Kevo writes:

On Mar 31, 10:19*pm, Lewis Perin wrote:
[...]
I wasn't claiming to be able to predict how a tea will behave when
aged based on how good it is to drink now. *That's the real problem,
and I'm skeptical of what I've read on the subject, as I said earlier.

I can't either, but I know of people who can - 1 told me from looking
at the pu-er disc what 2 expect then, 6 months later, & 5 years later;
the 5th year was last year, & so far she is correct.

Wow. Would you be willing to try to get her to put her
prognostication techniques into words?

At the risk of indirectly asking a woman's age, I wonder if you could
satisfy my curiosity: While five years is impressive, since the big
gains in a Pu'er only happen after, say, twenty years, has she been
able to establish a record of prediction on that scale?

By "balance", admittedly a vague term, I mean that the tea shouldn't
have too much of one attribute without some countervailing quality.
If it's bitter in its principal taste, there should be sweetness too,
perhaps in its aftertaste. *If it's astringent on the tongue, there
should be softness or smoothness somewhere else, maybe in the throat.

I c, understood now. Some of the 7542 cakes, from around the period of
1988-1992, have a bitterness that lingers at the top of the throat
that does not go away. Is this poor quality then? Some say this tiny
bit of bitterness will go away in another 10 years time...

If you think of balance as the position on an axis, I don't think it
needs to be dead center. I actually enjoy a certain amount of
bitterness in tea.

/Lew
---
Lew Perin /
http://www.panix.com/~perin/babelcarp.html