Official Pu of the day

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


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Jun 19th, '14, 03:02
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Re: Official Pu of the day

by Tead Off » Jun 19th, '14, 03:02

kyarazen wrote:
shah82 wrote:There are a lot of very good looking cakes with expensive looking picking and care for leaves that don't make good tea. Plenty of terrible looking bings that would start a bidding war here if it was ever available. Though most premium teas look good.
hmm... this cake only costs $3 USD... :shock: :D
LOL :lol:

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Jun 19th, '14, 09:00
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Re: Official Pu of the day

by Balthazar » Jun 19th, '14, 09:00

Drinking some Mengku Da Xue Shan from 2005 (it's a sample from DTH, which calls it "Mengku Snowy Mountain Pre-Ming Spring Tip Puer 2005", so I assume it's Da Xue Shan?). I'm liking it a lot, probably the best factory tea I've had so far, which doesn't say a lot, but still...

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Jun 19th, '14, 10:03
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Re: Official Pu of the day

by gasninja » Jun 19th, '14, 10:03

My sheng of the day is the 2001 8580. Is there even a factory with the production code 0? I grabbed this from Sunsing last year. When I went a little crazy and decided to blindly buy every war
Y 00s cake they had. I was initially pretty disappointed with this cake. It was hard to pick up anything underneath the storage taste. Today it is much improved having an aftertaste similar to an older 8582. The storage tast is fading leaving me hopeful for this cakes future. This is a rough looking cake to I found 2 sticks, a wood chipand a piece of plastic string just chipping out a pots worth of tea.

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Jun 19th, '14, 10:27
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Re: Official Pu of the day

by TwoDog2 » Jun 19th, '14, 10:27

gasninja wrote:This is a rough looking cake to I found 2 sticks, a wood chipand a piece of plastic string just chipping out a pots worth of tea.
Those are prizes! You won!

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by bonescwa » Jun 20th, '14, 19:14

I found an old bag of samples and came across about 10 g of teaurchin's spring 2012 gaoshanzhai. This is the tea that made me understand what the fuss was all about. For being only 2 years old it has almost no bitterness and has a sweet floral barnyard taste and aroma. Anyone know of any decent non-Teaurchin gaoshanzhais that are still available and reasonably priced? This one is neither.

Jun 22nd, '14, 01:21
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Re: Official Pu of the day

by shah82 » Jun 22nd, '14, 01:21

bonescwa, take a look at:http://www.art-of-tea.net/page/7

Scroll down to the third article that states that "Quality Aged Puerh Has Never Been Cheap". Now, this is talking about what ten years old tea has tended to cost as a percentage of your paycheck, but I think it applies to higher grade tea as well...

In short:
1) First rule of puerh is to get good at tasting puerh, so you quickly realize what is good and what isn’t.
2) Second rule of puerh is to buy lots of anything you estimate is good. Tongs are important!
3) Third rule of puerh is that everyone realizes all price mismatches and what’s decent well before it’s decently obvious, so look at rule one. Waiting until later means that you pick over “good bargain” leftovers.
4) Fourth rule of puerh is to find out how much the tea *should* cost, and use the first rule to figure whether the sample in front of you represents the appropriate grade you desire.

Jun 22nd, '14, 08:53
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Re: Official Pu of the day

by bonescwa » Jun 22nd, '14, 08:53

shah82 wrote:bonescwa, take a look at:http://www.art-of-tea.net/page/7

Scroll down to the third article that states that "Quality Aged Puerh Has Never Been Cheap". Now, this is talking about what ten years old tea has tended to cost as a percentage of your paycheck, but I think it applies to higher grade tea as well...

In short:
1) First rule of puerh is to get good at tasting puerh, so you quickly realize what is good and what isn’t.
2) Second rule of puerh is to buy lots of anything you estimate is good. Tongs are important!
3) Third rule of puerh is that everyone realizes all price mismatches and what’s decent well before it’s decently obvious, so look at rule one. Waiting until later means that you pick over “good bargain” leftovers.
4) Fourth rule of puerh is to find out how much the tea *should* cost, and use the first rule to figure whether the sample in front of you represents the appropriate grade you desire.
That's good to know, but not exactly answering my question. I know I have to pay. Was that article written by someone who sells tea, perchance?
That third rule seems a lot like the random walk analysis of markets in general. I don't think the tea market is as complex as Wall Street. I'm patient, I'm not going to jump in and pay whatever someone is asking. If it means I wait 10 years until prices become reasonable so be it.

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Jun 24th, '14, 06:31
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Re:

by MarshalN » Jun 24th, '14, 06:31

bonescwa wrote:I found an old bag of samples and came across about 10 g of teaurchin's spring 2012 gaoshanzhai. This is the tea that made me understand what the fuss was all about. For being only 2 years old it has almost no bitterness and has a sweet floral barnyard taste and aroma. Anyone know of any decent non-Teaurchin gaoshanzhais that are still available and reasonably priced? This one is neither.
Any real gaoshanzhai gushu will cost you a bundle.

Jun 24th, '14, 07:16
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Re: Official Pu of the day

by bonescwa » Jun 24th, '14, 07:16

MarshalN wrote:
bonescwa wrote:I found an old bag of samples and came across about 10 g of teaurchin's spring 2012 gaoshanzhai. This is the tea that made me understand what the fuss was all about. For being only 2 years old it has almost no bitterness and has a sweet floral barnyard taste and aroma. Anyone know of any decent non-Teaurchin gaoshanzhais that are still available and reasonably priced? This one is neither.
Any real gaoshanzhai gushu will cost you a bundle.
I figured... I wasn't sure if it was one of the costlier regions or not. do you think there are any regions that are undervalued for their quality right now?

Jun 24th, '14, 09:00
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Re: Official Pu of the day

by puyuan » Jun 24th, '14, 09:00

bonescwa wrote:
MarshalN wrote:
bonescwa wrote:I found an old bag of samples and came across about 10 g of teaurchin's spring 2012 gaoshanzhai. This is the tea that made me understand what the fuss was all about. For being only 2 years old it has almost no bitterness and has a sweet floral barnyard taste and aroma. Anyone know of any decent non-Teaurchin gaoshanzhais that are still available and reasonably priced? This one is neither.
Any real gaoshanzhai gushu will cost you a bundle.
I figured... I wasn't sure if it was one of the costlier regions or not. do you think there are any regions that are undervalued for their quality right now?
It's not one of the costlier villages in Banna, but that doesn't mean it's cheap anymore. My friend pressed two types of gaoshanzhai cakes this year. One with the plump looking leaves typical of the place (made from selected bigger trees) and a more normal one, and sold me a kg of the second, at cost. It was 1500 rmb per kg, 2500 retail. That's the cheapest possible, imo, unless the farmers sold later flushes for less, or if you get something heavily cut with small tree material. Tea from Xishuangbanna has gotten very expensive all over. Many places, even ones that had stable high price-to-quality ratios, doubled in price from last year. There are still little-known groves in places like the deeper ends of Yiwu, but the chances of finding tea from such a place are very slim, and the chances of finding anything worth the while (due to processing issues) are even slimmer. (That's talking about 2014 teas, that is.)

edit: I think I sounded a little to apocalyptic. There are affordable teas in Banna, obviously, but generally not too below 80-100 usd a cake.

Other than that, for real cheap teas with non-plantation material, you can look into teas from Lincang, Lancang, Laos, Burma... I personally don't, on average.

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Jun 25th, '14, 09:47
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Re: Official Pu of the day

by kyarazen » Jun 25th, '14, 09:47

having a 6ftm 2003 silver bud now.. its beginning to develop nice lotus leaf notes. probably another 10 years before it gets to become vanillic like old books :lol:

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Re: Official Pu of the day

by JakubT » Jun 25th, '14, 15:53

bonescwa: These days, I find the following http://www.chawangshop.com/index.php/pu ... -200g.html tea hardish to beat for the price - it is a fair, old-tree Yiwu, not unlike some Gaoshanzhais, as far as I remember. But still, it's not cheap so you might want to start with a sample.

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Re: Official Pu of the day

by puerhking » Jun 25th, '14, 17:01

2013 Yunnan Sourcing Feng Chun today. Very grassy and herbal....finishing with floral notes and slight aroma. According to Scott Feng Chun essentially means "Meeting Spring"... and it does taste like drinking a cup of spring. It also has a brothy or umami flavor about it. Not super durable compared to some of Scott's other puerhs, but for the price, it seems like a good value to me.

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Re: Official Pu of the day

by bonescwa » Jun 25th, '14, 19:52

JakubT wrote:bonescwa: These days, I find the following http://www.chawangshop.com/index.php/pu ... -200g.html tea hardish to beat for the price - it is a fair, old-tree Yiwu, not unlike some Gaoshanzhais, as far as I remember. But still, it's not cheap so you might want to start with a sample.
Thanks Jakub, I'll check it out

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Jun 26th, '14, 13:39
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Re: Official Pu of the day

by kyarazen » Jun 26th, '14, 13:39

having a pure autumn gushu.

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