Young Sheng Pu Er for aging

[steanze]

So far I mostly bought pu-erh to drink right away, but I would like to start aging some.
I have been looking around a bit and I would plan to get a tong of relatively cheap tea and a few cakes of higher quality stuff (all raw-sheng).

For the cheaper tea, I was thinking about Menghai's 7542 batch 901, since it is a classic and the price is still pretty low. So I ordered a cake of it to try from DTH.

For the higher quality tea, I am thinking about some Lao Ban Zhang, Lao Man E or Ban Zhang. I realize that there are quite a lot of versions of it produced by different brands.

Lao Man E seems definitely cheaper than Lao Ban Zhang and I read around that it is supposed to age at least as well. Is this only a marketing strategy or there is some truth to it?

Does anyone know how the cakes from Yunnansourcing (e.g. the 250 Lao Ban Zhang cakes from 2008 and the 2010 premium LBZ and the Lao Man E) compare to the cakes from Hai Lang Hao and other brands?

Thanks a lot for you advice!!

[bearsbearsbears]

<snip>For the cheaper tea, I was thinking about Menghai's 7542 batch 901, since it is a classic and the price is still pretty low. So I ordered a cake of it to try from DTH.

A safe bet.

For the higher quality tea, I am thinking about some Lao Ban Zhang, Lao Man E or Ban Zhang <snip> Lao Man E seems definitely cheaper than Lao Ban Zhang and I read around that it is supposed to age at least as well. Is this only a marketing strategy or there is some truth to it?

It seems every couple of years there's a new "hit" region or village. Lao Man'e, Bingdao, Mahei, Naka...all claiming they were fictitiously sold as "Lao Banzhang" with success because they're equally as potent, etc. etc.

Nobody has aged pure Lao Banzhang, pure Lao Man'e, pure Bingdao, or pure Naka, etc. for more than a few years. While there may be some truth that these regions age well (many of these regions likely made up parts of the menghai/xiaguan/kunming/etc. blends), there's no 1980s pure man'e/bingdao/mahei/etc. cake to prove it, though some shady vendor may make claims otherwise. Take it all with a grain of salt is my advice.

Does anyone know how the cakes from Yunnansourcing (e.g. the 250 Lao Ban Zhang cakes from 2008 and the 2010 premium LBZ and the Lao Man E) compare to the cakes from Hai Lang Hao and other brands?

I have the 2006 fall lao banzhang mengku-store-owner cakes, and I like them quite a bit. I have not tried the 2008 or 2010 production, and I have only had the HLH Ban'E cake, which is super potently bitter and seems to brew an infinite number of infusions, but has some iffy processing on about 10% of the leaf, which the item listing points to as evidence of the "sha qing" process being completed by hand.

I have samples of some of the Yunnan Sourcing productions but haven't tried them yet.

YSLLC sells samples of all of the cakes you mentioned; I always advocate that people try before they buy and make an educated decision rather than a stab in the dark.

[Maitre_Tea]

+1 to the above

and if it helps, the 1997 Hen Li Chang Bu Lang from Nada might actually consist of Lao Man'E material. Having tried both this cake and the 2008 HLH LBZ + LME cake I definitely notice some notes of similarity between them. In the '97 the bitterness is still there, but it's not a sharp astringent bitterness. I can only imagine how it must have tasted young...

Of course, this isn't accounting for storage, the authenticity/grade of the material, etc.

Now, I've heard that the reason that Lao Man'E is valued is because it used to be part of Lao Ban Zhang, and it was a region that was harvested in the 80s.

B^3: let me know how that turns out if you try it soon