Puerh article in this month's IMBIBE Magazine

[heatwaves]

Hey everyone,

I was just at my local Borders Bookstore and saw "Imbibe" magazine with an article about Puerh. Perhaps most surprising, the article wasn't half bad! I'm use to writers continually misrepresenting Puerh or oversimplifying it. For the most part, this article was interesting and accurate -- with the lone exception being a recommendation of steeping raw puerh in non-boiling 120-140 degree F water (?). While the article starts off with perspectives from David Lee Hoffman (The 'All In This Tea' documentary guy), it's actually pretty balanced with commentary from many other individuals. It even mentions the Live Journal Puerh Community! Cool Stuff.

[shogun89]

Interesting, especially the 120-140 degrees stuff!!!!

[hop_goblin]

Interesting, especially the 120-140 degrees stuff!!!!

Did you read it from the mag or online..

[shogun89]

Interesting, especially the 120-140 degrees stuff!!!!

Did you read it from the mag or online..

I didnt actually read it, I was just commenting on heatwaves.

[heatwaves]

I read it in the magazine. There doesn't appear to be an online version. If you click on the story online, it gives you some other story about the different varieties of tea.

[devites]

Hey everyone,

I was just at my local Borders Bookstore and saw "Imbibe" magazine with an article about Puerh. Perhaps most surprising, the article wasn't half bad! I'm use to writers continually misrepresenting Puerh or oversimplifying it. For the most part, this article was interesting and accurate -- with the lone exception being a recommendation of steeping raw puerh in non-boiling 120-140 degree F water (?). While the article starts off with perspectives from David Lee Hoffman (The 'All In This Tea' documentary guy), it's actually pretty balanced with commentary from many other individuals. It even mentions the Live Journal Puerh Community! Cool Stuff.

A little rant here; All in this tea was an absolutely terrible movie, it had very little information about tea, the tea buying process, and it looked like it was shot in the 1970s. There was a Q&A afterwards with the people involved in the movie and they knew very little about tea considering they made a movie about it.

Yeah i think puerh is going to be huge soon in the US as you can age it like wine.

[Salsero]

A little rant here; All in this tea was an absolutely terrible movie ...

I tend to agree with you ... but we are all so desperate for tea info, that we tend to praise anything. Good list of specific failings of the movie, BTW.


I also thought that David Lee Hoffman comes off as a complete ***hole.

[Geospearit]

A little rant here; All in this tea was an absolutely terrible movie ...

I tend to agree with you ... but we are all so desperate for tea info, that we tend to praise anything. Good list of specific failings of the movie, BTW.


I also thought that David Lee Hoffman comes off as a complete ***hole.

huh. I found the movie entertaining. It may not be very educational, but it could inspire someone to take the time to educate their self. He does come of as an ahole at times especially when people flock to him and he brushes their tea aside and says "chemical"... and "I want the good stuff" like a tea-crazed zombie. It may be a-holish, but I thought it was funny. At the end when he is giving people tea in Berkeley and he was COMPLETELY tea-drunk and falling out of his chair.

And he's got a cellar full of puerh. And he grows organic. And he used to be a vagabond. And he got his picture taken with the Dalai Lama. Sounds like a cool dude to me.

[silverneedles]

puerh is going to be huge soon in the US

it would be nice, but i doubt it.

[devites]

A little rant here; All in this tea was an absolutely terrible movie ...

I tend to agree with you ... but we are all so desperate for tea info, that we tend to praise anything. Good list of specific failings of the movie, BTW.


I also thought that David Lee Hoffman comes off as a complete ***hole.

I saw them at the Tea Festival in Seattle which was also terrible.

He may be a cool guy, but it is arrogant assholes like him that deter the masses from tea.

[wyardley]

Finally got a copy today. I thought it was mostly a pretty well written article.

For the most part, this article was interesting and accurate -- with the lone exception being a recommendation of steeping raw puerh in non-boiling 120-140 degree F water (?).

I bet that was Roy Fong's recommendation. He has long advocated brewing green sheng pu'er this way. I don't personally brew it this way, but I think you can make a reasonable argument for it, since green sheng is essentially green tea. I use boiling (or slightly cooler) water myself, but my goal in drinking green sheng is usually more to stress it to find out its aging potential than to make it taste good.

I didn't like that the author chose as her last quote (from some guy "Charles Munat", a collecter in Seattle) "You're probably not going to find groups to get together to drink oolong. It's like the difference between wine and grape juice. You wouldn't create a group to taste grape juice.". All respect to Mr. Munat and the "Greater Northwest Pu-erh Council", but to me, that's a very inaccurate generalization. Oolong represents a huge spectrum of tea and a wide variety of tastes, and I think there are certainly oolongs which are more complex than many pu'ers, especially shu pu'er.

I think her suggestion that "masterpiece" vintage pu'ers are priced in the range of $3-5000/cake is a little bit low.

I thought it was interesting that the author didn't delve much into the effects that storage has, and I thought many might disagree with the tip to avoid tea with white mold. I'm also not sure about the suggestion that aged shu is more "delicate" than aged sheng.

[heatwaves]

I agree with all of your observances, particularly the comparison about puerh vs. oolong. However, the world of tea is so large that it easy to understand why fans of one style can't comprehend that other styles also have an equally strong following.

While far from an ideal article about puerh, I was content that they didn't simply write that "puerh is compressed, green tea" like the typically poor pieces I've read.