what does 10 dollar pu taste like??
It tastes nice. Smooth and solid on the front end, but a bit hollow on the back end. It isn't bitter, but the flavor isn't amazing. All in all, depending on the pot I use to brew it, it ranged from awful (in my machine-pressed super-cheap zini pot) to pretty alright (porcelain), to actually surprisingly nice (in my nicer zini pot, my teacher's zhuni pot, my heini pot, or my mao lvni pot). This isn't just the first pu I found, though, so it is not indicative of all $10 shou cha dai bings! I went to maybe 7-10 shops and tasted, I don't know, ballpark maybe 40 or more teas! This was the cheapest I bought, and I got two disks, one to age (just to see!) and one for now.
iovetea wrote:also it would be funny if pu erh would be the only tea were you pay a fair price for the work.... i mean its not that you pay the fair price for oolong from anxi or wenshan, why should raw pu erh be any different??
2-Why do you think these other teas sell for a price that isn't fair? Personally, I most certainly pay top dollar for good tea in any category! I think anyone should be willing to pay fair prices for better quality of any product. It is just a matter of what price range you are comfortable in financially and what quality level you enjoy more (sometimes many people prefer the taste of lower-quality tea!). I merely mention the storage aspect to say that aged teas tend to cost more for a number of reasons. As per young puerh teas, I have found that young shou tends to cost more than young sheng. If you want to buy and age, I have seen teas for amazingly small prices (just dollars for 100g tuos, or super-cheap mini-tuos by the kilo, not to mention bricks, small disks, mushrooms, and loose leaf). If you want cheaper priced shou or sheng, you can find it.