by shah82 » May 7th, '12, 20:32
Well, let's not quite get too spun around. It's an assumption, and like in a blogpost by Gingko, where longjing sellers have problems because people don't believe it's good longjing at good prices, we *could* be assuming that the perfectly mindblowing GFZ is not actually what it is, due to our misconceptions about the market.
Now, we generally think this way because there is a pattern of elite consumers having leedle hidey-holes full of organic gardening and ranching created specifically for the safe consumption of the Party Bosses (check LA Times somewheres), while normal people have to wonder whether their pork is safe to eat, and make a run to HK for their baby formula. So, it's not a stretch to say that there are specific areas of LBZ, GFZ, Bingdao, etc, etc, etc, as well as places we've never heard of, that are not actually available to us mortals.
However, this is just a heuristic, and as heuristics go, it can be pretty poisonous to enjoying your tea! Besides, I suspect that elite demand generally circles around tea that few/nobody else has ever heard of. So it's really just your usual well-off Chinese, and all the tea merchants that cater to them that are the competitors.
The price of GFZ @ Nadacha is correct for decent GFZ. GFZ is about $200/1kg. The normal retail price is that the retail bing (357/400g) is about the same price as the per-kg cost. That pays for wrappers, shipping, pressing, travel, enough maotai to kill an elephant, cover cost of tea that don't sell, and profit.