The latest price of Red Mark, Blue Mark etc.

One of the intentionally aged teas, Pu-Erh has a loyal following.


Sep 7th, '12, 12:22

Re: The latest price of Red Mark, Blue Mark etc.

by wh&yel-apprentice » Sep 7th, '12, 12:22

wyardley wrote:
apache wrote: Is the same can be said to other Mark grade teas? There is no dry storage? Or there is no dry stored tea before 88 Qing?
In my very limited experience, and from what I've heard others say, storage varies quite a bit among all these landmark cakes, i.e., some are better / more cleanly stored than others. So storage matters, and you can tell something about how a tea was stored from tasting it. I think that the concept of, or interest in, dry storage doesn't come about until at least the 90s, and further, most, if not all, of the places where pu'er was stored in large quantities in those days were in fairly humid climates.

And I think even 88 qing bing has had some "traditional" storage early in its life, and its later storage in HK was still humid; just drier than some.
apache wrote: Another question: if one does not enjoy wet storage tea, would that person not very likely appreciate the Red Mark?

I guess it depends what "one" means by "wet storage tea". That term means different things to different people, and when you're talking about a tea that's 60+ year
s... that's a lot of history -- it's unlikely that the tea was stored in the same place for its whole life. Also, "wet" is not necessarily the same as "not dry". To me, well aged old tea just tastes like old tea....there shouldn't be any unpleasant storage taste left at this point, even if the tea was traditionally stored earlier on.
So Cloud thinks the RM &BM where drily stored cakes, at least the ones he is thinking about:

http://www.cloudsteacollection.com/html ... 008_e.html
When Cloud appreciated the naturally stored Eighty-eight Raw Tea Cake in 2003, the slight plum fragrance (emphasis, it was a very special plum taste which was different from the slightly aged tea broth taste mentioned in the previous paragraphs) was quite similar to the plum fragrance from the aged and drily stored Masterpiece Puerh Vintage, the Blue Mark - Grade A or Blue Mark - Grade B. Cloud having such subjective impression was because Cloud often drank these fine 1960's aged Puerh vintages at that time. There were some similarities between them. To be concise, drily stored good tea, possibly, might share similar aging tracks and taste styles.
Only 'normal' warehouse humidity vs purpose wet-stored humidity the 88 BT 7542 could have been subjected to pre-BT selling them off, would have been right after they were made, and no more, perhaps less than a few years.
The Eighty-eight Raw Tea Cake was a batch of tea cakes manufactured from 1989 to 1991. The owner who had been hoarding them for more than 10 years in Hong Kong was Mr. Chan of the Best Tea House (a Hong Kong local tea shop doing the art of tea business). He acquired the whole batch of tea cakes from a tea wholesaler in 1993.

In 1993, the Puerh tea market in Hong Kong did not approve dry storage tea cakes. Tea drinkers were of the view that these raw and astringent drily stored tea cakes were too green and astringent to be appreciated. Thus, few people enquired for the whole batch of Eighty-eight Raw Tea Cake at that time. The tea wholesaler contacted Mr. Chan in 1993. He remembered that the tea had a very special fresh aroma which was very attractive to him. He then decided to purchase the entire batch from the tea wholesaler. That was a fortune to the Eighty-eight Raw Tea Cake because the main stream of handling raw tea cakes in the early 1990's was to store the tea cakes in a relatively high humid environment in order to enable tea cakes to have a quicker "aging" process. However, Mr. Chan loved tea and did not do so.

按下圖片取得640x480解像度 Click to view 640x480
Repeating the History

Someone says, "History repeats, but only with different eras and people." Cloud agrees with these words. The story of this batch of tea cakes is similar to the story of the Red Mark happened in the 1950's as the Red Mark was too astringent to be sold in the market 60 years ago. The consumers in the 1950's and the 1960's did not accept such taste. Because of the fact that it was not a trend to store tea cakes by consumers in the old days, the tastes of tea cakes was very decisive at the time when a customer bought the tea cake. If the taste was too young, no consumer was willing to buy.

Sep 7th, '12, 12:27

Re: The latest price of Red Mark, Blue Mark etc.

by wh&yel-apprentice » Sep 7th, '12, 12:27

Do note that Cloud claims he did not like the '88 BTH beengs when he tasted them in 2001, a decade of dry storage, only the tea magically changed in just 2 yrs, to something excellent.


... I guess you just need to keep them for 15yrs, or 2x 8yrs if you feel 'lucky'
Without much experience, it would be difficult for one to discover its true power. Nevertheless, it had a positive and obvious change in 2003. This proved a traditional tea wisdom that a Puerh tea cake will have a great jump in its quality every 7 years. The Eighty-eight Raw Tea Cake proved this.

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Re: The latest price of Red Mark, Blue Mark etc.

by AdamMY » Sep 7th, '12, 15:00

wh&yel-apprentice,

Just curious, are you constantly recalling things your parents said to you when you were a young child, and now returning years later quoting various articles stating that the Tooth Fairy and Santa Claus are not real?

Nearly all the posts in this thread were over a year old, with only two ( technically 3) recent posts until you went off the edge again, because it was brought to the front again by a spamer, who searched the forum for any reference to taobao, and then posted his affiliate link through a program to buy from taobao, then posted his links in each of those threads.

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Re: The latest price of Red Mark, Blue Mark etc.

by gasninja » Sep 7th, '12, 22:29

Wh& yel apprentice lives in the deep end.

Its great reading his/her posts there pure comedy. :lol:

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Re: The latest price of Red Mark, Blue Mark etc.

by ImmortaliTEA » Nov 6th, '12, 05:01

wh&yel-apprentice wrote:
TIM wrote:
apache wrote:Just find another price for Red Mark from HLH dealer on TB http://item.taobao.com/item.htm?id=9433609416.

There is big different between Henry's and here. I wonder is this one pure dry storage so demanding such a price. They didn't say which year or storage condition on the site.

Look like Houde is the best deal if one want to experience the Red Mark, and I'm contented with my EoT cakes and HLH LBZ & Man'E.
As from my knowledge and experences with real 50s red label. There is no dry storage :roll:
no more RM @Houde :(...if you believe Cloud, being as young as he would likely be as a law school student in 2003, Red Mark cakes could be dry stored as opposed to purposely extra humid/wet stored. Just look at the difference in paper wrappers on the Blue Mark 50's @BT in Vancouver.


BTW, what's the diff btw Grade A & B? Is there a C,D, & F? Dif btw Grade 0 and others???

Looks like there might be some decomposition of the label, but it's in better condition than the one Cloud posted:

Image

Image
^Cloud's collector friend.

BM @BT:
Image
^pretty clean label> fake?

Image
^deteriorated label

likewise:
Image
I do realize this thread is pretty old but I thought I would chime in about the dry storage of famous label cakes. I once had an e-mail conversation with Daniel Lui from thechineseteashop.com where he stated that a number of the people he knows brought over label cakes to Vancouver back in the 50's and have since kept them stored there in the dry climate. I'm sure it wasn't done on a large scale but there are a few versions of dry stored label cakes floating around Canada. Daniel says no tea he has ever had comes even close to its complexity even the traditionally stored red mark. I personally have found that most of the puerh I've tasted from Thechineseteashop.com with Vancouver storage is not my cup of tea so I'm not sure if I'd agree but that's just speculation.

ImmortaliTEA-

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Re: The latest price of Red Mark, Blue Mark etc.

by needaTEAcher » Nov 13th, '12, 03:28

I just went to Henry Trading Co, but they were closed. The phone number (+852-2782-1568) made the fax noise, and the website (henry-trading.com) isn't up.

Does anyone know how to get in touch with these folks? I REALLY want to see the shop, and witness the glory of an old Red Label. I think if I sit in its presence for 10 minutes, my tea level will jump to OVER 9,000! :D

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