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Denong tea shop just sent me an email in regard to their newly released "LIMITED RELEASE 2016 BULANG GOLDEN AUTUMN HARVEST RAW PU-ERH TEA". The harvest is in autumn but the price is $4.50 per gram.

I know Bulang mountain has the famous Laobanzhang village. I also know Bulang mountain has good teas since I have tasted and really enjoyed the Teas We Like 2005 Bulang Double Lion and Wistaria 2006 Bang Zhang. However, these 2 cakes are way less expensive.

So can an autumn harvested tea in Bulang mountain without the mentioning of any famous village be this expensive? Is this a fair price I expect to get if I live in China? And what exactly is "Golden Autumm" harvest?

Denong tea is located in Pasadena California so they have a wealthy clientele. I like their "aerial fermentation" ripe puerhs but have yet to enjoy any of their raw teas.

https://www.denongtea.com/products/2016 ... pify_email

Of course this price would not be the same if you buy the same tea in China... that wouldn’t be a economically viable.

Don’t know about Puerh, but summer or autumn tea is usually cheaper than spring.

Interesting...

vuanguyen wrote: ↑

Fri Aug 21, 2020 11:42 pm

So can an autumn harvested tea in Bulang mountain without the mentioning of any famous village be this expensive?

It certainly can, as evident from your link

... but to be less cheeky, I agree that it's rare to see such price tags on teas whose origin is not more specific than "Bulang" (spring or autumn). Maybe the vendor really has no clue about which village(s) the material is from?

(I believe I read somewhere that the 2003 Bulang Jing Pin is actually an autumn tea (but a quick Google search just now did not give me an answer).)

vuanguyen wrote: ↑

Fri Aug 21, 2020 11:42 pm

Is this a fair price I expect to get if I live in China?

Probably not. As you note, there's the location of this store, and the fact that they have a physical tea room which I assume must be subsidized through sale of teas... So you can probably assume an even larger markup than what most other western vendors (for obvious reasons) apply. But this would be the case regardless of the season of the harvest of tea, though.

I think this is more about the local tea market; tea can be as expensive as someone is willing to pay, so the question becomes, will Denong customers buy the tea or not? Why would they buy that tea rather than another tea? This comes down to understanding who their customers are and why they buy what they buy.

It may just be that for a certain group of people it has to be that tea for reasons that aren't about the tea itself. This is a common issue seen in China with gift teas, for instance. Maybe Denong has tapped into the Californian version of gift tea.

I have been observing Denong’s prices for a few years. Their biannual price increase can be extremely high. Their 100g famous mountain cakes from Spring 2018 went from $190 to $299 in just two years

In general, Autumn tea is about half the price in the mountains compared to Spring. Sometimes a little more than that, sometimes less