Liu Bao sourcing
Good oneAlthough we know how messy ( speak of the legitimacy ) the puerh market is , yet I asked the vendor what age range of liu bao is in general available on this market. He dropped down his had and looking into the cup with smile , saying: “ you don’t ask about the age here “ . “Focus on the taste and price ,rather than the age “ , he continues. “If you chase the old liu bao , you more likely end up spending lots of money and buying some fake. If you after some very old stuff , there is very little almost to non here. Mostly it’s just that vendors claim whatever they feel like you want to hear.
Thanks for the article @aet! Always nice to see more photos of LB, especially the smaller local productions fermenting in all their random configurations- baskets, open wood boxes, unique pressed shapes...
I'm not surprised at all what the vendor told you about age and the difficulty of finding confirmable older material, especially in Guangxi. I have the impression that the vast majority of older LB was of course shipped over to Malaysia and earlier also to Hong Kong, all of it now long since being in the hands of older vendors or private collectors there, and even a lot of the better newer batches still seeing direct overseas buying. Then after the mines closed and prices collapsed a lot of production stopped - farmers who supplied to larger factories or made small batches cut down their trees and planted vegetables or green tea varietals because it was more profitable, which makes a lot of claims about the age of many trees there suspect. Because of its production process profits were never high, and once prices started dropping it would cost more to produce the tea than one could sell it for. I would post the article here but from what I can see it is unfortunately not online anymore - it was in Chinese so I read it with a translator but it was outlining this, as well as how much of the tea produced around that time was also extremely low quality. The LB I have had that is from the 90s or older (or so claimed...) has been a really mixed bag. Material that came from within China has with few exceptions been pretty unremarkable. A few that have been quite nice here and there, but they are charming more for their general aged character and you can tell it would be a much more interesting, powerful, and robust tea had it been of higher initial quality. A few of them have been great, but generally I find I look for and try such teas more as personal research being a fan of LB. A lot of the 80s and 90s examples I have tried have been mostly very weak in flavor, and some downright nasty, but even those on the better side feel like they saw very poor storage for extended periods and that they could be a much better tea now if that had not been the case which is always a bit of a shame. The tea having been probably next to worthless for many years means it probably saw very little care. The better examples I have had almost all came from outside of China. As the seller told you to ignore the age and focus on taste/feel - I suppose this is a blessing and a curse in a way. It means lots of unscrupulous selling knowingly deceiving potential buyers about age. But it also means maybe allowing us to focus more on what matters- the end result. Through pu-erh we can get so obsessed over knowing exactly what batch we are buying a cake from with all the codes and research to authenticating wrappers. It is maybe a nice contrast to sit down, not worry about when exactly the tea was actually made and just drink it and see what it has to say.
Also very interesting on San He having assistance from DaYi's marketing department. I noticed prices the last couple years skyrocketed on factory productions- COFCO "reissuing" classic boxes for ridiculous prices that not long before could have gotten you a 10 year old box of that same tea and that they were still on the market. I don't think people have been buying it though- I have noticed a lot of things going on sale, prices cooling off... As a big fan of all production styles of LB I was happy to see it catching on more, but agree that for its quality by liu bao or any tea standard there was major overvaluing going on, and the bubble seems primed to pop. I guess people saw it as the 'next pu-erh' and wanted to make sure they didn't miss the boat on trying to make big money. San He prices also seemed to go up but not to the same degree. But both both of the big producers seem to be focusing a lot more on small tin/boxes with every single thing now being a 'special production'. Some are still nice teas and decently prices as long as you don't put them side by side in price per kilo with decent bao lan teas.
While I am skeptical LB will ever see a big boom like Pu-erh that these big companies were banking on, I do think over the next 10 years we will see more good quality coming to market and more quality aged teas becoming available. For me personally the real sweet spot has been teas produced in the 2005-2015ish range. The prices are still reasonable on a lot of them if you can find them from the right places, the teas were produced using better quality and control than a lot of 90s teas I've been able to get my hands on, and they are also starting to hit a really nice point in their age. Sheng LB, especially smaller productions I've been lucky to be given some good examples of and is really interesting to me how variable it can be, as you also found. I think the examples given to me were intentionally stored more dry, so even with 10+ years they still retain a lot of green character and aren't noticeably humid as I would expect. The fact that so much of these teas are produced in small local co-op factories means they will never really be big-market sellable and will really require dedicated and interested third parties like yourself to go digging for them to offer to interest people, probably also at little profit for the effort involved. After all, what is a big factory/vendor going to do with a batch of tea that sees a production size of 40 kilos. I've had quite nice experiences with Guangxi border tea, and was actually looking for more examples of it recently, so I'm glad to see you found some and have it on offer. I'm always happy to see more vendors offering good LB, so I'll be placing an order to check out what you found so far
I'm not surprised at all what the vendor told you about age and the difficulty of finding confirmable older material, especially in Guangxi. I have the impression that the vast majority of older LB was of course shipped over to Malaysia and earlier also to Hong Kong, all of it now long since being in the hands of older vendors or private collectors there, and even a lot of the better newer batches still seeing direct overseas buying. Then after the mines closed and prices collapsed a lot of production stopped - farmers who supplied to larger factories or made small batches cut down their trees and planted vegetables or green tea varietals because it was more profitable, which makes a lot of claims about the age of many trees there suspect. Because of its production process profits were never high, and once prices started dropping it would cost more to produce the tea than one could sell it for. I would post the article here but from what I can see it is unfortunately not online anymore - it was in Chinese so I read it with a translator but it was outlining this, as well as how much of the tea produced around that time was also extremely low quality. The LB I have had that is from the 90s or older (or so claimed...) has been a really mixed bag. Material that came from within China has with few exceptions been pretty unremarkable. A few that have been quite nice here and there, but they are charming more for their general aged character and you can tell it would be a much more interesting, powerful, and robust tea had it been of higher initial quality. A few of them have been great, but generally I find I look for and try such teas more as personal research being a fan of LB. A lot of the 80s and 90s examples I have tried have been mostly very weak in flavor, and some downright nasty, but even those on the better side feel like they saw very poor storage for extended periods and that they could be a much better tea now if that had not been the case which is always a bit of a shame. The tea having been probably next to worthless for many years means it probably saw very little care. The better examples I have had almost all came from outside of China. As the seller told you to ignore the age and focus on taste/feel - I suppose this is a blessing and a curse in a way. It means lots of unscrupulous selling knowingly deceiving potential buyers about age. But it also means maybe allowing us to focus more on what matters- the end result. Through pu-erh we can get so obsessed over knowing exactly what batch we are buying a cake from with all the codes and research to authenticating wrappers. It is maybe a nice contrast to sit down, not worry about when exactly the tea was actually made and just drink it and see what it has to say.
Also very interesting on San He having assistance from DaYi's marketing department. I noticed prices the last couple years skyrocketed on factory productions- COFCO "reissuing" classic boxes for ridiculous prices that not long before could have gotten you a 10 year old box of that same tea and that they were still on the market. I don't think people have been buying it though- I have noticed a lot of things going on sale, prices cooling off... As a big fan of all production styles of LB I was happy to see it catching on more, but agree that for its quality by liu bao or any tea standard there was major overvaluing going on, and the bubble seems primed to pop. I guess people saw it as the 'next pu-erh' and wanted to make sure they didn't miss the boat on trying to make big money. San He prices also seemed to go up but not to the same degree. But both both of the big producers seem to be focusing a lot more on small tin/boxes with every single thing now being a 'special production'. Some are still nice teas and decently prices as long as you don't put them side by side in price per kilo with decent bao lan teas.
While I am skeptical LB will ever see a big boom like Pu-erh that these big companies were banking on, I do think over the next 10 years we will see more good quality coming to market and more quality aged teas becoming available. For me personally the real sweet spot has been teas produced in the 2005-2015ish range. The prices are still reasonable on a lot of them if you can find them from the right places, the teas were produced using better quality and control than a lot of 90s teas I've been able to get my hands on, and they are also starting to hit a really nice point in their age. Sheng LB, especially smaller productions I've been lucky to be given some good examples of and is really interesting to me how variable it can be, as you also found. I think the examples given to me were intentionally stored more dry, so even with 10+ years they still retain a lot of green character and aren't noticeably humid as I would expect. The fact that so much of these teas are produced in small local co-op factories means they will never really be big-market sellable and will really require dedicated and interested third parties like yourself to go digging for them to offer to interest people, probably also at little profit for the effort involved. After all, what is a big factory/vendor going to do with a batch of tea that sees a production size of 40 kilos. I've had quite nice experiences with Guangxi border tea, and was actually looking for more examples of it recently, so I'm glad to see you found some and have it on offer. I'm always happy to see more vendors offering good LB, so I'll be placing an order to check out what you found so far