Kunming storage has never been my preferred storage. In the scheme of pu’erh drinkers I’ve always been friendlier towards the danker side of storage.. As a result there are very few teas I own that have actually undergone a significant amount of Kunming storage. I wanted to revisit my long standing bias so I emailed the west’s most well known purveyor of Kunming stored teas, Scott (Yunnan Sourcing) for his recommendations.
Goals
Determine my current opinions of Kunming storage and if I need to revise my previous storage preference. While I don’t own cakes of any of these teas I have tried five of the seven before.
See how it compares with western storage, specifically my own. One reason I own so little Kunming is that I suspect my storage operates similarly and given my storage preferences it would take a very long time for a Kunming + Seattle combination to age.
Tied with 2. But in the XG Masochist report I used a multiplier to determine relative biological age based off of where it was stored. Seattle was valued as half of Taiwan/Guangdong. The third goal is to evaluate and revise this.
Scott’s recommendations leaned northern. A secondary goal is to see if my opinions on northern tea, which I tend to avoid, have changed now that they’ve gotten older.
Notes
2012 YS Nanpozhai
This starts out quite tasty, but very green tasting. Honey, acorn, nuts. It is also sturdy and oily. The bitterness does build and starts to take over the session. Some of it resolves nicely into a sweet aftertaste, while other parts linger. It is all still quite young tasting. I have had the 2013 before, and comparatively this is less floral but the notes line up generally, with just the very top notes being chopped off. There’s clearly good material here but the slower storage prevents makes it harder to tell what semi-aged profile it will eventually have.
2012 YS Xin Banzhang
Doesn’t start out too punchy, but steadily builds up steam. Acorn nuts, sugarcane. Nice strength and protracted mouthfeel. Bitterness crescendos in the middle steeps but does properly fade. It is thick, oily. Not changed or mellowed enough for my tastes but seems intact, without bitterness taking over. The notes sort of line up with those from 11 years back. It does not have a fruity sort of sweetness so I think it has aged a little.
2012 HLH 16th Anniversary
Seems less aged than even the YS Xin Banzhang. It starts out with quite a bit of activity before getting fairly bitter. The bitterness is rewarded with a protracted mouthfeel and some returning sweetness. It does have a nice oiliness to it and some mouthcooling that indicates quality material. The bitterness only partly resolves in this case, and it does tend to linger and builds up a bit as the session goes on in a way I don’t really enjoy. A subsequent session makes this pretty obvious.
2011 YS Mushu
This has more aged notes than the Nanpo and seems to have moved along further and better, mostly in the sense that it has darkened and deepened. Leather, darker, fruits, more of a wood base. Good oiliness, mouthcool. Some honey, while also having a sturdy bitterness. Here I can see the semi-aged profile developing. Not bad.
2005 HLH Lincang Impression
This is very green for something that is 20 years old. BBQ smoke, burly, honey, woody. Also oily, still quite green. Taste old school in a nice way. Tastes younger than alternate storage, but decent density and strength. The bitterness is there but not overwhelming and it resolves mostly.
2002 Tailian International
Oily, smoky, some density but also narrow. Don’t love the bitterness that doesn’t really resolve veryquickly. Does have good strength and some density, but it is thinner than I tend to prefer and while there’s some mouthcoating it’s kind of moderate. I had a more positive impression of this tea previously, perhaps because I’d had shah’s back in 2018 (his southern US storage had aged the tea a bit). The storage here is slower and to me results in a less pleasing tea.
2000 Bulang Mushroom
Nice old school pu’erh. Reminds me of some of the mid 2000s Nanqiao Bulang-centric products. This is aging properly and perhaps would be around the 8-10 year mark of some moderate Taiwan or southern Chinese storage. Dense, oily, less sweetness. Old school pu’erh in a good way. Still too green for me to really love, but it is heading in a decent direction. Just slowly.
Do I Enjoy These Teas?
A few of them, but they’re also kind of tiring and not something I’d reach for. I think this sort of storage may actually be decent for some of the more delicate Taiwan boutiques or Yiwus, teas I did not try in this report. I think about teas like the 2010 Xiangming TF Manzhuan which are similarly dry stored and are aged enough to at least somewhat enjoy.
Kunming Storage
This drink-through has not really changed my prior opinions. I still do not love Kunming storage and do not think I will be seeking it out. It has however been interesting to drink them with more experience and through a slightly different lens. The teas I’d tried before definitely resemble what they were about a decade ago. None have really thinned out, and many are still impressively oily and thick. I also suspect my storage may be advancing the tea a little faster than some of the teas in this report. Furthermore, I also think the multiplier I applied in the Xiaguan report of 2 (my storage ages teas at approximately half the rate of GD/TW/MY) was set too low. Now I’d estimate it around perhaps a third of the speed of those hotter locations. So a 21 year old tea stored in Seattle, is the very rough equivalent to 7 years in Guangdong. This is obviously a simplified way of looking at it, as the actual result is not the same but I find it a useful rubric to look at smoothness and drinkability. I would probably set the multiplier similar for Kunming storage.
Perhaps my palate has been shaped too much by the tea I drink, but think I will stick to my Xishuangbanna heavy diet of pu’erh.
A good tea friend who has gotten a lot of reps in with boutique pu’erh brands recently discovered a tea brand he really enjoyed called… Xiaguan. While he had of course drank a handful of crane teas, he hadn’t dove in enough to realize there were some teas that really hit the spot. This all despite Xiaguan being perfectly accessible, well known and much cheaper than the teas he’d been buying… He had somehow missed his natural affinity to one of the largest brands around..
We are All Shaped by Circumstance
Every drinker is molded by which teas/vendors we stumble upon initially. Someone who hears about pu’erh on TikTok from Jesse’s Teahouse will have a different trajectory than someone who discovered tea on reddit and buys from White2Tea or Yunnan Sourcing. People also tend to follow trends according to what teas they observe other people are buying and discussing. When I started drinking pu’erh, young pu’erh from labels such as YS, W2T, EoT, and TU were getting the bulk of bandwidth and conversation. Places like teachat, steepster, and instagram were buzzing with the new releases of the year. It was not uncommon to run into drinkers who bought a single cake of each their favorite western pu’erh vendor’s lines. Pu’erh with any significant degree of aging was the distinct minority of teas being offered by the handful of vendors that actually sold it. The Taiwanese boutiques that had been sold 5+ years before through Houde and Origin Tea, were mostly unavailable.
When YQH started being offered by Emmett in 2015, the western pu’erh audience (myself included) was starved for semi-aged boutique pu’erh. With virtually no competition, it is easy to see why it was so popular. Things would’ve been different depending on the year.. If I had gotten into tea in 2006, I would’ve likely been amongst the generation of drinkers eagerly awaiting Houde drops of factory and Taiwan boutiques. Or in 2025, perhaps I would be mining the discord and buying from places like TWL or LP. But in 2015 other than Houde scraps, YQH was by far the easiest to access Taiwanese boutique with teas of age.
One problem with having limited points of exposure with just one vendor or producers is they tend to have house characteristics and you are subject to their preferences. In 2015, during the western mini-YQH boom your alternates were mostly not that similar (factory, young western boutiques) or difficult to access (travel to Taipei and buy Wistaria). Probably due to a lack of comparison points, I anchored my own preferences towards the smooth YQH style of tea, and discounted other brands with stronger taste and perhaps more traditional processing. While I still enjoy YQH pu’erhs regularly, the ones I’ve bought are mostly good price performers rather than my absolute favorite boutique brand. I don’t regard YQH and myself as a total mismatch, but the amount I bought does not match up with my own appreciation of the tea.
Match Quality: The Importance of Trying Lots & Matching With The Right Pu’erh
David Epstein uses the term match quality to describe the fit between the work someone does and their abilities. I think this can apply to tea as well in terms of one’s own preferences. One piece of advice I give to new drinkers is to get reps in with the major categories of pu’erh. I’ve divided this into five categories that are quite different from one another.
It is important to dive in with good intentions and purpose. Choosing good examples is important. You shouldn’t judge HK traditionally stored tea from sketchy amazon pu’erh and you also shouldn’t judge boutique pu’erh off of the cheapest northern noutique cake available either. Do some basic reading on good examples. Try to like the tea! If you approach a tea in bad faith, you are not giving the tea a fair shake. If someone has in the back of their mind that traditionally stored tea is going to give them cancer that will impact the actual sensorial experience of the tea. Each of these five categories isn’t equally easy to find either. Good examples of traditionally stored tea was very difficult to find online until Yee On started selling and even now we have to contend with tariffs.
There is a very wide variety of pu’erh and it is important to match with the types you will enjoy the most. Your tastes will change and you’re not married to that same tea type forever but it can help to give you a strong foundation to start from. That foundation is intended as an entrypoint and springboard to start and explore more. One logical second step is to subdivide the categories you like even further. As my friend and Xiaguan shows, there’s a huge variety of pu’erh even within those categories. Those would technically fall into the semi-aged factory hot + humid category, and within this very massive group, you have prolific factories like Dayi, Xiaguan, Mengku and a variety of accompanying storages. It is an understatement to say there is a ton of variations within each group.
If you asked me to project my drinking % in 2012, I would’ve been wildly off, likely estimating a high amount of oolong. If you had asked me in 2015, I probably would’ve still overestimated oolong but I probably would’ve also overestimated my young raw consumption. Only by 2017 would I have a reasonable estimate of drinking habits now in 2025. Until your tastes are settled it’s hard to answer, but you should not overbuy too early assuming how your tastes will end up.
Questions you’ll want to answer:
Of the major categories of pu’erh what do you like? Does it pass the speed test? Subcategorize the categories you like and ask these questions again. How much do you want to drink factory pu’erh? Boutique? Which brands?
My Own Tea Diet
At one point I think my pu’erh stash was close to 80% boutique pu’erh and my drinking followed accordingly. Fast forward to the present, I’d say at least half of the pu’erh I drink is factory pu’erh. So what happened? I think I’ve slowly moved towards what I’d say is my ideal match in terms of type of pu’erh.
I’m amongst the most exposed western drinkers to what is available and have always sampled widely. Still other distractions and a lack of availability prevented me from fully exploring factory teas to the extent that I actually enjoy them. The boutique craze (both young and older) of the mid 2010s also messed with me enough that I overvalued a soft, smooth profile to a fault. The factory teas were rougher and it was frankly hard to find satisfying examples.
With Xiaguan, there is quite a lot of workmanlike tea that isn’t going to appeal to everyone so picking the right examples is important. Only after sorting through a ton with some help from people like Toby, do I have a few Xiaguan teas that I’d actually drink regularly. There’s also an advantage towards being a late comer, as you can take advantage of the knowledge and channels opened up by those who came before you. Similar to Xiaguan, Dayi has become increasingly easy to buy. At one point, they had non authorized taobao retailers like MX take down all their listings, making finding well stored, sufficiently Dayi difficult to find. The higher production years in the mid 2000s have also gotten older and have become more and more drinkable.. Contrary to the belief that pu’erh will always go up, Dayi prices have also gone down quite a bit in the last few years so it’s a great time to buy Menghai Tea Factory, tariffs be damned.
Try lots of tea and don’t assume you know exactly where your tastes are going to end up. Boutiques are often the most expensive teas in certain years but they’re not necessarily going to be everyone’s ultimate endgame.. Some people are naturally more inclined towards factory teas just as some people like HK Trad and others like Kunming storage. I thought I’d be a nearly exclusive boutique drinker at one point, but I’m a lot closer to 50/50 these days. Keep an open mind and don’t get tunnel vision.
The pu’erh scene has dramatically changed over the 11 years since I started my pu’erh journey (documented with the Yiwu Pu’erh Report and a flurry of Yunnan Sourcing and White2Tea teas). Unlike say Xiaguan I’ve always liked Yiwu teas and they remain a substantial chunk of tea I consume. The availability of Yiwu tea has changed and fluctuated since that time period. In 2014, the TW boutiques previously sold by Houde in the mid 2000s were not easily acquirable so the bulk of teas were youngish pu’erh under western vendor’s own labels. In 2015 I did a semi-aged Yiwu report filtering out most of the western boutiques, which had a particularly unimpressive roster of teas that were available at the time. Later that year, Emmett started doing group buys for Yangqing Hao which would eventually cascade into a variety of availability for a handful of Taiwanese boutiques that continues til today. Flash forward a decade and we have quite a few boutique Yiwus with varying degrees of age and a robust selection of $/g+ Six Famous Mountains Teas. Some of these are from western labels like YS and W2T that were still young in 2014, while others are from Taiwan and mainland producers. So in the spirit of my original tea of the month reports, I ordered a bunch of samples and called upon the teas already in my stash.
My Own Evolution As A Drinker & Yangqing Hao
One of the first brands that I really connected with was Yangqing Hao. They were originally introduced to me via Origin Tea, who sold the Zhencang Chawang, Qizhong, and Jincha. I was only just getting into pu’erh towards the end of Origin’s existence and bought a 50 gram sample of the Jincha as Origin was shutting down. Meanwhile things like the Qizhong were getting more than solid reviews and recommendations from places like TwoDog (W2T). This small 50 gram purchase ended with me (over)buying quite a bit of YQH, a result of a starving semi-aged market as well as appealing bulk prices. In the end this was not a significant mistake, as I can easily sell these at a profit. But I think the sudden availability of multiple YQH teas in a relatively short amount of time ended with my palate being overindexed on a certain type of soft, smooth, and gentler pu’erh. I liked their storage (still do), liked Yiwu (still do) and became acclimated with the sort of Yiwu tea they were making in the mid 2000s and most importantly leaned too heavily towards this combinatino as a marker of quality. I think this can be chalked up to my inexperience and the lack of other reference points (competing boutiques, MHTF Yiwus) that were available at the time. XZH started to become more available a little later, but it was very unclear at the time if the Taiwan boutique pipeline would close up and shut down at any moment. Instead the opposite happened (YQH/XZH are still very much around) and other brands like CYH, BYH, and DTH (HK Boutique) would become available around 2017/2018, two years after YQH, largely thanks to TWL.
One example of my over-Yanged palette is when I tried Dragon Tea House for the first time in 2017. The taste was very different from my benchmarks of YQH teas and I found their tea challenging to evaluate and appreciate.
Will These Age? & Windows & Single Origin
This is one of the more important thing I’m looking out for in this drink through. My overall opinion on boutiques aging well long-term has trended down throughout the years. Unlike say a very strong, densely packed factory tea, a lot of Yiwu tea has a less obvious aging trajectory. Some of this is that boutique processing can be tweaked to create approachable young pu’erh (allowing the leaves to oxidize, less rolling). It is also partly related to the terroir of Yiwu which tends to produce on average less aggressive teas than western Xishuangbanna. Even though these are more drinkable than young factory tea, I still prefer these teas with some degree of age. It is nice and a very helpful data point that we can drink many examples with more age than 10 years back.
Another way to think about aging is in windows. Thanks to Seo on Discord this sort of thinking has started to become more prominent. The window concept is straightforward, a tea will hit a peak at some point and should be consumed within a window of time. At a certain point, the tea will start to thin out, potentially losing strength and become less interesting. Due to my slow western storage, there’s not a ton of teas that have really thinned out on me. And I may indeed be the last person to know, so the samples of more aged teas from others might offer valuable hints.
A second concern is the materials that are used and how blended they are. Yiwu products sold are dominated by boutiques. These boutique outfits have frequently veered into more specific villages and batches, resulting in smaller and smaller runs with less blended materials. Since I am not interested in consuming pu’erh when it’s young, I am most curious about how well these are aging. A concern is that these can age in particularly uninteresting ways despite having good material.
Storage Match
I think unlike Xiaguan where you want a certain degree of humidity, it is less necessary and in many cases preferred for these teas to have had drier storage. The powerful blunt instrument of HK traditional storage would not be my first choice for most of these teas.
How these teas are stored will also impact their drinking window and when they could be termed as ready. While I still prefer these teas with a bit more aging from a hot and humid place (I like darker teas) I think if the tea is good enough, it can still be fairly drinkable given enough time. One good example is the 2010 XMTF Manzhuan, a tea that has been solidly dry stored and is very drinkable now
Goals
Stash check. Having a new family member has been a soft reset on a lot of things, my tea hobby included. Unlike many of the Xiaguan teas pulled out of deep storage I do drink these regularly but there are some that have fallen out of favor. There are also others that are now old enough to try.
Establish an average tea (VOATO, Value of Average Tea Owned) to benchmark against. As stated in my reflections I’ve previously overindexed on a YQH profile, so I want to have additional measuring sticks to compare teas.
Crank out my thoughts on a ton of teas in a helpful way for myself and hopefully for a few others. Like the XG Masochists Report you are getting more than a year’s videos worth of thoughts in one report. There are over 100 (!!) teas listed in this report.
Ratings/Tiers
I did not want too much mental gymnastics in grading the tea, so I am rating purely on my own appreciation of the tea at the moment I drank it. Some folks (Rex) suggested I switch to a tier system and I do think that makes sense. While I don’t wish to be memed, I do find rating to be an effective way of capturing my own thoughts at the time of drinking. So with the risk of making a fool of myself, I will include them. They are purely a reflection of how I enjoy the tea at this moment and not of a tea’s potential.
Chenyuan Hao
Chenyuan Hao is one of the most famous of the Taiwanese boutiques and has made quite a lot of tea in the last 25 years. While they’ve never been my favorite boutique, I’ve generally enjoyed their older productions. They do not make up a very large part of my collection but the few I do own have some undeniable qualities. They also have a number of teas that have gone in and out of availability. Unlike a YQH or XZH, you can also find Malaysian and Taiwanese stored CYH which adds another layer to explore.
2020 CYH Mansong (A)
I fully expected to be disappointed by this but it is actually a very pleasant drink, albeit nothing I’d buy (that price!). The taste profile is familiar and not unusual (sugarcane, florals, fruit, light bitterness). The broth isn’t super thick but the tea’s activity in the first five or six steeps is very enjoyable. It thickens up in the throat and has a great deal of sweetness in the back of the mouth and the throat. Pushed it has a mild bitterness. Feel-wise it also left me feeling great. Doesn’t last forever, not totally sure how this will age, it’s very expensive but it is a very enjoyable tea.
I recently had a much cheaper “Mansong” from a different boutique and it was a pale imitation. It takes quite a bit for a young tea to grip me, but this one did.
2016 CYH Yiwu Calligraphy (B)
Had this sent in from Tuna. Thank you!
TW Natural storage. This is a hard one to rate. It is quite tasty and easy to drink now but IMO does not have a ton of strength to develop beyond where the storage has moved it. Very sweet, woody, and herbal. Decently thick. It has clearly seen some temperature/humidity, but is reasonably clean for my taste.
2013 CYH Gedeng (C)
From Emilio, Taiwan stored. I’ve had good sessions with this and some worst ones. Unfortunately when I did this report it wasn’t satisfying. Herbal, wood, dates. A bit thinner and more bitter. Curiously not too sweet. To me this one lacks the depth of the better CYH offerings.
2013 CYH Youle (B/C)
Thanks to tea related putrefaction for sending in the Cang series. A similar profile to their older Mansa. Dark fruit sweetness, raisins. I think overall its decent, but basically has less depth and penetration than the 2003 CYH Youle.
2010 CYH Yibang (B)
Fruity. Nice protracted mouthcoating and texture. Overall this is much preferred over my encounter with the 2013 Cangle series. For a somewhat inexpensive 6FM tea this is sturdy and decent. Pretty easily the favorite of what I’ve tried from the Cang series.
2007 CYH Mansa (B)
From LP, Taiwan stored. This is an enjoyable Yiwuish tea. Sweet hay, raisins, a nice aftertaste. It isn’t super strong or thick, but overall pleasing. This would be a good buy for a daily drinking Yiwu if it pops up again. Not too heavy but will get bitter when pushed.
2007 CYH Yiwu Zhengshan (B)
From LP, Malaysian stored.
Has that nice thick spicy Malaysian stored feel. In the end, this is a bit simple for my taste and I wish that it was blended more, but it is undeniably nice. Big thick, wood, incense, with some nice sugarcane sweetness.
2007 CYH Yiwu Ziwang (A/B)
MY stored and been in Seattle for like 8 years. Most of the time this is a really nice Yiwu tea. It is thick, sweet, resinous, satisfying, with great depth. The tea is firmly semi-aged still maintaining some more youthful characteristics. Pushed it still has a fairly healthy amount of bitterness.
I’d heard this has some hong-ish characteristics, which did not show up in most of my sessions with it and I was ready to write that off. However, on a few more recent sessions those hongcha aspects really showed up and dominated the session, both in terms of texture and its sweetness. It was very nice hongcha, but difficult to overlook. I will keep sessioning this tea to see how it does but I’ve had to downgrade my rating a couple grades as a result.
2005 CYH Shanzhong Chuanqi (A)
A six famous mountain blend. Had this four or five times within the past couple months. It can really vary depending on what parts of the blend you get.. Some sessions present a lot more like an Yiwu tea, with that sweet throat aftertaste while others have a bit more fruit and body. It is almost always enjoyable, sometimes more than others but I do wish it produced a more consistent experience.
Not super thick, but thick enough. Good strength and backbone to this tea. More fruit and less throatfeel than a conventional Yiwu. Despite being a bit less sweet in the throat the tea has decent depth and there’s sweetness that lingers in a nice way. Changes quite a bit throughout the session. I would guess the material is a fair bit worst than the Dashu, but the blending helps make it a bit more engaging.
2003 CYH Dashu aka 2003 CYH Gushu (A)
MY stored. I have gone up and down on this tea a bit. It is clearly very good quality material but for my tastes a bit simple. Thick, oily, smooth, strong aftertaste, with good depth. It has some nice body feel, that feels generally relaxing and downwards. Tastewise, menthol, wood, and lots of sweetness. On the downside I think I prefer something like the SZCQ which offers significantly more dynamism at the expense of better material. To me, this is ready to drink and while I don’t think it’s going to thin out soon I don’t see a huge point in aging it for another decade.
2003 CYH Yiwu (B)
A very agreeable Yiwu production. The storage is a little muddier than the Malaysian storage of the Dashu but overall good enough. Soft, silky texture. Has a nice mouthcoat. It is overall thinner, but a bit more layered than the Dashu. Pretty sure this is expensive, but as a tea this is a very easygoing one that I would not mind having often if it were cheap enough.
2003 CYH Mansa (A/B)
Darker, fruity, sweet tastes. It is a bit narrower than the Yiwu and a bit more cleanly stored. It leans towards woods and muscatel/plum notes. I am a fan of these darker Mengla County profiles and this one hits the spot provided expectations aren’t sky high.
2003 CYH Manzhuan (A)
I like this a touch more than the other 2003 CYH mountains. A bit brighter but also less active than other Manzhuans I’ve had from the same era. It has a pleasing oily, raisin-like sweetness. A calming profile that goes down very easy. There’s a pleasant mouthcoating sweetness. Like a few other of these, there’s not a huge amount of bite. Although the taste profile itself is a bit light and subtle it reaches quite deep and warms me in the core. I like this a good deal, but I do think it suffers from comparison with other teas that are out in the surrounding years. To me this does not match the expansive oilinessmof the 2004 BYH product, which is a profile I tend to prefer. Still I would not begrudge anyone that picks this tea.
2003 CYH Youle (B)
This is a good tea but also my least favorite of the 2003 CYH I’ve tried. This has a sturdy and decent profile but lacks a bit more of the depth from the other 6 famous mountains focused teas CYH made. Tastewise it is more upfront, with acidic apple, wood, and herbal flavor note. Nice mouthfeel. More or less ready to drink as there’s not much bitterness or astringency when pushed. It is interesting that Chen elected to make the SZCQ blend a few years later. This is a nice enough tea, but I think I might prefer it blended.
2003 CYH TQH (S)
My favorite of the 2003s that are more available. This feels like a good combination of a more traditional profile, with a more rustic profile heavier on wood and resin, with some fruit in the background. Wood, fruit, good salivation. The depth of the tea stands out especially when put into contrast with the Youle consumed the previous day. The longevity isn’t the highest, but I’ll almost always take 10 steeps of quality than 20 steeps of less quality.
Having compared with others who aren’t as big of fans I still think quite highly of this tea, although the flavors are in general not as surface level appealing. I also think this has a decent amount of room to continue aging. Unfortunately did not have access to the 2004 SPH reproduction.
2003 CYH Yiwu Yesheng (S)
Perhaps my favorite of the report? Throat balling almost immediately off the bat. A bit light up front but has loads of depth and downward feeling. Strong, resinous profile. Protracted mouthcoat. A very strong, impactful Yiwu tea. Interestingly the less blended nature of the tea does not bother me as much as other ones perhaps due to the sheer impact of it. Seems like it has the fuel to age as well. Thanks to Peter for allowing me to acquire some.
Yangqing Hao
Summary of my current views on YQH.
YQH is not my favorite Taiwanese boutique.
I still enjoy drinking YQH teas.
For the price I paid for YQH, they’re my best cost performing boutique and my most consumed.
These prices are no longer available.
Their top teas sold in the 2004-2006 range (Dingji Yesheng, Teji, etc.) have flaws and nits to pick and are not really on the same level of the top teas from other Taiwanese makers (CYH Repros, BYH MZ/Yiwu).
I do not know the post 2007 teas well.
2007 YQH Qizhong (A/B)
I finished a cake of this around 2021 and waited to open another. So I opened a cake for this occasion. It is very much the tea of my memory. I am immediately greeted by the distinctive notes from what has been described as Yang’s Tainan sweatbox. Very sweet and heavy menthol notes, but when pushed gets astringent and drying. Some of the notes early do resemble Hongcha, which is a bit concerning but it quickly dissipates after the initial two steeps. The heavyish astringency is very quick to convert and leaves a great throat coat. The original mouthfeel is a little thin, but it thickens up over time. The longevity is also very good.
Fortunately or unfortunately this tea is not too different from my memory of it in 2015. It has not developed or turned the corner into its next phase. However, it hasn’t faded. Perhaps due to its hype Qizhong has always been a polarizing tea, but as one can tell from my rating and the fact I’ve drank a decent amount of it and am on the pro-Qizhong side of things. To my tastes this remains a solidly strong and enjoyable YQH. This still sells for a reasonable price IMO.
2007 YQH Lingya (A/B)
The calmed down Yiwu version of the Qizhong. It is soft and not nearly as active, but it is a very ideal daily drinker with similar notes (heavy menthol/toothpaste) that is smooth and goes down real easy. I’ve heard some concern that this is going downhill quickly, but after several sessions with it this year I feel its doing just fine in my storage. It is not strong tea, but a perfectly fine daily brew. At one point I decided I liked this more than Qizhong and it is a little smoother to drink, but I think the Qizhong is the more engaging and interesting tea to drink.
2007 YQH Tuo (D)
Was given this as a gift from Yang (I think?) when I visited in 2016. Didn’t know much about it then and apparently it is from Yibang?
Unfortunately this is pretty uninteresting. The tea is thin and not strong enough. It does offer a little bit of raisin-like sweetness, some floral noets, and a nice texture but lacks the oomph to make much of an impression.
I went back for a second session, the tea this time is fairly sour/sweet. It has a nice aroma, but fails to impress again. I had the 2007 YQH Jincha after to confirm my own impressions, which I found to be far more satisfying.
2007 YQH Jincha (B)
I’ve always liked this tea ever since I first tried it in 2015 when it kicked off my YQH enjoyer era. The tea remains quite enjoyable but has one fatal flaw that has prevented me from polishing off several, it’s damn compression. This tea is compressed like Yang found a Xiaguan tuo and thought it was pressed too lose.. Similar to other heavily compressed teas it takes some experience and patience to get it to open up and brew evenly. It is easy for the initial brews to be too watery, or too strong (if you’re brewing dust) but I’ve become accustomed to it.
It is a dark Yiwu (a fast way to my heart) and is mentholy, woody, leathery, resinous, with a nice texture and a sweetness that reaches far back. Oddly enough in notes, it echoes a lot of the XG 8653 notes, but in a more Taiwanese boutique way. Reaches to the back of mouth and top of throat. The price and quality are beginner friendly, but the compression is not.
2006 YQH Qixiang (B)
This is a YQH that never quite lives up to the potential for me and I like it a fair bit less than the CYH SZCQ (it is decidedly better than the 2005 YQH CL). Overripe fruit and wood profile. Oily, medium body. While it does have some decent depth and does go down easy (like most of YQH) I mostly prefer the 2007 Yang profile or something like the Chawangshu.
2006 YQH Chawangshu (A/B)
In the last few years I drink this one frequently with my buddy Garrett on Zoom, but otherwise hardly at all. Oddly it feels like I know this less than others. It is a simple, but broadly appealing tea. In some ways this is like the inversion of the YSSL, which has some strong characteristics but feels thin in others.
Camphor, menthol, some mouthcooling early on. It has an oily medium body. Lots of sweetness early on. Pushed it maintains the same menthol/wood profile and picks up a bit of bitterness. There is some bodyfeel, that does not penetrate as deeply as some of the older YQH products, although this one always has a generic, reasonably appealing profile. Probably one of the more middle of the road YQH in terms of distinct Yang-y characteristics. I kinda feel about this like I do over some CYH teas like the Dashu, nice tea, but a bit duller than the material should be and wish it was blended for a bit more dynamism.
2005 YQH Yuanshi Senlin Huangshan YSSL (A)
Otherwise known as long name. This tea is a bit different from 2006 or 2007 Yangs and I bought it a bit later. While the YSSL has some familiar Yang notes, I do believe it has a distinct profile from other YQH in the 2004-2007 range. This tea first caught my attention when I met and interviewed Yang in 2016 and I noticed the deep energy of this tea sinking down on me. This was otherwise in a context, when I would likely not notice (I was trying to focus on the interview). In my conversation with a close tea friend, we remarked that this is kind of the opposite side of the Yang’s that are relaxed and go down easy (Teji/Lingya), it’s more challenging and takes a bit of attentive brewing to tame. Likely the YQH in this report with the most potential for the future.
When I was first brewing it I found it to be erratic, but with increased familiarity I have a much better feel of when to push in and out with a tea. Much moreso than the 2004 teas (pretty easy to brew) this can get over brewed and quite strong. The flavor notes are typical Yang, menthol, mint, wood, fairly sweet but the presentation is different. The tea starts out narrow. The body is thin, especially at the start but it has a good huigan reaching deep into the throat. I also get significant deeper depth and body feel from this tea that is on the sedating side of things.
I also had the YSSL with Bev and while decent, it fared a bit worst when compared with the admittedly steep competition (other Yiwus brewed were the 2007 CYH Ziwang and 2005 BYH Yiwu). As a result this is a bit tricky to rate. On the downside I think it’s weaker and less well rounded than some of the other brands top hitters of this era. It is especially a bit thinner in the mouth. That being said, it is still reasonably strong with good, penetrating aftertaste and deep feelings.
2004 YQH Dingji Yesheng (A)
DJYS is deep, dark, heavy and gives me a fairly stoned feeling. Tastewise it has a bit of that Yang menthol, dark wood action, thick oily mouthfeel. I’ve been brewing a bit closer to the core so it has a bit of a pungent green resin to it. Buzzy mouthfeel.
The traits this tea has are uncommon and quite rare which makes it tempting to rank high. However.. I think there are other teas that are more of the complete package which stop me. Not something I can drink often, but one of the nice things of getting experience with a tea is knowing exactly when you want to have it, especially for funky niche teas like this. There’s been some talk about this tea dying, but it feels more or less the same as it did in 2015. Weird and atypical. Strong in very specific ways and weak in others. I’d definitely pick the top-end CYH/BYH of this era over it, but I still am happy to have this around.
This is a bit of a controversial tea with pretty varied opinions. In the end, I come down close to where Marco and Matt.
2004 YQH Teji (A/B)
I revisited my notes of this about 10 years ago and if you want to make a case that some YQH cakes are fading this would probably be one of the pieces of evidence, behind the Yiwu Chawang and Cangliu (not reviewed). It however, still has many enjoyable qualities. Tastewise it is medicinal, herbal, woody, fairly sweet. Oily with some textured mouthfeel. It is not nearly as dark as the Dingji. The tea has very little astringency or bitterness to it, so I’ve come to prefer it with about 7-8 steeps pushed quite hard. Brewed this way it has a great sweetness that coats the throat and it generally feels nice and goes down easily. Unlike the Dingji which is more stoning this is uplifting and easier to take in. Good depth overall although not as much as the Dingji.
One of the concerning aspects is the lower longevity overall. If you read my notes from the 2015 report where Grill comments on the very impressive longevity and I comment on the density of the tea and then compare them with Matt’s as well as my own current one, it’s not a tea that is getting stronger and might indeed be fading.
Biyun Hao
Less well known than CYH, YQH, and XZH in Taiwan. I still think the early Biyun Hao run of teas in 2004-2005, is my favorite of the boutiques I’ve tried. Major credit to Pedro, Teaswelike and The Jade Leaf for providing access to BYH. I’m a bit less familiar with the later teas, but have generally found them to be quite agreeable, especially their Manzhuan. Many of their products are either from Manzhuan and Yiwu. Both can be excellent, but I tend to gravitate towards their Manzhuans.
2023 BYH Mansa (B/C)
Decent young tea. Lots of mouthcooling, reasonable thickness, fairly sweet. This is the sort of tea I’m not great to judge as I drink so little. The mouthcooling more than anything indicates the quality leaves here.
2018 BYH Walong (A/B)
Late addition thanks to Emilio. This is amongst my favorite of the teas in the last decade. Nice protracted mouthfeel, some mouthcooling. A decently strong bitterness when pushed. Some grape/muscatel and has aged a bit already. Has that nice Yiwu-ish aftertaste that coats the back of the mouth.
2015 BYH Pure Mahei (B)
Thank you to Emilio for the sample!
This is a really good classic Yiwu. Good thickness, wood, sugarcane, light fruit, light but present bitterness. The profile reminds me a little of a more developed Last Thoughts.. Some of the time a lot of these Yiwus will lack the density or punch. Not the case here. While it is undoubtedly a TW boutique Yiwu it packs good strength and density.
2015 BYH Lishan Gongcha (B)
A nice blend. Some mouthcooling early and some sugarcane. Due to being a blend there’s a lot more dynamism than something like the Pure Mahei. Can get a bit herbal, some decent bitterness, hay. Like a lot of BYH has a nice concentrated, dense feeling to its core.
2009 BYH Xiao Mannai (B)
Concentrated, sugarcane, plum. Back of the mouth sweetness. Fairly classic Yiwu profile.
2006 BYH Manzhuan (A)
I tried this originally in the 2017-2018 range when BYH was just starting to get western exposure but did not remember it well. Starts out really nice with a darker, brassy, pleasing sweet plum profile. The depth and feeling is quite good. Flaw-wise most of it comes down to not being quite on the same level as the 2004. The body is only slightly oily and it leans a bit sour without the depth of the 2004.. The sourness lingers a bit even though it mostly does resolve into sweetness. Perhaps it will be better in a few years. Comparing it with the 2004 is a very high bar and this is a perfectly good Manzhuan in its own right.
2005 BYH Yiwu (S)
A very good classic Yiwu. Wood, plum, thick. Lots of sweetness and mouthcoating. In the end I do find this doesn’t quite have the extra depth and does not quite zonk me in the way that I love about the Manzhuan. It is also interesting that most of the BYH have not gone in the camphor direction. It is nevertheless a very pleasant and nice Yiwu. Feels nice and goes down real easy. I would happily drink this very often.
2004 BYH Manzhuan (S)
Even more of a personal favorite than the Yiwu. Thick, woody, oily, with some mouth cooling. I do like the overall taste profile which is nicely concentrated, but the tea is particularly impressive in its heavy deepness. Definitely a tea that gets me zonked most times I have it.
Still a bit of resin, and a nice dark sweetness that I find very appealing. I prefer this over the more broadly appealing BYH Yiwu (2004/05), but would not begrudge anyone who has the opposite preference.
2004 BYH Yiwu (S/A)
A very solid Yiwu that I almost like as much as the 2004. It is a bit more wood-focused and less fruit. Less of the BYH classic taste, with only faint plums in the background. There’s a pleasing herbal taste and this is both easy to drink and easy going down. It is a little less dense than some of the other ones which makes the difference between this and a higher rating.
Wisteria/Baohongyinji
Zhou Yu is the tea maker with perhaps the most varied output that spans across a decade but in a non-continuous way. I’m lumping in BHYJ here as Zhou has worked with them on a handful of products even though I don’t think he has anything to do with something like their Bohetang.
Mr. Yu’s Wistaria products I think come with some of the highest approval ratings. While I can’t blame anyone for balking at tea prices, if someone told me they flat didn’t like Wisteria, I would have questions.
2014 Baohongyinji Bohetang (B)
(not a ZY tea) Thank you to Peter for the sample. This is more expensive than the CYH Mansong and while undoubtedly decent it isn’t remotely worth the cost. Nice sweetness, some light mint and brown sugar. It is medium thickness and does coat the mouth nicely. It does have some nice throatiness but it isn’t as intense as I would’ve hoped. Feel-wise I found this to be OK, but not to the level of the Mansong. It is overall a perfectly decent Yiwu bound to both attract and let people down due to its name.
2013 Baohongyinji Yuema Wangong (C)
I figured I’d tried this once when I got it 6 or 7 years ago but had not apparently even touched this cake. The tea is in what I hope is an awkward stage. It is woody, floral, and has this dry potpourri aroma. Overall the taste is not that great. It however, does have a decent thickness and pretty good depth. It is a subtle tea, especially right now. It hints at a sugarcane and being a bit more bold but it doesn’t really happen.
From the persistent lingering sweetness you can tell there is good stuff here, but it feels pretty far from its potential. This is a harsh rating, but I think this tea will hopefully wake up in a few years. This is going back into storage for now.
2013 Baohongyinji Zhenren Yufeng Spring (A)
Made by Zhou Yu. I acquired this right before TWL and Quiche released it, thanks to Stein for the hookup! Somehow I never had this until recently, and it’s in a much better state than the Yuema Wangong right now.
It is satisfying right now but also unusually hard to pin down. It lacks distinct up front flavors but has a ton of secondary intangible qualities, nice texture, good body, huge sugarcane like sweetness, resin, and lots of throatfeel. It tastes pretty different from most semi-aged Yiwu of the same age and very different from the Wistaria’s 2003 run. The tea hasn’t filled in like others have at this point and I really don’t know how it will continue to evolve. Not to say it will be bad, I simply don’t know.
I had this in a session with Skylarke on Discord, and the tea got outshown by the BYH Zhengjialiangzi by quite a wide margin. To me that session showcases how context shapes impressions, and if you want a flavor-lite tea like this to show well, you’ll need to carefully consider what you are brewing around it.
2007 Wisteria Hongyin (A)
This is a tea that has gone up in my estimation a lot. It is honey sweet, woody, incense, reasonable thickness. Very good depth, coats the threat. The longevity isn’t the longest, but it is very good while it lasts. I wish I bought way more of this.
2006 Wisteria Longpa Youle (A/B)
Might be overrating this, but it’s actually quite good and rarely talked about. It is a fair bit greener than the 2003s but is definitely further along than I recall. It has a more broadly decent pu’erh sort of appeal, with good strength and pungency. Some mouthcooling early on. A bit of an acidic sweetness, not incredible depth but good enough with a nice throat coating effect. Like a lot of Wisteria this is a solid drinker. I think once it is a little more aged I’d move it into tier A.
2005 Wisteria Zipin (A/B)
This tea lingers in my memory a bit worse than it actually is, mostly because the 2003 is such a classic. It is a good tea and in a vacuum a decent imitator of the classic 2003. Nice textured powder, great Yiwu sweetness and depth. The sort of tea that easily passes the speed test, feels good and goes down easy.
2003 Wisteria Zipin (S/A)
22 years strong. Not much to say about this tea that hasn’t been said already. Thicker in throat with more depth than the 2005. Very satisfying tea, neither too heavy nor too light and one that manages to still grow in my estimation. It’s one I’d grade lower but I never complain about drinking it, so I end up with a very high rating.
2003 Wisteria Ziyin You (B)
Originally bought on accident from Wisteria a decade ago when I intended to pickup the Zipin. Like a cousin to the Zipin. It is more straightforward in taste and has a nice body, but suffers in comparison with the Zipin. Less depth and a bit drying. This is a good Youle tea but I prefer the 2006 (suspect I’m in the minority here).
Yuanyuan Tang
I did a blind of these in 2023, but don’t really have a strong understanding of the brand. Peter who runs a restaurant in New Jersey was kind to send over 10 YYT samples over. In the end, I don’t love all their teas but they did have a few stand out.
2013 YYT Yiwu Chahuang (B)
After a couple of fairly mild YYT that were just not quite cutting it for me, this tip heavy tea did the trick. It is potent and decently thick. A bit fruity up front with an expansive mouthfeel and texture. Pushed it does get a little sour.
2013 YYT Luoshuidong/Sifang (C)
Grouping these two teas together. Vaguely sweet, hay. These are either in a bit of an awkward phase or too mild for my tastes.
2012 YYT Bannaqing (A/B)
A blend of allegedly LBZ and Tongqinghe. This is a pretty solid tea and IMO a successful blend. It is easier to tell where this is going than the TU Miles Birthday. I think it’s possible I’d rank it higher upon subsequent tastings. It is thick, coats the mouth and offers some interesting mouthcooling, a bit herbal. It is not a brutal tea but one that strikes an interesting balance between the two terroirs.
2012 YYT Jingchanghe (B)
This is I think in a bit of an awkward phase but I think the material is decent enough. The storage seems dryish, with a lot of stale floral notes at the beginning. It does however have some nice sugar-like sweetness and depth. The aftertaste goes decently far back.
2010 YYT Tianmenshan (A/B)
This one caught me a bit off guard. A lot of mouth cooling. As much as I’ve experienced with a tea. I thought it started a bit thin, but it thickens up. Good throatfeel as well. Nice texture and sweetness lingering. In the end this is a fairly straightforward tea, but a satisfying one.
2010 YYT Luoshuidong (B/C)
Decent tea, that seems a little bit oxidized. Nonetheless it is decent material. It is very fruity, juicy, leathery. Easy going down and a generally pleasing tea.
2007 YYT Lengshuihe Guafengzhai (B)
Decent quality Yiwu tea. Presents lighter initially but darkens and thickens up quickly. It is thick with some light mouth cooling early on. Flavorwise moving into darker fruits from sugarcane and hay.
2005 YYT SZCQ (B/C)
Like a lot of the six famous mountains which were popular during the mid 2000s, this one might be prone to inconsistency. It is quite different from the more Yiwu focused teas I had around this time. There is more fruit, a richwoodiness and a bit of depth that lightly touches the back of the throat. It does however get a bit sour. I think there’s probably some better sessions in here.
Western Boutiques
This used to be the main place where people scrapped and tried teas they had higher hopes for. Now a lot of these are older and we can see how they are doing.
2023 W2T Last Thoughts (B)
Solid Yiwu but not on the level of the 2014 one. It has many of the same characteristics as that tea, but amped down by 20-30%, enough to feel the difference. The tea is very thick, floral, and has a very nice aftertaste that is good but not quite as expansive as the 2014. Qi-wise I find it doesn’t do nearly as much as the 2014. It is overall a very decent Yiwu (Wangong-ish) profile that leaves me reasonably satisfied.
2016 W2T Diving Duck (D)
This tea smells good but is unfortunately not in a very appealing place right now. It smells like dark berries, hay, wood. Unfortunately it is still very grassy and not that sweet. It has a fairly sturdy base to it but does not give much aftertaste either. Feels a bit like the Tea Urchin Zhangjiawan. Quite possibly not aging well (green tea pu’erh?) or optimistically in an awkward phase.
2014 White2Tea Last Thoughts (A)
The thought is that this is a Wangong tea. For better or worst, my very slow Seattle storage is good at maintaining a tea’s character. As a result this very much fits my memory of it (consumed 9-10 years ago?). The tea is thick with a sweet sugarcane note. Maybe a touch of fruit, light dry wood, but mostly still fairly floral. Not terribly dark (by base material or by storage). Good throatfeel. The tea stands out in particular with its impressive aftertaste and overall feeling. Relaxing and enjoyable. Back into storage.
2013 YS Xiangming (B)
This hit the upper bound of modest expectations. Good, thick sweet, base. Moving into this raisin like sweetness. Despite some attention towards these early YS Yiwu productions, I think this is aging as expected.
2012 YS Purple (C/D)
Had this right after the Xiangming and it comes off a lot weaker. The tea has a grape-like sweetness but comes off fairly thin and needs to be pushed. Eventually moves to a dry, floral profile. It’s not awful, but the tea is not convincingly strong, something that probably should’ve been clear when I tried this in 2014.
2012 TU Zhangjiawan (C)
Dark, leathery and sweet, but a bit lacking in substance. Reminds me of some of the Mansa teas with a raisin like sweetness. While it does have some mild bitterness and has a darker Yiwu profile I gravitate towards. I have just a cake of this and may just play around with it and see how it develops. Not too nice to drink now.
2012 TU Miles Birthday Blend (C)
80% GFZ and 20% something else (LBZ?). Good thickness and a strong aftertaste. The bitterness weaves in and out. At times it is quite persistent, at others a bit more manageable. It’s not too dark, but coats the mouth nicely. The thick mouthfeel reminds me a bit of the Last Thoughts.
I think this could be interesting in the future as there’s some nice material in here but right now it’s pretty muddled.
2011 TU Gaoshanzhai (B)
From my buddy Garrett. Good body, back of the mouth sweetness. Some astringency but accompanied with a good aftertaste. Moves into a dry, floral profile. Fairly standard but aging normally and decent enough.
2010 YS Yibang (B)
I had this immediately after the YQH Yibang Tuo and had become a bit concerned this may’ve gone a similar path. After all it is small leaf varietal and autumn material. However, the tea while not too far along is quite enjoyable and offers quite a bit more than the Tuo. This has a honey, brown sugar, raisin profile that is loaded with sweetness. Can be pushed pretty aggressively and while it does still have a bit of astringency there’s a nice richness here. Good protracted sweetness that coats the mouth.
It raises some interesting questions about dry western storage for these. With a similar storage path to Yang’s Tuo, would this be equally weak and uninteresting? I’m not sure, but the combo works well enough here even if you’re unlikely to ever get that deeper, darker aged profile with western dry storage. The tea also does not seem to be green tea pu’erh as it doesn’t have an overwhelming bitterness that does not resolve.
Other Boutiques
2015 Zhensilong Walong (B)
Very sturdy Manzhuan, that is strong and dense. Not too sweet in that raisin/brassy way that MZ often develops into. Still fairly floral and grassy. This is not quite ready but has nice density and strength.
2013 DTH Yiwu (A/B)
Thanks to my tea friend Dennis for making me a sample of this!
This is a nice tea. Like the 2012 it is very sturdy. It has a bit of that camphor and mouthcool starting to set into the tea. Dense, woody, pungent mouthfeel. Like the 2012 these are quite strong right now, and I’d probably prefer to wait to drink it..
2012 DTH Yiwu (A/B)
Since I was introduced to this brand I’ve always liked but not totally fallen in love with DTH products. Their traditional processing and leaf selection results in material that is very different from most other boutique Yiwu productions. In a blind tasting in 2024, I ranked their 2006 product last behind teas from BYH, CYH, and YQH. This resulted in me buying a cake of the 2012 determined to study and learn from it more.
For those unfamiliar, the storage is dry and not remotely HK trad-like (they are a HK based operation). Up front it is still a bit green. But it does have a good strong mouthfeel, good thickness, a long deep aftertaste. It has what I think developing camphor. Despite the considerable overall strength and staying power, I don’t find the level of depth that I would on my favorite Yiwu productions. It really defies the expectation of what Yiwu should be. Overall, the stiffer parts bring a different sort of appeal than other, predominantly Taiwanese boutiques, which tend towards softer, far sweeter profiles. I appreciate TWL and Marshaln for bringing it over. I will continue to drink and study this tea. In the end, this tea very well may justify its price. It has uncommonly strong bones and I have no doubts it is well made, the rating is sheerly based on my own enjoyment of the tea right now.
2017 & 2015 XMTF Yibang (A)
Very nice Yibang productions. Good sturdiness and density and very nice feeling to them. They coat the mouth. I don’t really have complaints other than they’re still young (age+storage), which isn’t my exact preference. Great longevity, all around solid teas. I think Yibang enthusiasts will in particular really love these.
There’s probably some differences between these, but would need to be focused on that to parse them out. I had them both a few times but not enough to confidently prefer one over the other.
2010 XMTF Manzhuan Arbor (A)
Pretty solid Manzhuan that is now available via TWL. Good, thick. Decent depth. The storage is definitely on the drier side of things, which doesn’t bother me too much in this case. Pretty drinkable now.
2008/2009 XMTF Manzhuan (S/A)
Thick satisfying Manzhuan teas. They have that brassy taste, moving towards plum. Good depth. The Yibangs offer more fireworks but I’d be more likely to pursue something like this. Still somewhat green due to the slower storage. In a side by side I preferred the 2009, but in individual sessions they’re both pretty satisfying teas.
2007 XMTF Manlin (S/A)
This is a very good Manzhuan tea that has been slowly raising in my estimations I almost prefer to my favorite MZs from BYH. My own preferences towards darker tea prevent me from doing that, but it is close. Rich (plum, light smoke), textured, thick, deep into the core. This is in my opinion better than the 2008 and 2009 but not enough to move it up.
I had this tea in a nine Yiwu-ish tea session with a tea friend and this may’ve been the overall winner, despite heavy hitters from CYH/YQH. Perhaps I should side by side this with some of those BYH MZs.
2007 CGHT Yiwu Chawang (A)
I picked up three of these in 2015 for about $85 each and have had it aging away. I have a decent memory of my sample of it as a quality darker Yiwu. These darker Yiwus tend to hit my soft spots so I was looking forward to revisiting this a decade later.
The tea very much fits into my memory. Decently thick, oily, darker wood, grain. There is a nice chestiness and good flow to this and the tea feels good. Florals come out in later brews. The longevity is decent, but not as good as some of the top teas in this report. Just a very nice enjoyable tea. A good example of my aging, only slow moving, but not degrading the tea. Yay for C- debatably adequate storage!
Exceeds modest expectations. Nothing crazy but it definitely has turned a corner. Pushed it a bit and it’s still pretty drinkable. Not super potent but pleasant as a daily drinker. Wood, plum, light throat sweetness. Longevity not great but perfectly acceptable for something like this.
Rewatched my episode from 2016. And the tea is considerably less astringent than it used to be. Probably too weak to really age a ton more, but it is easy to drink.
2003 CGHT Yiwu (B)
I don’t remember how exactly I ended up with a sample of this. It is a classic Yiwu. Woody, hay, straw, nice sweetness at the back of the mouth. A little bit of interest with the texture but mostly routinely enjoyable.
2012 JXJS Senlin Yun Forest Allure (B)
A late addition thanks to Emilio. A weird tea, perhaps due to being a product of being Yishanmo. It has some nice intangibles and is already pretty smooth. I had this after the 2018 BYH Walong and I do feel it suffers in comparison from more conventional Yiwu type teas.
2008 JXJS Guafengzhai (B)
My favorite of the JXJS which really reminds me of Taiwanese boutique brands. Has the same soft, spicy, woodiness going on but a bit more distinct character. Camphor, menthol. Similar to the others it is quite green but maintains a bit more bite when pushed.
2007 JXJS Dingjiazhai (B)
Spiced wood, soft sweet raisin-sweetness, decent depth. Raisins. I think this is a good enough Yiwu with good storage.
2007 JXJS Daqishu (C)
Similar to the Dingjiazhai. Waves of sweetness, spicy, woody. It doesn’t have much bite back and is OK enough tea to drink now. Not much room to grow.
2007 XZH Yiwu Chahuang (D)
Sent in by Emilio I believe. Thank you! Smells rich and nice of fruit and wood. In the end it is flavor forward but lacks depth. It gets a bit sour. Maybe messed up by its storage or its processing or a combination of both.
2006 XZH Youle (B)
A challenging tea to rate. The material seems good, but the storage or processing has done this tea a disservice. I originally saw this as more of a standard, naturally dark tea, but after several years in my storage it hasn’t really changed much. Menthol, camphor, cream, wood. The quality of the material presents itself with a strong mouthfeel and mouthcoat. It doesn’t have as deep of an aftertaste as an Yiwu tea but you can still feel the strength of the material. I do get some greater depth for it, but I find its easily overshadowed by above average teas I drink regularly. For instance, one day I had aged oolong after this that completely blew the tea out of the water, despite it being considerably less expensive. I don’t think the cake I have will ever live up to its full potential but it’s not a bad brew.
In some ways this is an interesting comparison to the Dingji, which has similarly dark bassy tones that are caused by some combination of processing and storage. I’d take the YQH over this tea 9 times out of 10 though.
2007 Sunsing Mangzhi (C)
From LP. A bit more dankly stored than I expected. Camphor, menthol, woody, chocolatey smooth. Not too much more to it, but it is a smooth daily drink, provided you like the profile.
2003 Sunsing Manzhuan (C)
From LP. Basically the same deal as the Mangzhi. Very big leaves. Smooth, thick, camphor, easy to drink. Not too exciting. Sunsing teas have never been a favorite and this hasn’t changed my opinion.
2004 Jujun Hao Ruiron Manzhuan (B)
A bit less humidly stored than the Sunsing teas but again serving the same purpose. Petrichor. Maintains a bit more mouth activity, not as thick, nice sweetness. A little more activity but not by too much.
Kyarazen Yiwu (C)
Thanks to Grill for the tea. This has a couple good characteristics but isn’t very enjoyable. The aroma is quite strong and a bit weird. Perhaps perfumey? Taste-wise it is still very young tasting. I actually don’t know how old the tea is, and it eventually moves into a fairly sour profile that I just don’t care for. On the positive side, it has a nice enough mouthfeel, body.
Other
2012 CSH Yiwu (D)
Had this tea twice and it failed to standout. It is very sweet, nutty, floral, smooth and sugary. It is watery and weak and takes too much to coax something out of the leaves.
2006 Fuyuanchang Mangzhi (C)
From LP, natural HK storage. A bit spicy, woody, hay. Old school Yiwu with some HK storage. Has a floral, potpourri thing going on. To me it’s not terribly interesting.
2005 Purple Yisheng (A/B)
Picked these up via Marshaln a while back. Satisfying Yiwu tea. Hasn’t changed a whole lot in my storage. Has that characteristic Yiwu sweetness, decent body, perfumey, nice texture. A good regular performer that does well on the speed test.
2003 XMTF Manzhuan (B)
Sold by TShop NY. Decent, comfortable daily drink. There’s some depth, it’s a touch brighter and a bit more mouthfeel than the YPH. Mostly an easy drinking comfort tea.
2002 Shunshixing?? Yiwu (B)
My memory is not great for how or why I ended up with these about 7 or 8 years ago, but they were inexpensive and it turns out fine for casual drinking. Quite possibly a fake or a different batch. It does not feel too similar to the naked Yiwu or ZCYH knock offs I’ve had.
The tea seems to be mostly dry stored. While it is definitely aged it still has strong notes of hay and straw. It is also not super strong but more potent than I expected with a nice protracted mouthfeel that coats the back of the mouth with sweetness. Can definitely still get properly bitter and astringent. Like the 2006 CGHT Yiwu Yecha, some of these Yiwu teas I do not mind the drier storage as much as I would a factory tea.
2002 Songpin Hao (A/B)
Pretty good, semi-wet stored Yiwu. Huge leaves, good mouthcooling early. It is fairly straightforward in taste, wood but it has decent thickness and is quite comfortable. I would easily take it over the 2001 YPH.
2001 Yichanghao Yiwu (A)
From Yee On, traditionally stored. Trust tea from the storage specialists! This tea is very nice. It is woody, herbal and has some of that Yiwu aftertaste in the back of the mouth and throat. It is also decently strong still. Good body. I’d take this anyday over the Sunsing teas. Too bad it is quite expensive.
2001 Green Sun (A/B)
Also featured in the XG Masochists Report. From Yang’s storage (thanks Emmett). Very different than the Xiaguan productions he made of the same year and feels more like a predecessor to the Yiwu cakes that would come out plentifully a half decade later. Pleasant, soft, sweet, potpourri, resin, wood. More “Yiwuish” and boutique-like than the Xiaguans. Has a nice throat sweetness.. I am a sucker for these teas, even if this has relatively short longevity.
2001 Xiaguan Yiwu Chawang Huangyin (A)
Just a solid all around tea. Camphor really developing. Good depth. Lingering sweetness. Not mind blowing, but solid all around. Wish this style of factory Yiwu was still possible without being extremely costly.
2001 Yangpin Hao (B)
Big leaves. A little humidly stored. Woody, a little creamy sweetness. Fine and comfortable to drink but not ultimately that interesting.
2001 Spring Buds (trad. Stored) (A)
The sort of tea/storage combination that is hard to find but makes tea that is agreeable. Very smooth, and mellowed but still maintains a lot of brightness. It has that Yiwu throat/back of the mouth sweetness that I love but is still unmistakably raw. Wish I could buy more..
2000 Zhenchunyahao (A) (Chen Huaiyuan)
From Alex of Taiwan Tea Odyssey. This is I believe an unauthorized production by Chen Huaiyuan (CYH). Very interesting to try, as it is a very early production from a Taiwanese producer, besides the earlier Zhenchunyahao’s made by Lv Lizhen.
I like this tea quite a lot. The tea is mellow but has good thickness and is still fairly active. Tastewise it’s quite woody with some good sweetness. Nice aftertaste. Very relaxing and easy to drink. Pushed, the tea only has a bit of bitterness but does reward with a thicker mouthfeel.
2000 Zhenchunyahao (B) (from JP)
From JP, thank you! He knew this was a fake, but a decent tea. Thought it’d still be interesting to try it in comparison with what it is faking. This tastes quite a bit younger and much sweeter. There’s some decent depth, but it loses out in thickness and depth to the Chen Huaiyuan tea. It feels a lot more modern boutique-like and less rustic as well. My guess is this is younger than the purported age. A decent tea in my opinion, but it doesn’t match up well against the Chen Huaiyuan tea.
2000 Naked Yiwu (C)
I’ve always had mixed feelings about this tea. It has some nice characteristics but has always been a bit rough for my tastes. Unfortunately my slow storage hasn’t changed it enough. Still too green for me to enjoy and comparing it with the “ZCYH”s from 2000 further emphasizes this. The taste is floral, hay and a bit drying. I can believe that this will be pretty good one day. But not yet. I ended up putting this back into deeper storage.
2000 Yiwu Brick (C)
Picked a couple of these up about a decade ago in Taipei. The material is just OK. It has a nice Lychee like sweetness and woodier. Definitely more of a daily drink, but fine for what it is.
1998 Yiwu Brick (B)
Also picked up from Taiwan about 10 years back. I believe this was lightly traditionally stored. Earthier, darker and fuller than the 2000s.
This feels neither extremely dense and concentrated nor very rustic or modern in its processing. Lots of characteristic Yiwu sweetness focused on the back of the mouth. It’s not super active but does have a little astringency when pushed but is mostly ready to go. Not a ton more upside but a reliable brew.
Semi-Aged Budget Teas Cr. YS
Wanted to include some cheaper things to compare. Also interesting to try them in comparison with the older
2008 CNNP Blue Mark Yiwu via YS (D)
Not a huge fan of this one, it has a nice body but is otherwise too soft for my preference. It also gets a bit sour at different points. The price point is perfectly reasonable but for me this would not pass the speed test.
2008 Yiwu Zhengshan Tongxing Laozi Hao (B)
My favorite of the YS samples. Good body, strength, still very clean. Has a bit of menthol and camphor. Overall it has enough sweetness to be enjoyable now but maintains enough intensity to keep me interested. Still a fair bit of astringency and can get drying. This is a good buy if you’re looking for one of those elusive cheapish semi-aged Yiwus.
2006 Chang Da Hao Yiwu Zhengshan (C)
Decent overall tea. Taste is more on wood and earth but is still overall clean. A bit chocolatey and has enough oomph to it. I prefer the Tongxing over this but this isn’t bad at all.
2005 Youle Old Tree (C)
Medium body, clean. Earthy, soft, wood. Decent mouthfeel and relatively smooth. Compared to an Yiwu this is a bit more straightforward with a bit less depth.
2004 CNNP Qiaomu Laoshu Yiwu (C)
This is the easiest of the YS to drink and has some pleasing aged notes. Menthol, camphor. Very soft and smooth. The body isn’t heavy but strong enough. There’s not a ton of fuel left in the tank here, but for a 20+ year old Yiwu for daily drinking this is nice.
2003 Yiwu Chunzhengpin (C)
This is a decent tea but not really my style. It is greener than most of the other YS sourced ones. Sugarcane, florals. The age has smoothed it and the tea is apppealingly sweet but the overall greeness of taste is not for me.
2011 Baohexiang Autumn Yiwu (B/C)
A decent daily drinking Yiwu. Has huge leaves, a sturdy base and some nice floral notes, some acidity, apple. Doesn’t have huge sweetness in the back of the mouth or depth but is perfectly fine. Reminds me a bit of the 2006 CGHT Autumn Yiwu Yecha when it was younger.
2006 Zhongcha Yiwu Zhengshan (C)
Sold by Quiche/TSH. Denny gave me a sample of this one. Mellow, sweet, maybe a bit of apple. A good starter Yiwu but not very exciting. For the price it is nice and I think if you are just getting started this is a good entry point.
How I Feel About My Yiwu/6FM & VOATO
One of the changes I’ve made in my drinking is a conscientious effort to drink teas I really enjoy that I own. So as a structured thinker/drinker, once per week I do the torturous task of drinking one of:
2003 Wistaria Qingteng
2004 Biyun Hao Manzhuan
2005 Biyun Hao Yiwu
2004 Yangqing Hao Dingji Yesheng
2005 Yangqing Hao YSSL
2003 Chenyuan Hao Tongqing Repro
2007 Chenyuan Hao Yiwu Ziwang
As you can tell from that list, only Qingteng is outside of the scope of this report, meaning I gravitate towards Yiwu and 6FM teas. While I enjoy my factory teas, there’s not many I own that I would put on the same level of enjoyment as these teas.
My average quality tea is probably something like the 2007 YQH Qizhong or 2005 Purple Yisheng, both teas I enjoy drinking. All of the teas I bought as more daily consumers are still more or less fine and I will continue to drink them without any evictions. In comparison my average Xiaguan baseline would be a tier B/C tea like the XG Jiaji. Because the average Yiwu in my collection is enjoyable I will lean towards higher-end teas for any future pickups. My favorite run of the Taiwanese brands is early BYH, 2004-2005 range, and I bought a bit of 2005 BYH Yiwu at the end of 2024.
Recommendations
For those shopping regardless of prices, I think the ones I rate in the S and A tier speak for themselves. In terms of value recommendations the Jincha remains a decent buy at $0.40/g and the 2008 Yiwu Zhengshan Tongxing Laozi Hao at about $0.25/g is well priced for the quality.
A Few Observations On Yiwu/6FM
Western boutique teas need to be judged case by case. The 2012 YS Purple Yiwu does not seem to be heading in a good direction (maybe avoid NSV if you want standard outcomes) but others seem to be on a pretty typical path. Nothing I am super excited for, but nothing alarming either. I did hear recently of a few teas that are green tea pu’erh, but I don’t think the limited amount of teas I’ve had here qualify. After Marshaln’s post I did retry several and have found a couple such as the Bosch which was quite awful on a retry. Reading my notes the Diving Duck may have gone on a similar path.
What is missing? Despite a huge range of tea it is very boutique centric. I wish I had more access to things like early 2000s Yiwu products made by factories like Dayi.
The $0.25/g-ish mid-range selection I did a report on years ago feels more thinned out than 10 years ago without a ton of value friendly options even accounting for some degree of inflation.
Higher-end, $/g+ tea. This was a pretty pricy report with a number of cakes hovering over the $/g mark. A decade ago, these would’ve been the highlight of the report. The availability of high $ Yiwu/6FM has never been higher, provided you have $$ to burn. 10 years ago you could’ve bought $/gish young Yiwu like Last Thoughts, but nothing like the selection now. You could argue that 7 or 8 years ago you could find stuff like the CYH Shanzhong Chuanqi for quite a bit less. Yes, but only if you had the right connections. These were not teas that were available to go onto a site and buy like they are now. I think we can largely thank Teas We Like for introducing many of the boutiques that are now sold multiple places and for filling in this range for people to enjoy and learn from.
And with that. Yiwu teas, I’m out! See you again in 10 years, maybe..
Tea can be consumed as a way to get regular routine caffeine, like a morning coffee. Or a tea enthusiast could drink tea as a weekend only/celebratory brew to really slow down and appreciate. The tea hobbyist community has room for both of these types of drinkers and they often occupy more or less the same spaces in terms of tea discussion.
Tea is also a caffeinated beverage and everyone’s body and tolerance for tea varies. We also all have different life circumstances. Both of these dictate someone’s actual tea diet. There’s sometimes huge disparities in the amount of tea fanatics can drink. Some go through only a single kilo per year while others go through 25-30kg. People like Scott or LP can tank through 30-40 grams a day no problem. Others don’t have time to drink until the weekends and can only do a few grams before 10AM. My life is fortunately set up to be closer to the former category (I go through probably 20ish grams daily), but I will confess to having a small amount of envy towards the lighter drinkers even if I would not willingly trade places with them.
Sparse Consumers aka The 3 Gram Gang
How this group of sparse tea drinkers actually consumes is undoubtedly varied, nonetheless I decided to dub them the 3 gram gang largely because I’ve ran into a handful of tea enthusiasts who openly talk about drinking a scant 3 grams a day.
357 Grams is NOT a Sample. Quantity is the Enemy
In the past I’ve bought ripe blindly and very aggressively. Why? Because I drink 10 grams every morning with my wife. I am experienced enough to avoid total duds and if something is mediocre or I can usually power through a few more weeks. Or dump it if it’s bad enough ($20 ripe doesn’t hurt much). Due to my consumption habits, 357 grams of blind buying ripe is a very low risk endeavor. That sort of buying is not recommended for the 3 gram drinker.
Quantity is a 3 gram ganger’s enemy. 357 grams was not a number designed for you. With constant temptations being leaked out, it is very easy to accumulate tea by simply occupying space in the tea community. If you are not actively drinking it in higher quantities, which if you are a 3 grammer, it’s too easy to amass a collection of middling tea. Discipline is essential.
One thing I’ve seen suggested to newer drinkers is to buy a well-regarded cake and use it as currency to trade for other things. I think this tactic is particularly well-suited for 3 grammers that are willing to jump through the logistical hassle of reselling and coordinating tea packages (discord is your friend). It allows you to micro-manage quantity and sample a lot more things than the alternatives (accumulation, drinking monotony).
When Are You Actually Going to Drink That Tea? & Serious/Casual Split
Everyone should aim to buy tea that can be consumed in a clear, practical context. For myself, I usually try to clearly define this when I’m buying a tea. If I’m not really sure, I’d probably be better off with a sample. Even if a specific tea is cheap, it’s annoying to have it around if you’re not going to drink it and getting rid of it takes time and can be a hassle. It’s also not always about quality as there’s plenty of teas that are technically high quality, that I’d have a hard time fitting into how I drink tea.
There’s a number of drinkers that can only have more dedicated sessions on the weekend and while they can still drink teas on other days they have a relatively low OQS (Opportunities for Quality Sessions). Their most routine teas by the nature of their workday or schedule largely have to be more casual teas. In this case, there’s a clear split on serious tea vs. casual tea. One might consume ripe and hongcha during the workday and have time for the teas they enjoy the most on the weekend, perhaps Yancha. Clearly looking at purchases with this framing is helpful. It probably doesn’t make sense for the regular Ripe/Hongcha drinker to buy cheap TW oolongs unless you think it’d replace Ripe/Hongcha during the work week or the fancier stuff consumed on the weekend.
$1k-2k Cakes Aren’t Crazy
Now for the fun part.. While I have spent quite a bit on tea over the last decade I have never bought a thousand dollar cake. If I were in the 3 gram gang, and had a stable, reasonably high income I would be looking hard at this pricepoint.
Sure the pricepoint for a $1000 tea looks crazy. You can’t necessarily enjoy tea prolifically like others can, but you can and should make it count when you do. If you are drinking 3 grams per day, that amounts to about 3 cakes per year. Why not make one of them a chonky $1k? Or buy some excellent $6/g Yancha? Or some truly old Liubao? While the rest of us live in the $0.20-$0.35/g range, you can use your sparse consumption to your benefit and hop straight over that mid range. The trick is to not overbuy mid or lower end tea. Unless you are young you almost certainly do not need a tong. So buy and drink your measly 3 grams, but buy and consume in such a way that you’re going to enjoy the hell out of each g.
I don’t know who came up with this. Maybe LP? It’s a pretty random size. Why not 15? Or 10? But you know what. I like it. Getting locked into 25 grams is overkill, and 10 grams can often be not enough. 16 grams is enough for three smaller sessions or two medium ones. If you’re a 5 gram-brewer, it gives you a little extra buffer in case you lose some leaf here or there.
Tea Businesses as Side Hustles
This is a like and a dislike. One thing I didn’t fully grasp in my return to blogging was how big and influential TWL has gotten. The niche western pu’erh scene has been heavily shaped in their image and the teas they source. Yunnan Sourcing and White2Tea are no longer the only options to start out on pu’erh tea. What I really didn’t expect was that so many people would end up sourcing similar and in some cases the same teas. The imitators are no doubt annoying to TWL, but for consumers they offer more options and places to get samples and teas that are otherwise sold out. The TWL level of curation is something that these vendors have a hard time replicating however.
The downside is that this creates negative incentives towards sourcing more original material as it is now much easier to undercut the vendor doing the curation. These undercutting operations may be trading immediate gains (lower prices) for worst access and prices down the line.
Marshaln’s Hong Kong Tea Travel List
Next time someone asks me for Hong Kong recommendations I will just send them to this fantastic list by none other than Marshaln. It has pretty much every HK shop I was aware of, plus extras. If I find myself back in HK, I’d probably just go straight down this list. I’d previously used this list from Nicolas Tang but I think this easily beats it.
Different Tea Sub Cultures & The Tea Discord Ecosystem
A lot of the interesting tea chatter happens in Tea Discords these days. If I’m honest, I only half paid attention to CommuniTea (one of the larger Discords) from 2019 until more recently. Since then, I’ve joined some of the smaller ones as well as The Tea Table (the other large Discord, started by LP). Despite being smaller on paper, The Tea Table has quite a bit more chatter going on and has also taken on a pretty different culture than CT (CommuniTea).
If you’re just starting out, depending on which discord you join you’d likely end up with similar but different samples and vendors recommended to you. I think this is mostly healthy as people can choose which one resonates more with them. When something is also more or less unanimously liked or disliked by both, that also says something.
TeaDB as Documentation & Rediscovering Teas
In what should be unsurprising, I have archivist tendencies and am temperamentally inclined to record and document. Most recently, I put every pu’erh we’ve drank on the show into a google sheet. This took a bit of time as we’ve been doing the show for over 10 years. (It also now needs to be updated again.)
In drinking more tea and rediscovering some of them, I’ve been pretty happy with the past documentation we’ve done on teas in the form of the recorded show as well as some of the tea reports. Rather than judging sheerly against memory, having stuff written down and recorded makes it much easier to jog my memory and recall. There were some teas I thought I liked but had more mixed feelings on as well as vice versa. If you’re in it for the long haul having some sort of system to log thoughts is highly recommended. Personally, I’d opt for something relatively simple that doesn’t ever become too much of a chore.
I don’t buy as much tea as I did in my peak years.. But last year bought a few cakes of 2008 Dayi 8582 off of taobao. I also had a local tea friend traveling home to Malaysia buy a few cakes of 2008 7542 when he was there. In the case of the 8582, I’ve always liked the recipe and the tea meets a lot of my drinking criteria. And 7542 is classic.. But why now? As those that follow pu’erh know, Dayi prices have been falling. The past couple years have been a particularly good opportunity to buy good enough factory tea for a reasonable price. A significant added bonus for those of us in drier climates is that 2005-2009 tea are now over 15 years old. The 8582 was a little over $50 and while of course there’s forwarder fees, even when included the price is still less than $60.
Note: There’s also inflation to consider, which would make the pricing of tea today even more favorable if it’s around the same $$ as 2020 or before.
15 Year Old Factory Tea Recipes Used to be Expensive
When the first episode of TeaDB was released (2013), 15+ year old well-known factory tea was hard to find and very expensive if you could. That would be teas like the 1997 Menghai TF Water Mark and 1998 Xiaguan 8653 Cakes or Tuochas. Today in 2025, it’s easy to find and not that expensive. Even before Dayi recently dropped in price, it was still far less. Obviously the fanciest productions of the year are not cheap, but well known benchmark recipes like the 7542 and 8582 are attainable. Compared with Dayi, other factories are usually even more inexpensive.
In the US there are a decent amount of teas to choose from, even amongst just the two big factories. This is due to a few factors. Most significantly – production ramped up significantly during the 1990s and into the 2000s, leading to increasing abundance of pu’erh. Along with the higher quantity came complaints that the quality of material and/or processing doesn’t live up to the 1990s or earlier standards (also true).
Still.. Even with lower quality material, I think these teas are worthwhile and do fit into my own tea diet assuming they are properly aged.
Where to Buy Factory Tea?
Here’s how I breakdown the buying options.
Big Online Store that sells all sorts of tea and is Western Facing.
The two most obvious of these are:
King Tea Mall
Yunnan Sourcing
Pros:
Reliable. I’d strongly recommend you buy from these over a random local shop or Amazon. While there’s occasionally a complaint of a bad sale, these are prolific sellers with a mostly satisfied customer base. You get what you buy and storage is usually accurately described. If you bought from a smaller retailer or a local shop, the cake vetting and storage may or may not be on point.
Markup isn’t extreme.
Sampling might be possible. A big advantage if you just want to try.
Simple. Will ship straight to you.
Cons:
Selection is limited to what they have in stock. If you’re just looking to try a few different teas, they should be good enough but if you’re looking for something specific you may or may not find it here. King Tea Mall (basically a taobao-reseller) probably has the widest selection of any western facing store.
Price is not the cheapest possible. These are marked up more than if you had full access to the Chinese or Taiwanese market.
I do this option from time to time, particularly for ripe. It’s often not worth it to spend that much time optimizing for the lowest price on a $20 ripe cake. The convenience of buying from Yunnan Sourcing US here outweighs the slightly higher price for me.
A related option – you can also buy Dayi from a curator like Teas We Like or The Jade Leaf or more recently Quiche Teas. The pros and cons are fairly obvious, the main negative being selection and sampling are limited. One major pro if you trust the curator is that they’ll have potentially tested the specific batch and storage and removed some of the risk.
Taobao / Dayi Authorized Taobao or TMall Store
This is what I did in purchasing the 2008 8582, I bought from an office Dayi Retailer.
Pros:
Price. Good way to get tea fairly directly. With prices having fallen slowly, these are often the best place to get the best deal. Even comparing the 2008 8582 cake price with King Tea Mall, there’s a large difference in the pricing.
Reliable. These are big stores and if you order from an authorized store they should be perfectly fine.
Ordering from Taobao and using a shipping agent is easier than it’s been in the past.
Cons:
Samples are almost never offered.
You’ll need to use google translate as these storefronts are not intended for a foreign audience.
Shipping agent. To get the tea, you’d first order on Taobao and have the tea shipped to a 3rd party agent who will then ship it internationally to you. I’ve used a few agents, the latest being shipforwarder. I’ve also been satisfied with Super Buy. Alternatively you can have the agent order for you, but you may miss out on vendor discounts and specials that are offered directly from the vendor. i.e. Tong discounts. In the end this option is still likely significantly cheaper than KTM or YS.
Other Taobao Vendors & Non-Dayi Factories
Seven or eight years ago you could find Dayi tea from a lot of different vendors including unauthorized dealers. At some point they tightened the screws and Dayi tea became a bit harder to get outside of the authorized retailers. Xiaguan never did this, so you can still use taobao search function to find Xiaguan fairly easily. I’ve ordered from MX Tea for 8 or 9 years now, and they’ve always been fine with reliably decent storage.
To order from other taobao vendors you’d follow the same protocol as a Dayi authorized taobao.
Taiwanese Vendors (or Auctions)
One of the bigger changes in the last 7 or 8 years is the amount of people buying from Taiwanese-based pu’erh vendors. I’m sure from the vendor’s perspective it’s an insignificant number, but for a small niche community it feels like there’s more commerce directly from vendors who aren’t specifically trying to sell to the west.
The popular shipping agent here is EZStar, who primarily uses facebook to communicate. This works the same way as a Taobao agent. You can use them to send money to the tea vendor and as a ship forwarder. Occasionally vendors will be able to ship direct to the US, but you may need to wire money, which is something an agent can also help with.
Taiwanese auctions are exactly what it sounds like. An auction for pu’erh cakes. It takes place on facebook. Some cheap, some expensive. My advice: try to get some idea what you’re doing and setup the agent before bothering vendors. Talk to people who have used auctions before. Don’t bid on something cluelessly and try to figure it out later.
Is The Price Good? Using Donghe For Reference
Finally, how do you determine if the price you’re about to pay is good. Donghe is a good reference point for Dayi tea. It’s important to note that Donghe is a wholesaler and you can’t reasonably expect a vendor selling a cake or even a tong to match the price. What Donghe is good for is to get a quick look at if the price is reasonable or not. For instance, if Donghe is telling you that a jian costs 10,000RMB you can translate that to a cake price of around $33 (divide by 42 cakes). If you are about to buy it for $250, you’ll know you might be able to find a better price elsewhere.
Donghe is also based in mainland China. The Taiwanese market may be a bit slower to react to pricing changes on the mainland.
A new TW-based vendor popped up out of the Tea Table Discord, named Quiche Teas. You’ll notice that their prices are quite low, especially when put against other western facing vendors. This is because Quiche is dropshipping primarily from a Taizhong based vendor named Taishunhe with a relatively low markup. While dropshipping can sometimes be a negative term, in this case it is technically accurate and I definitely appreciate how transparent Quiche is about his sourcing. There is no pretense of Teas We Like level of deep curation, as he openly states he has not tried all the teas and is simply listing what Taishunhe tells him to. I’ve bought teas from Taishunhe before and they’re one of the more well known Taiwanese sources but selling them with a shopify site like Quiche Teas, makes it considerably more accessible and easy to order.
I often get asked if I would ever start a tea store. The answer has always been a pretty hard no. I love tea, I’m an entrepreneur in real life and I enjoy interacting with the community but it’s a difficult business to be in, especially if the goal is to make a living. Making samples sucks, shipping is a pain, and dealing with customers can be a real annoyance. And then there’s deciding what sort of markup.. Due to the labeled nature of pu’erh we often have some idea as to what the actual market price would be for those teas, by looking at taobao or Donghe (for Dayi). For many teas, you can find the teas for around half the price if the western vendor is reputable. Even that is a somewhat low markup and one option is for a vendor to markup the tea even higher (see 1 $45/10 units, 2 $12/10 units). Another way to avoid just being someone reselling pu’erh is to press your own tea which has a different price/market dynamic and is far more difficult to tell the original cost of production.
Low Markups in a Niche Market
Why not just charge a low markup?? Having low markups in a small niche market, means you have to make up for the lower margins with volume that the market probably won’t support on a regular basis. If you sell a cake for $100 and it cost you $75. You need to sell quite a few to make any significant profit.. This is where the hobbyist vendors have slid in. A vendor curator like Teas We Like, US-based Liquid Proust or someone like Emmett for Yangqing Hao. They are often tea enthusiasts first and can afford to sell with a lower markup than traditional vendors as they don’t need to make as much money as the sole source of their income.
Eastern-Facing Options
A certain level of tea obsessive ends up in the annals of Taobao searching for random 2005 productions or using facebook for the sole purpose of buying from Taiwan or Malaysian based tea sources (I confess). Why? Because the eastern market is more appealing when the alternative is western facing sources that are more restrictive and expensive. There is a massive amount of tea available and you can often get tea for quite a bit less. You are sacrificing a level of curation, sample availability, and ease for the potential of lower prices and a wider net. This is all quite stupid if you don’t know what you’re doing. However, if you’re OK with calculated risks it can become a default way of buying tea.
So how bad is the calculated risk? It depends on the arena you choose. Navigating untrusted taobao sources is one thing.. But if you had zero idea what you were doing and bought blindly and randomly at Quiche without ever having tried the tea, you’d almost certainly do much, much better than buying from a place like Jesse’s Tea House or Mei Leaf. Taishunhe might be a somewhat ordinary tea shop in Taiwan, but simply having a relatively vetted shop that is more Taiwan facing rather than western facing makes the value much better. The alternatives in the west are more limited. Even teas outside pu’erh (their bread and butter) like Yancha or TW oolongs have gotten praise as good value teas compared with western facing options.
Quiche Teas is another evolution from other, earlier hobbyist vendors. Ironically given their start as a hobbyist vendor that disrupted some of the popular vendors in value, I’ve seen some refer to TWL as a high markup vendor. While I don’t agree that TWL could be classified as high markup, it is true that there is still some markup and you can find some of their teas for less. Part of this is simply logistical. TWL sells teas shipped from Malaysia to Taiwan and slices cakes into quarters, things that cost money. At least for now a place like Quiche can offer teas for even less of a markup than these other vendors. Batches and storage may not be vetted to the same level, but that can be an OK trade off for a lower price. This is also a very new vendor so it’s also possible that Quiche finds being a vendor in this capacity is not worth the trouble and either shuts down or raises prices.
What Would An Ideal Tea Day Actually Look Like For You? What About An Ideal Tea Day For A Regular, Routine Day?
For my first decade of tea drinking this is a question I never really asked myself. I suspect I’m not the only one. An ideal tea day does not mean narrowing it down to a hyper-specific tea, but more about the context and types of teas. What time would you drink tea? Would you enjoy Yancha, Yiwu?? Maybe a rotation between a few different types of tea? How many teas? Do you enjoy drinking with tea friend A or tea friend B? How much time do you need to have a satisfying session?
Two followup questions. How often do you achieve an ideal tea day? What is preventing you from having more days like this?
An ideal tea day is something that can’t happen everyday for most folks due to life constraints. Work, kids, school, etc. Most of us have a fairly regular and routine schedule… Now, on an average day, ask the same question. Under the constraint of an ordinary day, what would the ideal tea day look like?
The Goal:
The goal is to pursue both your ideal tea day and teas so you can appreciate and enjoy tea more! By defining this clearly, we can strive for it more frequently.
For Myself:
My ideal tea day is having a leisurely 1.5-2 hour morning or early afternoon session with a good tea friend. My best and most memorable sessions are rarely alone, but in the company of someone else. We would share 3-4 great teas we both enjoy. Ideal tea types: pu’erh with age, Yancha, and aged tea. A good quantity to savor and enjoy, but not too many to overwhelm the experience. Teas I would not drink: younger pu’erh, Taiwanese oolong, Dancong, most Heicha, green tea.
The more routine ideal is to have two excellent quality teas in one day and then go on a run afterwards. The teas should be distinct from one another. For instance, one fairly active pu’erh around 20 years old followed by an aged tea or Yancha. An example: 2004 BYH Manzhuan, followed by some old Liubao.
Determining the ideal tea day is not particularly relevant for newer drinkers. The exploratory phase is something that plays out largely on its own and takes everyone in different directions.. Mostly you don’t want to over accumulate tuition during this period (samples are your best friend). But I think if you’ve been drinking tea regularly for a few years and have an idea of where your tastes lie you should try to move towards our ideals.
What Would An Ideal Month or Year Look Like?
This is a deceptively different question than an ideal tea day. Looking at a full month or year time frame, gives a different perspective than what you’d like to drink today or tomorrow. That level of distance and long term thinking is also good for preventing tempting impulse purchases that may not fit your vision. Having a zoomed out point of view also allows you to sample and dabble with a bit more purpose. Perhaps this month or year you want to explore Liubao. As much as we love to build a fantasy cart made up with teas we have the slightest interest in, you can go a lot deeper if you eliminate the clutter and focus, sample, and drink in a purposeful manner.
For Myself: Do 2-4 wide samplings (10+ reps) to get a feel for a tea maker or a tea type, i.e. Liubao. More routinely having a regular rotation of teas, 15-20+ year old pu’erh, Wuyi, Aged Oolongs.
I still enjoy sampling around and try different things on occasion. It remains fun to shop for tea that I enjoy. I continue to get a fair bit of edification by doing themed tastings and explorations. 10 years ago, I sampled too hard at different points so I know there is a limit to this for myself but there’s still enough variety out there in pu’erh and all tea types to enjoy the learning process. One difference between now and a decade ago is I’m much faster to move on from a session or sample if it isn’t working for me.
Managing Finite Resources. Did You Buy Too Much? Or Did You Spend Too Much?
As an RTS (Real Time Strategy) enjoyer, one of the biggest in-game mistakes you can make is floating too much of one resource. In the Age of Empire Series (I currently play AOE4) you have four resources, Food, Wood, Gold, and Stone. At a certain level of play if you are floating too much of one of them you’re probably dead. Why? You might be rich, but because you have mismanaged your economy you won’t have as much to invest into units. Tea is obviously different, but in the same way you can definitely over commit in certain areas.
Did you buy too much tea? Or did you spend too much money? These are different questions that don’t always overlap. Someone who spent too much money, means they likely don’t have enough for other things outside of tea..
Someone who bought too much tea has a different problem. Both are a resource allocation problem but should be thought of differently. The good news: if you misallocate too much into tea quantity it’s not like an RTS game where you’ll be dead in a couple minutes..
The two most important things someone who bought too much tea can do:
Give away or sell teas you value less.
Focus on teas that are of superior quality.
I have fallen into the “bought too much” camp more often than the former. I probably spent too much in my first couple years of tea hobbyism. But once my job and income stabilized I was buying too much quantity rather than spending irresponsibly.
By my own calculations I technically do not have a lifetime of tea, I would be able to brew and drink prolifically for around 30 years without buying anymore. Given my healthy stash of tea, one of the largest mistakes I can make now is to buy loads of value-oriented say $0.07/g tea. Another of my focuses in the past two years has been on giving away teas. Tea is better consumed by someone who enjoys it, rather than a tea hoarder padding his stash. I’ve opted to give away, and have given away at least 10kg in the last couple years. If a cake is indeed a sample, you should do the same thing you’d do to a dud sample you’re no longer interested in drinking. Get rid of it.. I fortunately do not need the money and can be thankfully picky about the tea I keep. So in the end I’m happy to give it away. After all, I overbought in quantity not in $$!
I don’t buy as often as I once did, but when I do make a purchase, I try to not buy on price performance or over focus on value as much as I once did. Obviously price and cost are always a part of the equation, but I am buying up a bracket from what I did when I accumulated most of my tea and trying to look at sheer quality and enjoyment. We do not drink dollars..
How Do We Know Tea Is Expensive?
Many people spend and judge price sheerly by feel. When something is too expensive, it’s often more of a feeling and not by an objective measure. Expensive also almost always means relative. $500 feels like a lot compared to $100, so therefore it is expensive. If you scroll back into the annals of pu’erh discourse you’ll find the days where people complained about $35 young cakes. This seems obvious in 2025, but they weren’t complaining because the cake was expensive in absolute terms. They were complaining because $35 was more than other pu’erh being sold at the time and they could not see what future pu’erh tea prices would be. It’s important to be aware of this psychology we use when judging prices.
I’ve long advocated for $/g metrics and I continue to hold to that. This is simply smart math and helps to standardize any purchasing calculations. Standardizing $/g is one thing, but there is also adjusting tea expenses to life circumstances. Tea fanatics range in life stages and can have hugely variable levels of income. It does not make much sense for an unmarried 30 year old working in tech in the Bay Area making $600,000 vs. a college student with no income to abide by the same budgeting rules.
So how much to spend on tea? For people who have an income, I would suggest using a % of income as a baseline. Perhaps it could all fit into some sort of bucket for all discretionary spending or hobby spending or perhaps it’s a tea budget line all on its own. This gets into somewhat uncomfortable territory as it is taboo to talk too openly about one’s own financial situation in most social situations. It also can feel like you’re spending too much if you are framing it this way. This is a psychological barrier and I think having a healthy and honest view on spending money on something we enjoy is ultimately a good thing. I also believe spending in proportion to income makes sense, when compared with spending by feel. It would be prudent to be frugal during tougher times when income is lower. Likewise when things are going well it is OK to spend more.
One obvious caveat is that the actual % set can and should vary. After all two people can make the same amount of money in the same city and one can live comfortably while the other drowns in housing costs and credit card debt. It is probably unwise for someone paying high interest credit card debt to spend a lot on tea. Whereas the one with a fully funded retirement account can probably afford to allocate a higher %. Judge what is expensive or not based off of real numbers not just a feeling.
A Couple Quick Calculations
At what rate are you buying vs. consuming tea? This is pretty simple to figure out. It’s easy enough to calculate out how much quantity and how much $ you’ve sent within a specific timeframe. It might be painful to tabulate, but it is better to live honestly than with purposeful self-delusion.
Calculate:
Quantify Amount Purchased
Quantify Amount Consumed
Quantify $ Amount Spent
Quantify $ Amount Consumed
At what rate are you drinking tea vs. consuming it? This is helpful as a way to measure how quickly you are accumulating. A lot of people humor the idea they will have a short burst of buying a lifetime of tea perfectly suited for them and retire into their idyllic wood cabin with beautifully designed, aesthetically pleasing pu’erh storage. It is true that once people have a lot of tea they do tend to slow down. And perhaps some people have that sort of self control but it is far more frequently fantasy than reality. It’s important to be realistic about our human impulses and not rationalize extremely rapid acquisition under the false idea you’ll stop on a dime.
One calculation I suggest is calculating the $ amount consumed. It is entirely possible to consume several times beneath what you are buying. It essentially means you are drinking your cheaper teas at a decent pace but saving your nicer teas. I know because this describes my own habits for years. I would manage to save up and justify pricier purchases, that I would hardly touch. Part of this was the premise that the tea was not at its peak. Part of it was simply good old fashioned hoarding. You could argue this means the teas don’t pass the speed test. But the only reason they don’t pass my speed test is because I deemed them too expensive to enjoy.. Drink and enjoy stuff you like when you can. Now as someone with a young child, I generally try to get a good session whenever I can and the conditions are good enough, not when the stars are perfectly aligned!
Remember.. For a lot of your favorite tea, you are amongst the most ideal people to enjoy it. You bought it for a reason. It can be OK to wait for the perfect opportunity to share tea, but sometimes a good but not perfect time to enjoy a tea is all you need.
Tea Drinker A:
20 Cakes Purchased Annually (7,140 grams)
10 Grams a day consumed (3,650 grams)
2:1 Weight Purchasing to Consumed Ratio
$2,400 Spent Annually ($200/month)
$65 Consumed Monthly
~3:1 $ Purchasing to Consumed Ratio
Opportunities for Quality Sessions (OQS)
Life dictates how we drink tea. Tea is a caffeinated beverage and different people react in varied ways. I have a friend that strongly prefers to be done drinking before mid-morning or his sleep gets messed up. Others can tolerate evening tea sessions without losing much sleep. Some people can also drink multiple teas easily, whereas others are strictly one per day. Opportunities for Quality Sessions (OQS) is essentially how many chances you get to have a good session.
I am fortunate to have a high OQS in my current life. Quality sessions are doable for me on most workdays, where the nature of my work allows me an objectively good schedule to enjoy tea. I tend to have time for morning tea sessions where the caffeine is least likely to impact my sleep.
Having a low OQS unfortunately means less chances to really enjoy and savor tea. It does however have some positives. For instance if you can only have good sessions on the weekend you could just load up on daily drinkers for the work week and bring out the $1k cakes for Saturday, Sunday. If I could only drink tea intently once per week my buying would and should look different (bring on the $3/g cakes!).
You Don’t Have To Feel Bad About Spending Money On Tea
One thing you’ll notice when money gets brought up in tea circles (reddit or discord) is a shared sense of shame for how much they’ve spent. I think this is mostly because it isn’t normal to spend hundreds or thousands of dollars on tea leaves. While this is true, most of it is based on societal expectations. For instance, far more people spend irresponsibly on another vehicle than tea, something that is more or less accepted as normal. I don’t think people who spend a good amount on tea need to feel bad about it, provided they are doing so responsibly.
It is very easy to gawk at someone who spends an outrageous $2/g for a $12 session as an unwise use of money. But that $12 might be the highlight of their day or week and something they looked forward to before the session, enjoyed in the moment, and savored afterwards.. If that’s the case, $12 is an absolute bargain. It is a good thing when people spend money on hobbies they personally value and enjoy. Especially when the alternative is self-enforced tea poverty. Spending as little money as possible is not a good or inspiring goal and we shouldn’t besmirch someone who responsibly spends a few thousand on tea in a year, in the same way we shouldn’t talk down on someone who does their best with a more modest $100/annual budget.
How we feel is often uncorrelated to reality. Take a step back. Are you actually spending too much?? Or does it simply feel like you are spending too much?
Don’t Sell Your Self Short
I realized I was drinking lesser tea than I needed to. Things like that BYH Manzhuan I enjoy had lingered in deep storage only coming out on rare occasions.. Sure even if I believe they’re not at the peak of their potential, but I like drinking them in their current state and I have enough that I should have some around later. Why should I only drink that tea five times in five years?
Would you rather have your eccentric uncle’s antique coin collection or cold hard cash. Unless you share very similar interests as your uncle, 99.9% of people would likely take the money. In the case of inheritance, money beats esoteric interests. The same is true of tea. We are the eccentric uncle. And unless you are in a tea aficionado family your loved ones do not want your tea and will not enjoy it a fraction as much as you do. Even if I inherited another pu’erh fan’s tea, their taste and choice in tea would likely be different than mine. Passing on jians of tea to the next generation isn’t something that should be a goal in most cases.
Setting Matters. Activities to Do With Tea
Confession time… I find it suboptimal if I sit with the tea alone. I often get bored and the cycle inevitably ends with me scrolling on my phone or some other inane activity. My solution? I like watching films while drinking tea. Ideally I’d be able to share the tea with someone else, but that’s just not the reality most of the times. Sometimes the best setting given the options isn’t always a high-minded lofty one. Yes, I know it isn’t very zen or meditative or whatever… Sorry. I am who I am..
For others, the context would no doubt be different. Setting the right scene and mood matters. I know many folks love nature sessions. As a nature-agnostic who has bad allergies, being surrounded by trees isn’t my preference, but I can understand and respect why others love it. The same goes for teaware. It’s not always about a mathematical calculation to extract the best cup. Sometimes drinking tea in nice things we enjoy enhances the enjoyment even if the chemical compounds of the cup are held constant.
In the travel-sphere, they say you experience a trip three different times. Firstly in anticipation and planning of the upcoming trip, second during the actual experience of the trip, and finally through savoring the experience and enjoying the memories after the trip happened.
I’ve started scheduling my sessions, kind of like meal planning. Sometimes plans change, but I rarely arrive at the tea table and think about what I’m going to drink. I’ve already decided a few days before. Like the travel example I derive a similar level of enjoyment where I look forward to the sessions and savor them afterwards. Scheduling sessions also forces me to make sure to plug in nicer teas at least once a week that I can look forward to.
How Much To Buy? A Math Problem. How Far Does 4 Cakes vs. 2 Tongs Get You?
It’s important to tackle this question once your tastes settle and you have a good idea of what will and won’t pass the speed test. There’s a certain danger with overplanning and outlining an idyllic tea life before you’ve had enough experience to even figure out what you like or want. But once someone figures out what they like…
In trying to determine how many cakes or tongs to buy of teas we like, I think these easily start to feel too complicated and potentially overwhelming.. We can reduce the purchasing to a simple math equation. For the calculation:
Approximately how long you will be drinking tea or that specific tea. For some teas maybe drinking it until the end of your life doesn’t make sense.
When do you approximate the tea will be at a state for you to drink and enjoy?
How often do you want to drink the tea?
How big are your sessions?
If you talk to old veterans of tea some of their hammers are very heavy. Splitting jians two ways, several tongs of tea. In my opinion, this is due to a few factors. (1) High quality pu’erh wasn’t always as expensive as it is now and (2) they were younger with time to drink these teas (3) the price is often quite a bit less if you can buy in higher quantity.
For Myself:
I estimate ~40 years more of tea drinking or until I’m around 80. (Like retirement planning, slowly aging tea forces you to reckon with your own mortality.)
If I bought 4 cakes of a tea and I wanted to enjoy it regularly for the 4 next decades, I’d be able to drink it 6 times per year (5 gram session + 20% cake dust/weight loss) or every other month for four decades. If I bought a tong + 1, I’d be able to drink it once per month for that same timespan.
Think Long Term. Why Younger People Should Consider Hitting Harder. A Tong Isn’t Always Enough
Looking ultra long term like this hopefully doesn’t discourage you from drinking your tea (you can always buy more), but it should encourage long term planning. I was puzzled at first to hear how much experienced people bought when they like a particular tea (wait, how many tongs do you have?). But now I do get it and in some cases do my best to replicate that behavior. A tong might seem like a lot, but if we are talking about a lifetime it is not that much. When you like a tea and want to be drinking it regularly for the rest of your lifetime you don’t just buy two cakes or five tuos. You buy two or three tongs.
It is true that most people tend to buy more than they consume, but the more haphazard buying often results in an odd assortment of slightly consumed cakes. Buying like this lacks focus and vision. Usually what is left are the worst teas that don’t pass the speed test, with the best stuff long gone. Would you rather have a random assortment of teas, or smaller variety but higher quantity of teas you love and can enjoy more freely.
Teas that won’t be ready for a while, you probably don’t need to hit as hard. There’s a few cakes that I’ve become convinced won’t be ready for at least 20 years in my unfortunately slow storage. Since I will only start drinking those in 10-20 years, I probably don’t need several tongs of these.
Younger folks whose taste have gotten somewhat settled, frequently don’t hit hard enough. They simply have more time, to both age and drink tea. If you have the resources, hitting hard makes the most sense for younger people. If you are crafting an investment portfolio, someone like my mid 70s year old Dad acts and invests in a different, more conservative matter than myself. Neither of us are wrong. Our situations are simply different.
If you are a young person who has been drinking for a few years and you run into a tea you like a lot and want to drink you should buy much more than two cakes. You don’t have to be impulsive.. Sleep on the decision and take a breather but when you run into a tea you love, it is very unlikely it will be around forever. Your old version will thank you later.
As usual with these reports, even the most massive ones, there were a lot of late arrivals that didn’t meet my publish date. Having exhausted pretty much every thought I’ve had on Xiaguan in the past report I wasn’t quite sure what to do with a few of the late arriving Xiaguans. But I wanted to do something for these teas, so here’s a small addendum with notes.
Being burnt out of Xiaguan didn’t really have a desire to pad it with cheaper tea so these tend to be better Xiaguans. Thanks to Phobos for sending a handful of blind samples.
Starting… I hit my benchmark, the 2005 XG T8653 from MX, and went back to the Xiaguan mines for some more friendly crane sparring.
1998 Xiaguan 8653 (7.5) via SF
Thankfully not overstored like SF’s unfortunate and disappointing 1999 or 2005 T8653. The tea is softish, woody. The tea is nice enough but disappointing in the hunt for densely packed strong Xiaguan tea. It is not nearly as dense as something like the 2001 Xiaguan Heifei. As the tea brews out it does improve a bit. Some salivation and not too drying. No menthol.
The tea itself is a bit sour and I do wonder if this would benefit from more conditioning. It’ll be an interesting reference to have around.
Revisiting the tea and hitting it a bit harder it is quite a bit better. It has more or less the same profile but seems more appropriately dense. The longevity falls off a cliff quickly after about steep 7, but it is enjoyable before that point.
After Alex’s post on fake XG, I’ve been a bit more paranoid about the legitimacy of some of these teas but it does seem like most people think SF is legitimate.
1999 Xiaguan Jiaji (7.4) via SF
Consumed blind from Phobos. Very woody. Good mouthfeel and mouthcoat. It dies relatively quickly but has good depth. Does not have that menthol/pine wood, so I assumed this was not a T8653. Was somewhat surprised to see it be a Jiaji. Definitely a pretty good version compared with some others I’ve had.
2000 Xiaguan Hongyin (6.6) via SF
Some sort of commission I believe. This is fairly dry stored. Woody, BBQ, retired smoke. I had one session get quite sour, but the second was a bit better. The tea overall is soft and woody. This is also disappointing in the sense that it lacks the punch or strength to really go much further. Not every pre-reform XG tea can be a winner. This is pretty mediocre IMO.
2001 Xiaguan Chawang Yellow (7.5) via Taishunhe
From Taishunhe via Quiche Group Buy. Thanks to that buy, there’s quite a bit of the Chawang circulating western tea circles. This is a little less aggressively stored than Yang’s version and for me a satisfying factory tea that’s in a nice place now. Very smooth, moderate body, oily, good depth. A lot of sweetness that is fairly persistent. Not the densest or strongest Xiaguan, but has a good aftertaste and easy enough to drink. If I were to be critical, this tea isn’t as strong as some of the better factory examples.
2001 Xiaguan Da Hongfei T8653 (7.3)
Consumed blind from Phobos. Good, but not great tea. Has a nice punch, some light bitterness and resin to it. Sort of like the 1999 Jiaji it is over relatively quick. It has a nice density to it and it does have a good amount of of bitterness.
Reflecting on this vs. the Heifei, this is the less impressive tea by a decent margin but also more ready to drink. Was slightly surprised to find this was a T8653. To me the gap between the Dahongfei and Heifei is larger than the Thin vs. Thick versions I’ve had from 2005.
2001 Xiaguan Heifei (8) via TWL
Consumed blind from Phobos. Perhaps the more promising teas I’ve had from these Xiaguan reports. This is somewhat similar to the 2005 Xiaguan T8653 in basic profile. Similarly thick, but a couple grades stronger. The initial steep and aroma have that very classic menthol, pine wood, sweet aroma that make me immediately assume this is a T8653.
What stands out here is the smoky peatiness/BBQ that is still very much intact. This tea is well aged but still has plenty of fuel in the tank to continue to age. I would consider buying this if TWL restocks.
2003 Xiaguan Teji Red Eye (7.2) via SF
This is apparently an early version of a Teji and thankfully moderately stored. The tea itself is enjoyable. It is more mellow, sweet, herbal, and woody than a Jiaji and not as packed with that Xiaguan intensity. It has a bit of resin, but not enough fuel to convince me there’s a ton of room for it to improve. The tea has overall decent (for a tuo) depth but fails to standout much beyond that. I think this might be a decent reference for Teji tuos, which I know much less well than Jiajis.
2003 Xiaguan FT Jiaji (6.5) via Laochafei
Consumed blind from Phobos after the Heifei. This one is OK. I do wonder if it suffers a bit because I had it shortly after the 2001 Heifei. it is very mellow. I don’t have Baoyan very frequently, but the coarse wood smoothness reminds me a bit of that. Very different from an 8653 profile. softer and to me lacks enough density and punch to be interesting.
2004 Xiaguan TFT8653 (6.7) via Laochafei
Consumed blind from Phobos. Nice enough, mellow, woody and easy drinking. Seems like it saw some humid storage but it is still pretty clean. I think due to the storage this presents quite different from the Taiwan-stored/MX-stored FT8653s I’ve had.
2005 Xiaguan T8653 SF (6) via SF
I really like this tea from MX. Unfortunately the SF version is overstored. It is mellow, woody, chocolatey. While drinkable, not exciting or interesting.
2005 Xiaguan TFT8653 (6.6) via Laochafei
Consumed blind from Phobos immediately after the 2004. Very sweet and woody. Has a bit of an acidic bite.
I was very surprised when I found out this was also a FT8653 products. Storage really makes a huge difference. Neither this nor the 2004 seemed to similar to each other either. They also both lacked that profile from my previous encounters with the 2004 FT8653 and the 2005 FT8653 (MX).
Last Thought
Finding good Xiaguan is hard! There are many wrong turns including storage and the batch/tea quality itself. Even teas that I know should be good are unsatisfying if the storage isn’t good. I very well may buy the Heifei from TWL if they restock it as its a tea that does hit a lot of the right boxes.
This post was original planned as an update to the Pu’erh Vendor Guide which was published over a decade ago and is now hopelessly out of date. However, politics, tariffs and the back and forth trade war made me give that more all-encompassing article a (hopefully temporary) delay. If the tariffs do continue, importing from mainland Chinese sources will be more expensive and likely more difficult. It will also have trickle down effects felt further down the line, specifically with vendors who are based outside of the mainland but source their pu’erh directly from China. This should impact almost every pu’erh vendor to some degree, but not equally. In particular vendors who commission and press their own pu’erh and sell a lot to the US will be hit the hardest, places like White2Tea, Essence of Tea, and Yunnan Sourcing.
Taiwan based hobbyist vendor. Teaswelike has a very high level of curation and a strong track record and high batting average. They source from everywhere, but have a strong Taiwan and Malaysia focus. Good for mostly semi-aged and aged pu’erh with a variety of boutique and factory tea.. Also a very good Liubao vendor. Their selection has drifted mid to higher-end over the years but you can definitely still find well priced budget tea. The downside is no samples and they frequently run out of stock. Their restocks are mini-events with teaware and some teas selling out quickly. TeasWeLike has had a large influence on the niche tea scene, many of the previously unknown to the west brands they sold are now regularly sold by other vendors.
TWL is also one of the few vendors I’d trust with sourcing more aged teas (pu’erh, Liubao), which can be a bit of a trap for less savvy vendors.
A new merchant dropshipping Taishunhe (a Taizhong based pu’erh merchant) and some boutique teas. The markups are low so the prices are quite good if you know what you want. Taishunhe is good for mostly Taiwanese stored factory tea and there’s now a portion of the site that has more boutique teas, primarily Chenyuan Hao. In general Quiche Teas cover the whole spectrum of budget friendly tea to more expensive offerings. Like TWL, no samples.
Ran by Taipei based potter, Emilio Del Pozo. The Jade Leaf was originally more of a teaware and Taiwanese oolong hub but has gradually ventured out into selling a wide variety of pu’erh. Sells a lot of Taiwanese boutiques (BYH, CYH, YYT) as well as factory tea with Taiwanese storage. One big advantage over TWL or Quiche is The Jade Leaf sells samples.
Tainan based boutique vendor, that has always been somewhat popular in the west. XZH was originally brought to the west by Houde about two decades ago and have started selling online. XZH is usually on the pricier side of pu’erh.
Thai based collector who sells mostly older, expensive pu’erh and heicha.
North America Based Vendors
Since pu’erh is not grown in North America, these vendors will be hit unevenly by tariffs depending on how their supply chain is setup. A place like Yunnan Sourcing who sources directly from the mainland is far more likely to be impacted than someone like Yangqing Hao, a Taiwanese boutique.
Remains one of the largest, widest selections of pu’erh. Fortunately their US site makes them a viable option. These tariffs unfortunately are likely to have a big impact on their ability to restock tea. YS teas are well priced and their selection is huge. They also have several years of producing their own line of raw and ripe pu’erh. For these YS products, the best value is almost always something made in the last couple years. They do annual price hikes around March which can add up after a few years.
Ohio based vendor who sells a variety of tea, but usually has a very healthy selection of semi-aged pu’erh stored in Taiwan, Malaysia, and Hong Kong. LP has historically sourced from a pretty wide ranges of places, and the selection rotates regularly. He’s a good vendor to subscribe to for his monthly drops, in case there’s something that piques your interest. Because LP’s sources are diverse and not mainland dominant, I’d anticipate small shifts rather than drastic changes.
A curated, often underrated, long running California vendor. Similar to TWL, a very high batting average. There’s a wide range of pu’erh from younger teas to much older ones. Generally their teas are on the higher-end. A handful of their teas offer experiences that are very difficult to find in the west (Evening Fragrant Jade, Kunlu). Bana does sell samples which helps to make some of their higher-end stock accessible. They have close ties to Hong Kong, specifically Best Tea House, so I’m not sure how well they’ll be able to restock.
US based Yangqing Hao store run by Emmett Guzman. Yangqing Hao is a Tainan based boutique pu’erh label that’s been pressing pu’erh since 2004. Emmett originally started coordinating group buys about a decade ago and his operation eventually grew into being Yang’s distribution partner in the US. Like XZH, YQH generally sells higher-end products and while they initially focused on Yiwu tea in the mid 2000s, YQH has pressed tea from all over Yunnan. Unlike YS or Bana their connections are entirely Taiwan-based, so they should have less issues restocking.
A Texas based reseller of a variety of popular Asian based vendors. They source regularly from Taishunhe and Yee On. The Steeping Room sells samples and their markups are generally reasonable making them a good, accessible choice to try and sample teas. Their ability to restock from Hong Kong, might be restricted.
A well known mainland pu’erh producer that lies somewhere between factory and boutique. CSH was created in 2008 and most of their tea is sourced from Menghai area, with a lot of Banzhang productions. They famously signed a contract to monopolize LBZ tea in 2008. CSH does also press some Yiwu tea and make a number of regular blends (Bawang/Emperor, Yihao). While they are mostly mainland focused they do have an outlet in Canada. CSH regularly raise prices on older stock so most of their better value tea are younger.
Washington-state based vendor who presses their own tea. Although they have their footprints in the mainland, they keep a good sized stock state-side so they should be able to sell for a while before running out.
Long running Houston based vendor with Taiwanese ties. They sell a variety of mostly US stored factory teas and Taiwanese boutiques (XZH, YQH, CGHT) from the 2000s. They don’t restock their shelves often, but because they’re old players in the game they have teas that are not commonly available when they do.
UK-Based pu’erh vendor selling mostly tea from the 2010s and 2020s, with a focus on Zhensilong productions as well as Tea Encounter’s own commissions. Both ZSL and Tea Encounter productions tend to be Yiwu focused and have drier storage.
Newish UK based vendor who sources tea from a wide range of sources from Taiwan, Malaysia and mainland China. Puerh Guy sells a lot of boutique as well as some factory tea. Boutiques include CYH, BYH, XZH, YQH, YYT, BHYJ, etc. A lot of overlap with Teaswelike, Liquid Proust, and Puerh.uk. Most of the tea is semi-aged, ranging from 2000s to 2010s.
Sells a range of younger boutiques to older more anonymous aged pu’erh. Mostly Taiwan and Malaysian stored tea. A particular emphasis on CYH. They also run the official Chenyuan Hao distribution for the west.
Russian/Dutch vendor that used to be compared regularly with Yunnan Sourcing. Their selection isn’t as big as YS anymore, but they do still sell some pu’erh.
My Top Picks
It is very difficult to go wrong with Teas We Like. The other two Taiwanese based vendors (Quiche and The Jade Leaf) also would be amongst my top recommendations. Not to be mercenary, but many vendors sell a lot of the same boutiques, so you can shop around if you want something specific. A place like Yunnan Sourcing remains good for stocking a variety of teas while LP is definitely amongst the most interesting domestic US vendors. For the tea type that will probably become somewhat harder to find (young pu’erh) you can still go to places like Yunnan Sourcing US, Crimson Lotus Tea, and Tea Encounter.
