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.
However, I have to disagree that there is "no such thing" as aged
puerh in the USA.
Hi Mike,
I was simply pointing out the difference between American marketing and how it sells in China. If you look closely you will see that I didn't say there is no such as aged puer in the states. You can get any puer in the states. I was only saying that what is called green puer here is never over a year old. It simply means it is this years pick and isn't aged. Therefore, you can't get green puer over a year old anywhere (by Chinese standards). Older tea that still smells green (and hence is suspect regarding quality) is simply not aging well.
Hope that clears it up
.
I would say more, but i'm going to save the rest to answer the replies (a lot of them) on the other post I made. Check it out. I think you will find it interesting.
Best regards.... Renny
Quote:
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Originally Posted by Mike Petro
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 |