Vintages in Puerh

[TIM]

Reading Puerh labels are confusing.... I am always curious about puerh with the word Vintage on it. Specially new ones like "Premium Vintage 2007" or "Vintage Spring 2009" DY or MH factory.

I know single estates meant in Italian or new world wine = best selected harvest from South exposure or the best sun/wind area in a single estate = Equivalent of a 1st growth or Premium Grand Cru in French wine.

But Vintage 2008 puerh or anything less then 15 yrs old? Really puzzled me.

[TIM]

This is just a guess on my part, but I think vintage in this case could just mean production year.

As in I believe you could have A vintage 2008 wine.

I believe the misconception comes about as people usually don't brag about vintages unless they are quite awhile ago.

In googling the term vintage, though it applies to wine, I'm sure it can be extrapolated to pu.

Vintage for wine is the year in which the grapes were picked for that wine.


so basically Vintage is just the year it was released, or at least picked.

I thought a wine vintage has to do with the climate, harvest quality, weather of that year x 20 different more elements to determine if it is a true vintage or not? 2001 is a vintage, 2005 also a vintage in question, but 2008 or 07? I don't think the wine is aged enough to be label "Vintage".

As far as for puerh, 2001 is a vintage IMO. If we label vintage every year, there will certainly have no more vintages....

[wyardley]

so basically Vintage is just the year it was released, or at least picked.

I thought a wine vintage has to do with the climate, harvest quality, weather of that year x 20 different more elements to determine if it is a true vintage or not? 2001 is a vintage, 2005 also a vintage in question, but 2008 or 07? I don't think the wine is aged enough to be label "Vintage".

Well you can talk about whether a particular year was a "great vintage" (i.e., a particular year might be a great vintage for a particular type of wine), but in my understanding (and I am no wine expert) "vintage XXXX", e.g., "vintage 2008" could be correct and (in my understanding) wouldn't mean that the wine is from a good year or that it's aged, but would just refer to the year of production [edit: and the fact that it's from raw material harvested in a single year].

Wikipedia says:

A vintage wine is one made from grapes that were all, or primarily, grown and harvested in a single specified year. In certain wines, it can denote quality, as in Port wine, where Port houses make and declare vintage Port in their best years. From this tradition, a common, though incorrect, usage applies the term to any wine that is perceived to be particularly old or of a particularly high quality.

So I guess that usage would kind of explain what you're thinking about, Tim.

Now saying "vintage wine" or "vintage pu'er" (without a date) might imply that it's aged.

[tony shlongini]

I think you may be referring to port, where a "vintage" is declared every so often when the stars align and the production is great.

For the rest of the wine world, every year is a vintage. You can buy a 1980 vintage Ch. Petrus (awful) or a 2005 vintage Ch. Latour (not awful).

[JP]

Including the term "vintage" is a marketing strategy. You'll see it applied to all sorts of products in the collectable sections of eBay. No matter the product, declaring it vintage is thought to make it more desirable and rare.

[Dizzwave]

Language is fluid. Like all words, "vintage"'s meaning is constantly changing just by how it's used in popular culture. It comes from the French word vendange which means "grape harvest." But it's come to mean anything that's classic (another bastardized word, hmm, am I getting anywhere with this?), good, revered, old...

But, would you think twice if a bag of pork rinds said "classic recipe" on it? It's no different with tea.. Marketers won't stop short of much anything to make something look more desirable...

(Apologies to lovers of pork rinds.. no offense intended!)

[wyardley]

I still think saying something is "vintage 2008" is different from saying it's "vintage". To me, at least, "vintage 2008" (esp. when 2008 is a very recent year) is simply a slightly pretentious way of saying when the tea was made.

[Dizzwave]

I still think saying something is "vintage 2008" is different from saying it's "vintage". To me, at least, "vintage 2008" (esp. when 2008 is a very recent year) is simply a slightly pretentious way of saying when the tea was made.

Gotcha. Agreed!

[tony shlongini]

I still think saying something is "vintage 2008" is different from saying it's "vintage". To me, at least, "vintage 2008" (esp. when 2008 is a very recent year) is simply a slightly pretentious way of saying when the tea was made.

Agreed, to the extent that I wouldn't refer to my 2009 Toyota as a "vintage" car.

At least with wine, it's fairly easy to master the desirable vintages. For example, Bordeaux:
1980 horrible
1981 good
1982 phenomenal
1983 excellent
1984 terrible
1985 excellent
1986 great
1987 fair
1988 very good
1989 excellent
1990 phenomenal
and so on.

With pu'er, I haven't come across enough information regarding the most desirable harvests by area, and production quality by factory, but I plan on finding out.

[sp1key]

puerh is a bit different since in most cases they are made according to a 'recipe' or 'pin pei' in mandarin eg. 7542, 8613 etc stressing less on vintage.

In chinese, the word vintage isnt being used when describing puerh but just the year of production/release, recipe, producer etc.

If I may give a summary here, unlike wine where vintage, chateau's the key then cellaring conditions;
For puerh, the key is type/quality of the tea cake, storage condition then the year.

[vibrantdragon]

I think that the leaves are different and the year does make a difference. Great tea starts with great leaves. In 2008 many of the trees and leaves were damaged by bad weather early in the year. The tea made from those leaves are different than the tea made from other years. Some years are wet or dry and again that will change the character of the leaves. Even the chemicals in the leaves will be different depending upon the weather for that year.
Natural products have large variations year to year depending upon the locations and weather.

[woozl]

At least with wine, it's fairly easy to master the desirable vintages. For example, Bordeaux:
1980 horrible
1981 good
1982 phenomenal
1983 excellent
1984 terrible
1985 excellent
1986 great
1987 fair
1988 very good
1989 excellent
1990 phenomenal
and so on.

With pu'er, I haven't come across enough information regarding the most desirable harvests by area, and production quality by factory, but I plan on finding out.

Sounds like a fun project,
I would love a rough guide to years+area.
Keep us posted