There's another pu erh bubble...

[jayinhk]

We already had one crash in 2008...another one is due in 2016 or 2017 when Chinese people stop buying and start offloading!

[Drax]

Haha, it's true at some point, the people speculating need to retire, so we shall see...!

[shah82]

There's been plenty of reporting on puerh decline in chinese media. Stuff like lots of teashops in Maliandro closing, drops in recent Dayi prices, etc.

2008+, the wages of the people making, processing, packaging has gone up a lot, and the rent for storing and selling in teashops have also gone up a lot. That's why recent teas are more expensive.

Another reason why recent teas are more expensive is that they are more easily found, with real marketing support. There hasn't been a winnowing to cakes that deserve high prices from tea that doesn't. Much of the best stuff from the mid-aughts do not cost more, and often cost much less than many plainly inferior teas. I've also suspected for awhile that the vast majority of decent aged tea is in firm hands, and that most of the trading '80s and older teas are fakes or bad examples. The rich in China and E. Asia in general want the cachet of age, but I think sooner or later, there's going to be an aggressive filtering (say tea parties where you have to bring your tea and *serve* it) out of bad aged tea that merely serves as an image boost.

I do think that gushu teas are an interesting investment. Just understand, that beyond the issues of keeping the tea in good shape for the long haul...

Not-so-old puerh is effectively bling for sophisticated people. People who have both money and time. It's not going to offer the flavor or aroma blasts of darjeelings or oolongs, and it's not necessarily going to offer the most appealing flavors. In terms of pharm, is it really going to beat coke, ketamine, or marajuana? So as far as overawing the proverbial used car saleman made good, they're not necessarily going to get it, you know? Sort of like Picasso in full cubism glory shown to the owner of a small savings and loans company in the '50s. Now, puerh could be something that *separates* class, in the sense that old money knows how to appreciate it, while you young whippersnappers don't, and they never let you forget it, while keeping a nice stock of LBZ in their room-sized pumidors. However, it's probably going to be more like how jazz is today, perpetually a fringe group of sophisticated listeners of all classes who are really into it, as the rest of the world does KennyG shu. Good gushu will always be appreciated, but it will never really appreciate like good wine/spirits.

[ethan]

shah82, Thank you for your post. I don't & won't buy pu-erh but will drink it when offered by someone like you. The taste & cha-qi may be rewarding but not as much as getting enough experience to appreciate these threads. I enjoy your eloquence here & reference to cubist Picasso paintings being offered to bank managers before they cost tens of millions of dollars, etc. However, I think you need to prove (and cannot) that people who like jazz do so because of sophistication enabling appreciation.
Perhaps for good reason, most people feel that most jazz is awful. John Coltrane alone or w/ others running amok may make your sophisticated ears happy, but I feel Mozart accomplished more as a child than Coltrane et.al. do in their whole lives. I don't need to work to enjoy to Mozart, nor to enjoy many good teas. So why all this investment in pu?
Is good tea being stored away for years when it could be sold immediately? Probably not. Is storage ideal? Who knows? Etc. etc. If a cake of pu-erh on offer is not part of a scam, it is at least a gamble to buy.
For me, pu is a risk as bad as buying tickets for performers who often arrive late, too stoned to do well, and feel like assaulting their audience w/ the wildest, unlikely ways to use their instruments.
Sometimes it all may come together (there are great jam sessions), but too many times pu-erh tastes like dirt while one hopes for a symphony of flavors & cha-qi.

[kyarazen]

Haha, it's true at some point, the people speculating need to retire, so we shall see...!

well.. i guess everyone wants to make money one way or another.. its all about.. $$...

[jayinhk]

There is a certain degree of experience and sophistication required to know good pu erh and all of the potential offerings out there, and to know when you're being taken for a ride too. Apparently I have a lot to learn yet as I had no idea how rampant pu erh forgery was here in Guangdong...there is a lot of really bad fake tea out there!

I visited my first Chinese tea market recently and the side of the market I started on was PACKED with really bad fake pu erh. Guizhou or Guangxi tea I guess. Funky, wet wo dui in everything, even '90s' cakes. Their excuse? Hong Kong traditional storage. Thousands of cakes of crap tea. Right in the middle of all of that fake tea, there was what appeared to be a genuine Dayi store, but even that's a crapshoot on the Mainland. I'm going to tackle that market again, but at the first sign of crap tea in any store, I'm walking right back out.

[ethan]

I think shah said that to enjoy good pu-erh takes sophistication even if one is smart & lucky enough to have the good stuff. Thus, pu-drinking would not be mainstream just as people listen to music other than jazz. I ? whether sophistication is necessary to enjoy something that is good. E.g. I am not going to work at liking stinky tofu, though some people love it.
Perhaps I should not get involved but do so because of my experience w/ cigars. It took me quite a while to learn which cigars age well & which do not improve w/ age (or even lose flavor), which were worth stocking up on, how to age & store, etc. I did learn & found ways to make my hobby affordable; then, chlorine damage to my nose ruined smoking for me. I wonder how many people will have a store of perfect pu-erh that they will never drink because they have gone senile etc. before they get to it. Anyway, hopefully no fellow teachatters will suffer such a fate.

[jayinhk]

The current trend toward non-blended cakes reminds me of single malt whisky...some people want purity vs the old school blends. Whether this is just a temporary trend or a long-term thing is debatable and whether investing in new Dayi is a good thing is also debatable as some believe the quality is nowhere near what it once was, even at significantly higher prices for new cakes. There's lots up in the air at present. I still don't know squat, so I'm buying what I know I'll drink and not worrying about long term value too much. Some of the new single tree cakes are supposed to have questionable aging potential too, but are great drinkers now (there does indeed to be a trend of foreign pu heads drinking fresh, pleasant-tasting high grade sheng), so letting them age and letting that wonderful aroma and flavor dissipate and ending up with mediocre tea would be a crying shame.

[CWarren]

EDITED

[pedros11]

Probably the main curse on puer is it`s marketing ideas to be the older the better. Of course, old puer can have a special nice feeling, but it`s something essentially different what a sheng gushu might offer. Just like wine, while older ones would develop a calmness and seriousness, they just lose the fruity playfulness younger wines would have. Like a friend mentioning to a quite successful tea-maker how much he likes the old teas, the tea-maker quite frankly told him to look for it somewhere else, they don`t appreciate old puer. Maybe looking to puer just like green teas would be a more healthier relation, like nobody would be surprised, if an excellent longjing or shencha would not taste the same after a year. If it ages well, that just a nice bonus to it, but should not influence it`s face value.

[honza]

the price will drop down more but for less famous tea areas, for garden tea - taidi. But I guess there will never happend big crush of prices on 6FTM area gushu, or some another rare gushu teas, which are mostly still sold out from China to Taiwan etc., where the market is different and customers there can accept high prices, Because very good tea in Yiwu etc., is still so rare and in small quantity, and too many hunters want it...