Renny wrote:

> No offense, but there is no such thing as a green puer more than a year
> old except in American marketing. Here, green puer simply means it was
> picked this year. Some older puer simply smells green, which is an
> indication of poor (no pun intended) quality. Green puer here is
> purchased for investment purposes. If its a good quality puer it will
> no longer smell green, the fermentation and/or aging will have improved
> it, and it will be much more valuable like good wine. Vendors often run
> out of aged stock and find ways to market "green" puer that range from
> truthful investment selling to outright fraud. Beware. Its easy to
> get burned here, let alone the states. I know because I make my living
> buying and selling tea in China. Moved here from America to marry a
> Cantonese girl and decided to stay.
>
> I made a few more comments on this in my response today to Gills'
> thread about a good teapot for puer if you want to check it out. I
> give away green investment puer with purchases (its that cheap here) or
> give it away for shipping and a five dollar handling fee so don't spend
> an arm and a leg on it until you have educated yourself a little more.
> Good luck. I hope you find my comments useful. I'm pretty tired of
> seeing Americans get ripped off on this stuff.
>
>
> --
> Renny

Renny, I totally agree that there is a tremendous amount of deception
in the Western market. I have seen a lot of alleged 20 year old cakes
offered for sale that were no more than a few years old at most, I have
cooked pu-erh offered up as old aged raw pu-erh, and very frequently
pu-erhs offered here are less than half of their alleged age. I started
my website as a direct result of the misinformation and outright
deception that I found in the marketplace here. I, and most others who
have bought pu-erh in this country, have been ripped off numerous
times. Yes, it is also true that the price of Pu-erh in China is often
a mere few dollars per kg, and by the time it gets here it is marked up
as much as a thousand percent or more. That's why I buy most of my
pu-erh directly from China.

However, I have to disagree that there is "no such thing" as aged
puerh in the USA. I do run across it regularly now. Vendors such as
Teahub, Jingteashop, Teaspring, Genertation Tea, and most recently
MITea, do indeed offer authentic aged pu-erh, albeit at a heavy price.

Mike
http://www.pu-erh.net