beyond referring to a pleasantly old or an uncomfortably young flavour, I'm not especially good at describing the taste of such things.

Andrew
User avatar
Bok
Vendor
Posts: 5782
Joined: Wed Oct 04, 2017 8:55 am
Location: Taiwan

Sat May 29, 2021 7:44 am

Another evening of Mangzhi, in a pot I haven’t used for a very looooong time. One of my first self purchased pots in Taiwan, made by my pottery teacher. Still love it.
Attachments
3B64D616-B57F-402D-94BE-875BFA93500C.jpeg
3B64D616-B57F-402D-94BE-875BFA93500C.jpeg (109.83 KiB) Viewed 3589 times
Post Reply