Sheng Puer, plantations, and the classics

[cutesy93]

Recently I was talking with some puer friends about plantation tea that is taken from small, terraced bushes, and what value it has when making good, raw puer. I figured this would be as good a place as any to see what some knowledgeable people knew. Is there any good plantation tea around now? Any brands that make plantation tea and make it really well?

A couple of specific questions:

1) Classic teas, like teas from Zhongcha or Dayi from the 70's-90's, were they picked from plantation bushes? From trees? Or from "old arbor", or a mixture of the above? Does anybody know roughly what proportions for a higher quality blend, like 7542?

2) If the answer above is, yes, some plantation tea, then, shouldn't consumers be more focused on buying a good blend, rather than old arbor trees or wild trees, etc? If some of the older blends, which are now quite delicious after some aging, are in fact made from plantation tea as well.

[grasshopper]

Say hey, Cutesy93--

In these matters there are only opinions (too often stated as if they were facts), and here is mine. I love a complex aged sheng that displays beautiful intersteep evolution. Many of the great nick-named teas are factory teas #7542 or #7532 from the seventies and eighties. Blends can produce brilliant complex aged sheng.

By the same token, old-tree, single-origin pu'er can be absolutely delicious as nascent and adolescent pu'er, and it seems a shame to blend tea of such monolithic perfection. I have no 40yo single-origin pu'er. In fact, I have no 30yo or 20yo single-origin, one-mountain pu'er in my collection. I have many adolescent single-origin pieces that I hope will age well. Time will tell.

In China I met some collectors who own truly old home-made/small factory cakes (70yo+) that are single-mountain pieces. Most of those collectors do not speak English, and few of them surf chat rooms and discussion groups. I wish I had the contents of their brains in my addled brain.

A collection should not reflect just one genre. See?--That's stated as if it is a fact. It's just my opinion. Every year, stock up on #7542, #7532, and single-origin cakes that display a powerful but delicious and broad flavor-band. Store them in a special room at 72F and 74% rH. Think in terms of decades, not months.

If you can hang onto your collection through the vicissitudes of life (and that's darned difficult!), then when you are very, very old you will know what kind of young pu'er to buy for long-term aging. That's the big irony. :-)

Multitudes will disagree with everything I've written here.

Best regards,
~grasshopper

[cutesy93]

I think most of what you wrote is correct.

The questions that is on my mind is, should people really be as concerned as they are with single origin teas from famous regions? It seems to me that a lot of the best aged puer was plantation tea and mixed.

Maybe people should be buying more $10 cakes and less $80 cakes?

[shah8]

Well, first of all... Feel free to buy $10 cakes and age if you like. Nobody's stopping you. I do think that if you try to drink $10/400g tea, you will probably not like the result, long term.

Next, there has, from the beginning of the deep interest in sheng puerh in the US (circa 2005-6), people have said the exact same thing as you are suggesting. I might suggest that there is a well of experience in the broad online community.

Going on, much of the tea that are so expensive now, were not especially cheap according to chinese wages. A Red Mark when it was new 50-60 years ago, was very much a luxury purchase for chinese households. Tea made from the Kunming and Menghai factories were not the proverbial $10. Xiaguan, Fengqing, etc, etc, made a great deal of dirt cheap tuos, because teas from outside Banna were worth very little, and mostly made into green and black teas.

Most non-standard special grade puerh made from before the mid-90s had absolutely no marketing, and only insider hobbyists know about them (and what they're made from) and have them. And they'd cost waaaaaaaaaaay more than comparable factory tea, if by some miracle, you find out about some special tea.

Finally, when we are talking about 80's tea, or older, what we are generally talking about, beyond the tea's original quality, is the quality of storage. An $80 tea is more or less ready to drink in 7-15 years (if you have a good one, of course). A $10 tea, provided that it ages at all, will only be potable with lots of humidity and lots of time, 15+ years for a tea that's less interesting anyways. Time is money, and it doesn't take all *that* many bings before you have a lifetime's worth of tea. Of course, these days, an $80/400g tea isn't necessarily all that great! You still have to shop and sample, and buy a bing, see if you like it as you drink it up, and buy a tong if you still like it when you finish the bing.

[Doc4]

Multitudes will disagree with everything I've written here.

No they won't.

Well, first of all... Feel free to buy $10 cakes and age if you like. Nobody's stopping you. I do think that if you try to drink $10/400g tea, you will probably not like the result, long term.

This reminds me a lot of wine. Most of it, including almost all the inexpensive stuff, isn't capable of cellaring for any period of time. Not that there's anything wrong with that ... a nice Beaujolais is very enjoyable. The ability to not just withstand a few decades of cellaring but also to flourish, develop and improve over that time is possessed by only a small percentage of wines made ... mostly the expensive ones.

Funny how that works.

I know a lot more about wine than pu-er ... and not all that much about wine, when push comes to shove ... but a couple decades in your basement isn't going to turn a sow's ear into a silk purse ... otherwise, those sow's ears would cost a lot more.

[grasshopper]

I think most of what you wrote is correct.

The questions that is on my mind is, should people really be as concerned as they are with single origin teas from famous regions? It seems to me that a lot of the best aged puer was plantation tea and mixed.

Maybe people should be buying more $10 cakes and less $80 cakes?

Hi, cutesy93--

Regarding aged belnds, you're right. A quick look at the offerings in Sunsing's expensive collection bears that out.

A blend can--because it is a blend--impart a very nice complexity. The better the teas in the blend, one would guess, the better the blend--and the better the results in thirty or forty years. I like complex aged shengs. But as regards classic blended beengs for $10.00, you have me at a disadvantage. Where can I find 2012 MH #7542 and #7532 for ten bucks? I'd love to have a link to a reputable vendor offering those cakes. When you refer to classic blends, what do you mean specifically?

Best regards,
~grasshopper

[cutesy93]

I appreciate the responses, and maybe my tone was a bit off! I did not by any means mean that there is no merit to more expensive teas, what I meant was that some of the older classics were made from plantation tea, and turned out pretty well. I personally buy cakes made with higher grades, because I suspect the same as most of you. Similar to wines, like Doc pointed out, it needs to be able to tolerate cellaring. A lot of the plantation puer is far to weak to take aging, i think. The flavors will be dead in 10 years.

I like complex aged shengs. But as regards classic blended beengs for $10.00, you have me at a disadvantage. Where can I find 2012 MH #7542 and #7532 for ten bucks? I'd love to have a link to a reputable vendor offering those cakes. When you refer to classic blends, what do you mean specifically?

I live in Asia, so 7542 costs me about $15 (USD) per cake. 8553 costs less, ditto for 7572 (if you are into shou). If you are buying in the west, it is unlikely to get prices like that, not sure what you usually pay for 7542? Personally, I buy a few cakes of those blends to age, but I don't have a lot of confidence in them or their ability to age. A lot of the bigger operations have lost their way, Zhongcha being the most disastrous. Dayi and Xiaguan are alright, but for the price, there is better tea to be had.

For higher quality blends, I am not even sure what gets to the west? The good quality blends I buy are usually three times the price of 7542, mainly because the base cost of materials is so high in the last few years. A good gu shu blend is not cheap.