You mean there is a thieves market where everyone wants to buy aged
pu'rh but can't because of the fraud. Why does it even exist if
everybody knows that. If you aren't shopping with the locals then you
are in the wrong place. I know it is a market and not retail. Price
gouging is the norm but that is just the starting point. I just don't
completely buy the story that the Chinese rip each other off because at
some point the seller needs the buyer and vice versa. I suspect that
the real problem with aged puer is that there is no market just
speculation. If nobody thought a tea worth drinking so many years ago
then only a fool would buy it today at higher prices. I see it in the
cheap periodic refried oolongs presented as a better taste and more
expensive. I'm fortunate to have a low humidity walkout basement that
stays 67 spring,summer,fall,winter. Simply when tea is properly stored
it holds up well in the long run. I haven't seen any that get better
with age. I've got commercial tins of Poo Nih that are at least 30
years old. Yeah I remembered the 20 year old tuo but forgot about the
Cantonese ones till a recent post. If memory serves me right I thought
they tasted like medicine back then and a recent sample the same. It
is just a fact I tend to hoard teas and the very first ones from way
back when are still drinkable. At best the taste doesn't change with
age. If you want the good stuff, buy a recent crop, save your money
and let someone else invest in a lifetime warranty humidity controled
George Foreman rotisserie grill where the only change in taste comes
from the aged buds in your mouth. If you like teas by the kilo then
pu'rh is a good bargain. It is a great way to decorate your house.
Like any compressed teas I'll concede that the exterior protects the
interior but no real change in taste. I have teas that can't be
replaced and have a short eulogy when they're gone but that doesn't
make them expensive. I've got dozens of 200g US Twinings tins before
they downsized to 100g before they closed their Greensboro packing
plant. A while back you could get them for a buck each in the discount
stores if you could find them. I wished the speculators would show up
so I can retire. Pretty girls can sell anything even bad food. I
enjoy your field reports.

Jim

Mydnight wrote:
> >#3 getting an itchy thing in the back of my soft palette, kind of like when
> >you eat cheap chocolate
>
> Excellent description, btw.
>
> I have noticed that when pu'er is stored improperly or it has been wet
> to make it look older, I will get this scratchy feeling in the back of
> my throat instead of the smooth feeling. From my understanding, it was
> the style to use wet storage in the past, but people began to realize
> how much damage it was doing to the original leaf so people realized
> that dry storage is better. Anybody else notice the scratchy feeling
> besides me in relating to wet vs. dry storage techniques?
>
> What I mean by "wet" is sometimes the bosses will use a spray bottle
> and wet down the tea and let it dry and then repeat...after doing this
> a few times, the tea will look older and taste a bit aged. When buying
> bing or tuo, look in the hole to see if the tea appears to be a little
> "muddy," for lack of a better explanation, and there's a pretty good
> chance it's been wet. The bosses will sell these wet teas for much
> higher than the dry teas and try to pass them off as being "5-20"
> years.
>
> I also noticed that you get the "Se" (bitter sort of acidy aftertaste)
> much quicker when drinking wet tea. I think the vendors noticed that
> you can get a decently smooth brew for the first 3 or 4 steeps but
> after that it gets increasingly bad...if you're ever in a shop and a
> vendor refuses to extend the brewing for no reason...it's wet!
>
> As an aside, I hung out in Fangcun Tea Market all day today and came
> across a bunch of horrid shops. These young (but pretty) girls were
> peddling their pu'er so badly; "this tea is 20 years old"..."it costs
> 800 yuan"...etc.etc. I wouldn't worry about the American business guys
> at all when it came to the rating of tea, I doubt the Chinese business
> dudes would even be honest enough to give them anything more than 3rd
> grade tea anyway, but that's just my opinion.
>
> >"Bo Nay",
>
> And...I think this one may be Fujian dialect, but correct me if I'm
> wrong; I know Po Lay is Cantonese. The dude I dealt with today was
> from Fujian and I think I heard him say this a few times when bantering
> with his wife about tea in their local dialect.
>
> Mydnight from the frontlines, signing off...