Hi!
As I've seen some sites list their Pu such as 2006, 2007 .... 2016 and 2005 & before. Usually teas made before 2006 are more expensive. Is there a reason for such listing or it's just a habit?
I was searching and found something regarding Pu-erh around 2007, cheap and fake teas started flooding the market and the prices (also quality) went down. If the reason was this then I'd assume the listing would look like 2006 & before and not 2005. Maybe I missed something and that bubble burst occurred earlier.
Another question, should I avoid teas made in 2007? (Because of the uncertainty of quality).
I bought 100g of a 2007 Haiwan Old Comrade 7968 (raw) and I didn't really like it. It was made in June or July. I won't say that it's a bad tea because I don't have enough experience with Pu-erh. It wasn't even expensive (11$ for 100g), maybe my expactations were too high, though I had nice sheng for this price (it was a Xiaguan).
Re: Pu-Erh listing, age
My guess is that the "200X & before" probably just comes down to whether it's worth that vendor creating a separate page (or whatever) for every year. Older teas are more rare, and vendors are likely to have fewer options available, so a particular year may only have one or two teas (or none at all). So it becomes easier just to lump all of the older teas into one bin -- and the 10 year mark is roughly a good spot at which to say "10 years and older."Xeractha wrote:Hi!
As I've seen some sites list their Pu such as 2006, 2007 .... 2016 and 2005 & before. Usually teas made before 2006 are more expensive. Is there a reason for such listing or it's just a habit?
I was searching and found something regarding Pu-erh around 2007, cheap and fake teas started flooding the market and the prices (also quality) went down. If the reason was this then I'd assume the listing would look like 2006 & before and not 2005. Maybe I missed something and that bubble burst occurred earlier.
Another question, should I avoid teas made in 2007? (Because of the uncertainty of quality).
I bought 100g of a 2007 Haiwan Old Comrade 7968 (raw) and I didn't really like it. It was made in June or July. I won't say that it's a bad tea because I don't have enough experience with Pu-erh. It wasn't even expensive (11$ for 100g), maybe my expactations were too high, though I had nice sheng for this price (it was a Xiaguan).
I suppose it could have something to do with the puerh flood and what-not (we were certainly concerned that teas around 2007 were going to be generally less good), but I think the website categorization choice is a separate issue...
Re: Pu-Erh listing, age
I've heard that there was a drop in quality in mass produced puerh teas post 2005. I think some of the big factories were privatised in the early 2000's, but I don't know the exact dates.
Re: Pu-Erh listing, age
It's out of the vendor's habits...
Two things
1) the sort of milieu of quality
2) how old the tea is.
The first is probably more key than the second. There's the Hao era of before 1949, the Grade tea of the 50s, 60s, Qizibing era, Privatization process era, Menghai privatized, etc... For me, the break, say for Menghai teas is from about 1996-2005, with '92-'95 and '06-'07. The era in the fringes has less known good teas, but all of the good Menghai tea of a certain style is between those years. The best gushu (with not always the best processing) is 2003-2009, with interest starting in banzhang/jingmai a couple of years earlier, and a post period through to 2011 when gushu was reasonable in expense. So on and so forth, and everything depends on what tea you want.
the second is simply the aging cycle, of 7, 14, 21, 25-30, and 40+ (and here, we're really talking about specific products and not really age, tho' that's important too). It's not *that* important and as time goes on and higher and higher production tea reaches the milestone, it'll all be undifferentiated. But certain products really have a longer maturing stage than others. Buddy teas, you really sort of would like to wait 25 years + to get a certain really nice aromatic taste, etc, etc.
Two things
1) the sort of milieu of quality
2) how old the tea is.
The first is probably more key than the second. There's the Hao era of before 1949, the Grade tea of the 50s, 60s, Qizibing era, Privatization process era, Menghai privatized, etc... For me, the break, say for Menghai teas is from about 1996-2005, with '92-'95 and '06-'07. The era in the fringes has less known good teas, but all of the good Menghai tea of a certain style is between those years. The best gushu (with not always the best processing) is 2003-2009, with interest starting in banzhang/jingmai a couple of years earlier, and a post period through to 2011 when gushu was reasonable in expense. So on and so forth, and everything depends on what tea you want.
the second is simply the aging cycle, of 7, 14, 21, 25-30, and 40+ (and here, we're really talking about specific products and not really age, tho' that's important too). It's not *that* important and as time goes on and higher and higher production tea reaches the milestone, it'll all be undifferentiated. But certain products really have a longer maturing stage than others. Buddy teas, you really sort of would like to wait 25 years + to get a certain really nice aromatic taste, etc, etc.