What Pu'er Are You Drinking

[DailyTX]

@Andrew S we probably should migrate this conversation to a separate thread about puerh history so we don’t clog up this one. In regards to the tea houses/dim sum restaurants in HK, there was a demand for puerh tea but waiting 20+ years before Sheng could be drinkable was not able to meet the demand nor profitable. It was around 1970s when shu was created. Take this with a grain of salt as there is another school of tea drinkers believe shu was not created to replicate aged sheng.

[pedant]

feel free if you guys want. and if you do, i'll move the relevant posts into it.

[Andrew S]

Agreed, and thanks, sounds like a good idea, except that I've run out of 'knowledge' and need others to contribute to the topic so I can learn more...

Andrew

[enjoi]

Sotheby's Hong Kong is currently making an auction with a Pu-Erh Cake form the Qing.
Well priced...
https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/auction ... iao-hei-zi

Auction:
https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/auction ... ?locale=en

[Bok]

Sotheby's Hong Kong is currently making an auction with a Pu-Erh Cake form the Qing.
Well priced...
https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/auction ... iao-hei-zi

Auction:
https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/auction ... ?locale=en

Sad thing is that there is a good chance that the buyer will never drink it…

[yinyautong]

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1999 Fu Hai Yi Wu Six Leaves Tea (Raw Tea). （1999 - 福海易武綠星星）

Hi all! This is my first post in teaforum. I'm from Hong Kong and newly moved to Canada. I started drinking Puerh in around 2016 after my friend treated me some 2000 Orange Changtai, which is now showed as my profile picture and was super delicious.

I've often wanted to record of Puerh drinking experience and accidentally found this forum. This is great!

So this is a 22-year-old raw tea. I have made 15 brews of this tea. Using 8g tea leaves with about 120cc water in a covered tea bowl. This is quite a famous tea in Hong Kong so the price is a bit crazy. I've only two cakes of them so I've drunk them sparingly since I bought them few years ago.

I expected this would be delicious with strong aroma. However, it turned out to be not as good as my expectation. I did remark some scent of flower and wooden but it didn't quite enrich my saliva and actually I felt a bit dry in my month. The body was a bit thin.

Overall, it tasted good but not great. Its aftertaste was long. It was elegant but was not a powerful tea (yes, because it is a Yi Wu tea right?).

I will post the detailed tasting note and the pics in my link below later.

https://yinyautong.wordpress.com

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[yinyautong]

2000 First Batch Chang Tai Hao (首批橙昌泰)

I drank 2000 First Batch Chang Tai Hao (首批橙昌泰) today. I liked it very much. Worth to mention, I found a unique smell of frankincense which also came along with notes of wood and forest. A bit of bitter taste in the throat when I drank it in the first 5 infusions but the bitterness disappeared fast and became notes of sweetness and minty.

This is a tea that attracted me to drink cup after cup. The “Qi” was also strong as I felt warmer after the 3rd infusion. This tea did enrich my saliva a bit though I found its body was quite dry and thin tonight.

You may also see a more detailed tasting note in my blog: https://yinyautong.wordpress.com

Thanks for viewing it

[.m.]

@yinyautong Great teas! Thanks for sharing

[yinyautong]

@yinyautong Great teas! Thanks for sharing

Thanks .m. your reply really encourage me to keep posting here.

1994 Xia Guan Ripe Tuocha (1994下關沱茶 - 熟沱）

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Tonight, I drank the1994 Xia Guan Tuocha, which is a ripe Puerh tea I bought from Yee On Tea in Hong Kong few years ago. I just checked their website and found that It price has raised a double. There is an idiom in Hong Kong "the earlier you bought a thing, the earlier you could enjoy it; the later you bought a thing, the few more hundred you are gonna to pay for it" (早買早享受，遲買貴幾舊), and the idiom has come true now.

Like the discription in their website, the taste of this Tuocha is really smooth and rich, with ginseng and old tea aroma. Lovely.
After about 15 infusions, the tea was still enjoyable with comfortable sweet flavour. You may also see a more detailed tasting note in my blog: https://yinyautong.wordpress.com

IMG_5699.JPG (347.78 KiB) Viewed 12152 times

[Andrew S]

There is an idiom in Hong Kong "the earlier you bought a thing, the earlier you could enjoy it; the later you bought a thing, the few more hundred you are gonna to pay for it" (早買早享受，遲買貴幾舊)

If I kept thinking about the prices at which I could have bought old puer a decade ago when I was first learning about tea, I'd be losing a lot of sleep (or, perhaps, losing a lot of sleep while trying to invent a time-travel machine).

It's probably important for puer drinkers to remind ourselves every now and then that old puer was a relaxing, simple, and cheap tea that people drank casually, until it got too expensive.

It is nice to see that you've enjoyed that tea as much as I did, though. I had some last night (albeit at the higher price...) to wind-down and relax, and it's on my list of easy-drinking puer teas to take with me to yum cha one day.

Andrew

[faj]

If I kept thinking about the prices at which I could have bought old puer a decade ago when I was first learning about tea, I'd be losing a lot of sleep (or, perhaps, losing a lot of sleep while trying to invent a time-travel machine).

The true cost of drinking tea now is the amount you could sell it for at the time you drink it. What you paid for that tea in the past, and when you purchased it, does not affect that opportunity cost. Psychologically, we tend to forget the possibility of resale (because resale was not the intent of the purchase), and focus on the sunken cost. It makes us feel better when choosing to enjoy things we purchased in the past.

Tea is a good "investment" only if its value rises more quickly than the value of investments of comparable risk. For sure, tea is not risk-free : it may not age into something as good as you hoped, and you cannot be sure that your storage conditions can actually age tea properly. Also, market prices may have increased a lot in recent decades, but collectibles value is driven by macroeconomic mechanisms which may stall or reverse at some points in history.

The NASDAQ is about 10 times higher than 20 years ago, and surely investing in the NASDAQ is less risky than long-term storage of tea. For many people, it probably makes sense to store their "tea dollars" in a NASDAQ index fund, and pay full market price for old tea at the time they want to drink it.

Given my knowledge and the risk involved, I think if I were to store tea for the long term (currently I do not), it would be for purchasing larger quantities of teas with already some age on them after trying and liking them, when their price is somewhat high but not stratospheric, and the main driver for my decision would be to ensure long-term availability and save time and hassle researching teas to purchase, not to save money over the long run.

[Bok]

@faj availability in the future is a very good point. At the rate things are going, I do not count on handing tea available as it is now in a few decades… I’m pretty pessimistic that the current tea growing regions will be able to withstand climate change in the long run and a shift to different regions would not necessarily yield the same teas(know how would have to move as well, a lot will be lost in generational experience), different terrain, basically starting from scratch and that maybe farmers will plant something more essential to survival than tea.

[faj]

I’m pretty pessimistic that the current tea growing regions will be able to withstand climate change in the long run

That is a real risk, for sure. It helps however that this happens gradually, and that at any point along this transition there is significant demand for tea, as well as people whose livelihood depends on supplying tea. This makes it more likely that growing regions will gradually shift, through countless individual decisions, and ensure that there are interesting (though maybe different) teas available in the future. Individually and collectively, humans are highly adaptable and inventive : this is what allowed us to create this climate crisis to begin with.

[Bok]

True that.

Let’s hope for the best - for tea and the world.

[LeoFox]

Individually and collectively, humans are highly adaptable and inventive : this is what allowed us to create this climate crisis to begin with.

Faj!!