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.
Help identify this cake (generic Zhongcha wrapper). Help me with my order from White2Tea/Yunnan Sourcing/TWL? What’s a genuine pu’erh source? What pu’erh should I try?
Sometimes I feel like parts of the tea community (reddit) are stuck in a Groundhog day time loop, doomed to ask the same questions over and over. One of my continued aims with TeaDB was to make content that remained useful and helpful over time and help get out of repeated patterns. The results have been mixed. Some articles I still see linked regularly whereas I’m sure a huge chunk are buried in the archives. The aim with this post is to create a guide for someone just journeying into pu’erh in selecting and exploring this diverse category of tea.
If You Are A Beginner You Should Try These Five Types of Raw Pu’erh
There are large differences based off terroir, processing, age and storage. Some things matter considerably more than others, and if you are new it’s important to cut through the massive info dump (who cares which micro village it’s from) and get the most important basics down.
This is my preferred way of breaking down the categories of raw pu’erh for someone new.
Young Boutique Raw Pu’erh – There’s a ton of different smallish outfits making young pu’erh. Young pu’erh will brew a lighter, yellowish color and have lighter, fresher, more floral profile. It can be pleasant now and there’s definitely a large group of pu-heads that drink these regularly. It was and perhaps still is the dominant type of pu’erh promoted to westerners. White2Tea, Yunnan Sourcing, Farmer Leaf, Chenyuan Hao, etc. Not all brands are the same, but you really have to try them to determine which brand and areas suits you best.Why not young factory pu’erh? While there is a general sentiment that these have gotten easier and smoother to drink, these are historically teas for storage and aging. For the sake of simplicity I would not bother trying these until later.
Semi-Aged (10-20 years old) Factory Raw Pu’erh Stored in a Hot + Humid Place – An important aspect to pu’erh is its ability to transform. Different climates and different storage methodologies will yield different results. Hotter and more humid areas will transform the tea more quickly. These teas should brew darker than younger tea, orange or even red. Generally they will become smoother over time.It’s important to note that humid is relative with most of the defaults being significantly hotter and humid than your average western climate. The United Kingdom or Pacific Northwest reputation aside do not qualify as humid in this case. (a) Hot + Humid place = Guangdong, Taiwan, Malaysia, Xishuangbanna, etc.. (b) Factory = Menghai Tea Factory, Xiaguan, Mengku, etc. Menghai Tea Factory is probably the ideal factory although different people have different factory preferences. The ideal: 2005-2011 Menghai TF tea stored in Taiwan.
Semi-Aged (10-20 years old) Factory Raw Pu’erh Stored in a Cool + Dry Place – While age will generally smooth and darken pu’erh, drier climates in general will result in a slower transformation and keep the original character of the more tea intact. Teas in this category will have a darker color than young tea, but not as much as 2.
Semi-Aged (10-20 years old) Boutique Raw Pu’erh – The more aged version of tea type 1. One hurdle is a lot of the western facing boutiques have not been around that long. Semi-Aged boutique tea is probably easier to find from Taiwan-based vendors which has a high number of boutique vendors that are accessible to the west.. You can also find more dryly stored examples. Example: 2007 Chenyuan Hao Yiwu.
Traditionally Stored Raw Pu’erh (10+ Years Old) – This is an important type of tea that is different from what people sometimes disparagingly call wet storage. Read about traditionally stored pu’erh on Marshaln’s blog. Generally this will brew the darkest of all the categories, reddish. Traditionally stored pu’erh is the most difficult type to find. It is important to try as traditional storage transforms pu’erh in a different manner than more natural Taiwan/Guangdong/Malaysia/Hong Kong. While there are some more indie vendors that have some traditionally stored tea, the biggest, most reliable place to get traditionally stored tea remains HK-Based Yee On who is a traditional storage specialist.
Samples & How Many Should I Get?
If possible, order samples! Samples cost a little more per gram, but getting the extra value from a full cake is relatively unimportant compared with getting good examples for the tea you want to try. Getting a good baseline for these categories of tea is an essential step in moving forward. It is more important to get good experiences from a diversity of sources than 60-70 reps with one cake. With 16 gram or 25 gram samples you can try the tea multiple times and if you want, you can always reorder a second sample.
Ideally I’d order at least 3 examples of each type of tea. There’s a tremendous amount of diversity within all five of these categories, so before dismissing a category entirely you want to make sure it’s not just the specific example. Please do not be that person who dismisses pu’erh categorically on reddit after you’ve tried one cheap & crappy grocery store ripe..
Where can you order these?
The simplest way to get these.
Young Boutique – So many options! Yunnan Sourcing, White2Tea, Essence of Tea, Farmer Leaf, etc. You can also seek out accessible Taiwanese brands, like CYH.
Semi-Aged Factory Hot + Humid – Liquid Proust (US), Teaswelike (Taiwan), Quiche Teas (Taiwan), King Tea Mall (Guangzhou).
High-end ripe was an afterthought when I started drinking tea in the early 2010s. There wasn’t easily accessible fancy ripe to do a tea drinking report and ripe was mostly a cheap thing for daily drinking. When White2Tea released Pretty Girls in 2015, I remember a grumpy murmur from the tea community for having the gall to sell $0.20/g ripe. Absurd! But in the past 10 years these sorts of productions have become normal and part of a larger trend towards higher-end ripe. The $0.20/g ripe looks quaint compared to some of the $/g ripe W2T puts out now.. These teas still get less attention than raw, but as evidenced by the large increase in productions there’s clearly a market for higher priced ripe productions made by boutique brands. We now have several years of products done by the usual suspects, enough to have a drink through. The goal of this report is to sample and get a better feel for the landscape of these higher-end ripes made by boutiques. I’ve dabbled and sampled a few but overall this hasn’t been a major area of focus for my own drinking/sampling. Drinking in close succession allows me to place them more accurately and try to understand the different profiles.
I am well aware that boutique ripe existed before 2015. My assertion is that the boutique ripe movement has picked up quite a bit more steam in the last 10-15 years. As usual with a tea of the month report this grew in scope. I originally only wanted 10 teas, but ended up with nearly 20.
I did most of the drinking in February before BFZC ripes showed up at LPs. Next time.
The Two Profiles
In drinking through these, I feel they generally fall into two different categories.
The Asskicker. More bitter, highly punchy material. This ranges from different punchy Bulang sorts with Bitter material that easily persists through the ripening process (think Lao Man E). I think the concept is that these are highly dense, thick and substantive teas that get partly smoothed out through the ripening and will further smooth out over time.
Refined tea.. These could come from wherever but tend to focus more on texture and aftertaste and lack the bitterness of the more asskicking type.
Of course these categories aren’t perfect and a vendor like W2T who does heavy, somewhat experimental blending, has some that are more challenging to place. Even for more conventional blending there is a spectrum as there are teas that will have a smaller touch of the asskicking material and balance it with more typical material.
Both types will generally have much better base material than you wouldn’t normally see in a ripe production.. Most vendors also seem to prefer to keep their boutique ripe on the lighter fermented side of things, although there are some exceptions (W2T Reading Room). The lighter fermentation gives a bit more room for the tea to evolve and change than it would under a more standard fermentation. You can also taste the base profile a bit more clearly. The lighter fermentation also means teas that have a few more years under their belt have softened and evolved a bit.
Small Pot/Gaiwan Gong-Fu Brewing
These teas uniformly do not pass the speed test. I brew a lot of ripe, but most of it fits into cheap stuff for daily drinking. My usual ripe brewing is not well suited for this month. As followers of my inbetweenisodes know, I usually have my ripe in my big blue pot in the morning with my wife. This works fine as most ripe is a forgiving and easy brew that does not require an especially meticulous hand. But for this report I mostly brewed gong-fu. Why? For the asskicker types, this makes it much easier to have a good session as the long pour time can lead to extreme overbrewing and some frankly nasty brews. That could be adjusted, but I’d rather just do gong-fu where it’s easier to respond to the tea than hear my wife complain about the bitter tea she’s drinking in the morning. For a few of the more refined ripe I did brew them in both fashions, to see if there was any performance difference. But even in these cases I defaulted to the gong-fu type brewing.
The Teas
White2tea
For the past decade, White2tea has gotten a lot of attention for their “outrageously” priced ripe. I admire the experimental nature of many of these and do enjoy trying them. They are especially well suited for regular TeaDB episode material with Denny, where we can admire the dynamic, engaging nature of the teas together. White2tea’s teas are probably the most complex and interesting to analyze of the lot.
On the flip-side none pass the speed test for myself. The teas aren’t casual or cheap enough for daily drinking and I’d usually rather drink a Liubao or a raw with some age, even with less dynamism. That all being said, from a sheer let’s talk about tea the fancy W2T teas are fun and interesting..
2024 W2T Machine of Loving Grace (6.6)
Decent, but unexciting tea. Rich, creamy, with some bitterness. It reminds me of a fancier Bawang with a bit more texture to enjoy. Hints at some citrus. It’s kind of stuck in no man’s land, where it is expensive for what it is but not as interesting as W2T’s more expensive ripes.
2023 W2T Reading Room (7.5)
Interesting in the sense that this is far more fully fermented than a lot of the other high-end W2T ripes. As a result, this feels a bit more settled and is indeed quite tasty. Rich, full flavors. Perhaps some sort of Menghai/Bulang blend made of good strong robust material. It feels like a very good version of classical ripe. Rich, vanilla cream. Throat leaves a good aftertaste. There’s a lot of fun complexities to this but this is ultimately an easy tea to understand and enjoy.
2022 W2T Lich Tears (8)
Probably the most interesting W2T ripe and definitely an asskicker. Very complex. It is quite tasty now, but also should get even better. Unlike Reading Room, this is clearly a lighter fermented ripe. It has a very active protracted mouthfeel and small amount of silk texture. Flavor is coco, rich, vanilla cream. A lot has been made about this tea’s bitterness and it definitely has a sturdy vein of pill bitterness flowing through it, but I don’t find it overwhelms the other flavors. It’s definitely not the most bitter tea of the month. The bitterness is most pronounced in steeps 3-5, before fading away. It is also accompanied with some nice sweetness. Very hard to rank as it clearly hasn’t hit its potential.
2021 W2T Reckless Daughter (7.8)
This was the surprise hit of the W2T batch for me. Had it once and liked it a good amount and subsequent sessions cemented it as a very solid and promising ripe.
Reckless Daughter is clearly lighter fermented, but feels cut from a different cloth than W2T’s other ripes. Lighter leaf and brews a dark red hue. It is more regal and refined than the more rambunctious asskicker types. There is bitterness but it’s not the pill sort. Very dynamic, thick, satisfying. Good aftertaste. Set aside a session for Denny later. This is good stuff and different from something like Lich.
2020 W2T The Nameless One (7.2)
Vanilla cream, some bitterness. Coco. This seems to fall in the fancy Bulang (Lao Man E/Banzhang) blend. I initially liked this a bit more, but in the context of other high-end ripes it stands out less. It is still complex and a very good tea, just not as gripping as I originally thought when I recorded an inbetweenisode a few years ago. I would personally pick Lich Tears or Reckless Daughter over this.
Yunnan Sourcing (& Hailang Hao)
Compared to W2T, Yunnan Sourcing and Hailang Hao lean a bit more conventional with their fancy ripe cakes. They aren’t as wildly blended or as dynamic, but have more straightforward easier to understand profiles. Generally speaking, this is my preference even if it might not generate the Thinking Denny memes quite as effectively. They also generally fit neatly into the two popular boutique ripe profiles, asskicker (Lao Man E, Xin Banzhang) and refined (Yibang).. I’d also say, that YS current year or last two year cakes are easily the better value (the HLH cakes get expensive quickly!).
2024 YS Lao Man E Old Tree (7.1)
This fits exactly the image I have of Lao Man E ripe. Pill-like bitterness. Thick vanilla cream. A bit of citrus. Gradually it gets even more bitter before it tapers off. I braced for this profile and found it thick and satisfying. Sometimes tea is helped by certain expectations. That is the case here. If I expected a more conventional ripe, I would hate this. Bracing for the bitter, allows me to appreciate this quite a bit more.
I think this is just a little too bitter for my tastes currently but I do get the appeal. Probably would brew way too strong in my big blue pot (did not attempt).
2024 YS Xin Banzhang Offering (6.8)
One of the less expensive teas of the month. Basically the budget ass kicker profile. Has a nice bittersweet profile, its bitterness is definitely a bit more balanced with other material. Decent amount of tips. My memory of the 2023 is that it got a bit more bitter.
Second session with this had it performing a bit more like a slightly less bitter version of the YS LME/Chawang. Sturdy profile, expansive mouth feel, pill-like bitterness. It’s not overly strong but has a clear and if you’re ready for it pleasing profile. Probably the lowest cost way to get this sort of profile of the teas featured .
2023 YS Lao Man E Old Tree (6.7)
I think I may’ve had a slightly off session. The session lacked the clarity of the 2024 or the Chawang which I’d had the day before. Definitely hints at the profile of the 2024 or 2023 Chawang, but feels a bit different in a way I can’t quite put my finger on. Gets a bit bitter, but not to the level of the 2024 or the Chawang.
2023 YS Chawang (7.5)
Basically should be treated like a LME ripe-base. Greener nose than expected. Hints at fruit, but is sturdily bitter. Definitely of the pill sort. Light wood, vanilla cream. Strong, thick mouthfeel. I knew it was coming and I very much enjoyed it. In my limited experience, this is my favorite of the YS asskickers.
2021 YS 5 Villages Bingdao (6.6)
The charms of Bingdao and northern tea are somewhat lost on me. I’ve yet to be enchanted by many raw tea from there. Sadly this ripe falls into the same camp. It is decent enough and essentially presents as a very clean and decent ripe with nice texture and some mouth cooling. Compared to the asskickers it isn’t particularly potent and its charms don’t live up to my more preferred refined tea.
Hailang Hao
2019 HLH Lao Banzhang (7.5)
Fits very neatly into the asskicker category. It is a very solid and sturdily made tea. Not quite as bitter as the Chawang or some of the LME. Thick, vanilla cream, protracted mouthfeel, very potent brew. It also lasts for quite a while.
2018 HLH Gaoshanzhai (7.4)
I probably enjoy this equally to the HLH LBZ. Caramel, brown sugar, antique wood, nice throat aftertaste. It is also sufficiently thick and oily. After getting through quite a few high-end ripes, this one still managed to stand out. It’s not as textured as the Dragon Brick, but has a greater depth that is very appealing.
Despite being more in the refined category the GSZ is notably lightly fermented. In a mug in my normal morning parameters it packed more of a punch than I anticipated. If we compare this with other of the more refined teas there’s a sharper edge to it than something like the 2012 Xizi Hao Dragon Brick which was likely lightly fermented but aged longer and partly in Taiwan.
2017 HLH Junai (7.2)
Rich, sugary aroma. Vanilla cream, decently heavy pill bitterness. Solid, clear profile. Nothing too dynamic and wild.
I like this just a touch less than the LBZ. The longevity isn’t as good and it feels a bit less thick. Still if you want to get the gist of that tea, I think this is a reasonable substitute and doesn’t cost over $1,000!
Other
2024 CSH Lao Banzhang (6)
Smells of Wo Dui. Thinner and watery compared to the other teas. It does thicken up. I am definitely drinking this too young, and overall it’s OK, but it is fairly disappointing for such an expensive ripe.
I had this as a big mug brew the next day and unfortunately it still didn’t impress. Perhaps it needs to settle. I gave the rest of my sample to Denny who said it was fantastic. Tea is inconsistent sometimes.
2016 Denong Commemorative (6.4)
This is an OK enough tea, but a disappointment as a higher-end ripe. I find this to be perfectly decent, but kind of dull. I don’t doubt there’s quality material here but it doesn’t seem to have a clear purpose or the cohesion like the better teas.
Tastewise it is lighter fermented, has a slight silk texture and a decent body. Otherwise a fairly standard ripe profile. Brewed in the big blue pot it more or less confirms what my gong-fu session. Maybe a bit cooler than a standard ripe. I would guess, likely not Menghai County material..
2012 Xizi Hao Dragon Brick (7.3)
Brighter nose. Complex, antique wood. Very nice texture. Not super thick. Definitely a more refined sort of tea despite having that familiar vanilla cream taste. I’ve heard that some people think this is small leaf varietal, which is believable for me. Compared to something like the HLH Gaoshan Zhai this offers more texture and a bit less depth.
Overall pretty enjoyable and assuming the 2013 is similar, one of the better value buys.
2007/2008? Chenyuan Hao (6.4)
Only had a sessions worth left. Sweet, has a nice antique wood aroma and a moderately oily body. It’s not watery like the CSH, but doesn’t really stand out that much when put against other fancy ripes. We liked this quite a bit when we had this for an episode, so maybe I just got a lesser session at the bottom of the sample bag.
2008 Xizi Hao Xishangjiaxi (8)
A late addition as I had forgotten about its existence, but I own two mini-cakes of it which I discovered while clearing out my old shu cabinet. In my memory this was a good tea, but didn’t remember much else.
In the end, it’s amongst my favorite brews of the month. Definitely in the refined category of shu. Far more of an aged taste than anything else this month, with menthol, antique wood notes. Coats mouth and throat very well and has better depth than most other teas here. In my previous sessions I had noted berries, which have aged out. Flaw-wise it is not ultra thick, but that is nitpicking as this was a perfectly satisfying session.
CYH/XZH must’ve been pretty early on these special products. I haven’t seen many more as early as this.
2007 Dayi Anxiang (8)
We got a big factory RINGER!!??? What’s a ripe report without some Dayi! Bought a cake recently from taobao. The cakes from the Dayi store came drier stored than I had expected. For the raw this was not exactly what I hoped, but for this cake I think it’s pretty ideal as it maintains a good deal of complexity.
Complex, thick, light mouthcool, antique wood. Coats the mouth nicely. Moderate thickness. It’s tip heavy and falls off a bit fast. This is great stuff. It confuses me how this is still relatively affordable! Perhaps there’s just not too many pu-heads into more serious ripe and the ripe drinkers would never spend this amount on a cake? Either way, this is worth a buy if you are a ripe drinker who wants the good stuff.
Recommendations
If you really want value for your buck. I think the older teas are better. The serious tea world has never seemed to take ripe as seriously as raw, and the prices haven’t risen as fast as raw has. I am surprised at how cheap you can find things like the Anxiang (I bought mine for around $100, $0.25/g). Similarly the XZH Dragon Brick is also a good ripe and can be bought in the US domestically from Liquid Proust for $0.40/g ($400/1000g). This is also a very good price when you put it up against anything made in the last few years.
I haven’t really had any asskicking type ripe older than the 2017 HLH Junai so it’s harder to find this type for less. This is too bad as I think these probably significantly improve with age. For those on a budget the 2024 YS Xin Banzhang offers the basic profile without being too expensive. Probably the best bet here is something like the 2023 YS Chawang, which I preferred over YS LME products and I find to be reasonably close to the more expensive HLH products.
In terms of overall recommendations, I think Reckless Daughter and Lich Tears represent their respective categories of modern boutique ripe very well. They are markedly pricier than the value recommendations but if value is less important I think they’re worth checking out.
Buying these is of not the only way to buy pricy ripe. You could also buy older factory tea from the 2000s or 1990s. These teas are often thought of as superior to their more modern cousins, mostly due to the factories having access to better material.
Value Recs:
2012 Xizi Hao Dragon Brick
2007 Dayi Anxiang
2024 YS Xin Banzhang
2023 YS Chawang (not really cheap, but significantly less than HLH/W2T)
Other Recs:
2021 W2T Reckless Daughter
2022 W2T Lich Tears
Takeaways
It is nice to drink pu’erh without considerations about processing and aging. Drinking ripe tea is more straightforward compared with the vigorous debate about which raw teas are better and will age. Perhaps it’s because all the oxygen is sucked up during those debates, or there’s just less to discuss on the more gradual transformation of ripe.
Is there space in my tea diet for these teas? Frankly I’m not sure. In the past, I’ve historically reached for something older or traditionally stored when I want something in a darker, fermented profile. That being said, the selection we have available now is better than it has been in the past. I do indeed like most of the teas here. So perhaps I’ll report back in a couple years. At worst, for the more refined types I can drink them up in the big blue pot in the morning as an overpriced casual brew.
Ripe narrows the bandwidth of teas compared with raw. In typing up these notes I realized how similar each tea sounds to one another. Even teas that are fairly divergent from one another like the HLH LBZ vs. HLH GSZ will have a fair bit of crossover on notes. I also think I’d burn out of these faster if I drank too many of them. Now… Before I type vanilla cream for the 155th time and am forced to add Masochist to another tea report, I will move on.
The first tea of the month reports I’ve done since re-establishing the blog was the Xiaguan Masochists tea of the month report. This essentially meant drinking a lot of Xiaguan teas that are laying around and trying to measure them against one another. Evaluating teas you haven’t tried much against other one another is much more difficult than trying to compare a tea with a tea you know very well. This is a why having solid benchmarks is helpful. In this case, one tea I’ve used as a benchmark is the 2005 Xiaguan T8653 January Thick Paper from MX Tea. Is it the best Xiaguan ever? No. Is it the best 8653 ever? No. But it does represent an above average 20 year old Xiaguan with a roughly typical profile that I’ve consumed fairly regularly for a few years.
Tip for Beginners: Establish a Benchmark Tea
One of the best things a new drinker can do to stabilize themselves in a sea of unfamiliar tea is to establish solid benchmarks for broader sorts of tea. Yes it is wise to sample widely. But it is also useful to get a good amount of repetitions of certain teas. Something like a good Xiaguan or Dayi tea that you can use to calibrate future experiences against. This helps to anchor your own tastes against something more solid and reliable. It probably shouldn’t be the highest quality you can find, but something that is decent that represents the category of tea well. I’d probably aim for something you enjoy that’s potentially a grade or two above average.
Then drink that tea, get your reps, and get familiar with it.. We learn a lot by contrasting different teas and tea experiences with each other. This doesn’t have to be a side by side comparison, but even just mentally comparing a tea you are trying to a benchmark is a more effective way to judge than trying to evaluate it in a vacuum. In the past, when I’ve done tea of the month reports I’ll start and finish the month with my benchmark tea(s) as a way to center my judgements.
Establishing a benchmark is useful for all sorts of reasons. It can be a more structured way to determine a tea’s quality but also how some of its individual characteristics differ (texture, aftertaste, depth). It’s also a good way to test out various other potentially confounding factors, like new teaware or a new water source. If you’re brewing a new tea in a new pot there are already a few variables at play. It is impossible to figure out very precisely the impact the teaware is having. Brewing a tea you know well in new teaware is a much more reliable way to approximate the ware’s actual impact..
In the Xiaguan tea of the month report, having a solid benchmark made me realize how different the FT8653-3+1 can be. Despite carrying the same name and surface-level tasting notes to many other teas in the report it is a different experience with pungent characteristics that is not your typical 8653. FT productions in general are not great benchmarks for Xiaguan as their overall taste is related but not quite the same.
One particularly bad Xiaguan benchmark is the 2013 Xiaguan LFPT. This is a popular tea in the west and I’ve seen people drink this tea and extrapolate whether they like Xiaguan or not. While I do like the tea, it is a special production and very different from average Xiaguan with a profile that is its own. The tea is made by FT and uses aged leaves for its blend. Even if you prefer the LFPT, the 2005 T8653 Thick Paper makes a better benchmark because it is far more typical in its profile. The T8653 is repeated over and over in Xiaguan’s products over many years. The LFPT is a one off.
For Dayi, getting reps with a decent 7542 and 8582 (not commissioned) with a decent amount of age is a good idea. With their ripe, maybe a 7452 or 7572. These are teas that they make routinely.
Benchmarks don’t have to be a permanent marker. You’ll probably establish and re-establish different benchmarks as you become a more experienced drinker.
Another Benchmark: Establishing an Average Tea Owned
I like to also learn what my average tea is in categories. For instance, what is the average tea from the six famous tea mountains/greater Yiwu area I own? This is helpful in buying situations. If you’re trying something beyond a daily drinker and the potential tea falls beneath your average tea in perceived quality, it’s not worth acquiring unless it has something very unique or some hidden potential.. Yes even if the tea is an overall good value buy. When acquiring tea you should be raising the bar, not lowering it. When you consume a tea, there’s an opportunity cost of what you could’ve potentially been drinking instead. Having an average tea established allows you to take a step back, and compare the sample with something and hopefully make an informed decision. Speaking for myself, this helps to ground my decision making and avoid impulse purchases.
There is a film studio in Japan called Toei. They’re not the most well known Japanese studio but they’re reasonably large and have been around for 75 years. In the 60s and 70s they specialized in making B-Movies and were heavily associated with the Jitsuroku era of Yakuza films (most famously Kinji Fukasaku’s Battles Without Honor or Humanity). These are abrasive, subversive films filled with anti-heroes who replaced the classical, heroic yakuza from a few years before. These Jitsuroku films are composed of angry tattooed men berating and beating other angry tattooed men, filmed in a hyper-kinetic hand held style. There’s some legitimately great ones, but also a lot of chaff. It can take sorting through a few of these to find the hidden gems. Fans of these films (myself included) sometimes call themselves Toei Masochists, presumably due to the hard hitting nature of the films and the labored process of looking for gems..
Drinking through my fair share of Xiaguan over the last 10 years, I wonder if masochism isn’t an appropriate term for us tea drinkers that can’t quite quit the crane. Xiaguan fans in the west lovingly call themselves the Crane Gang after the famous crane logo that Xiaguan uses. Even though I’ve drank a lot of the stuff I am still filled with mixed feelings about Xiaguan. Sure I’ve had some good enough teas from them, but I’ve also endured a good deal of crane-induced punishment. Maybe I should be more aptly referred to as a Xiaguan Masochist. After all even in 2024, one of my first ideas for a tea of the month report was yet another Xiaguan report. And as a glutton for punishment here are several thousand words (the longest report yet).
One of my goals after my daughter displaced my tea room has been taking stock of what I do have, get organized, and clean out unwanted samples and cakes. I’ve drank through Xiaguan in three previous tea of the month reports in 2015 to 2017 with mixed results. In the initial report I took a photo of the crane on my toilet and compared it with their logo, summing up the lackluster teas.
In the process of clearing out cakes, Xiaguan also probably represents the most evicted tea brand of 2024/25. It’s an easy brand to accumulate due to their appealing prices and 100 gram tuos.
Here are approximately 40 reviews of Xiaguan or Xiaguan related teas all in one place (a full year of inbetweenisodes).
In the 2016 report, I mentioned a few rules for making calculated gambles that still apply. These were largely implemented after the toilet bowl Xiaguan drinkfest.
Buy sufficiently old. I used to think 10 years was enough, but now I think 15 years and ideally 20. 15 year old Xiaguan really isn’t very expensive and an extra 5 years of storage will significantly hepl the tea.
Select humidly stored tea from: southern China, Taiwan, Malaysia. If you follow (1) and (2) properly, there won’t be an overwhelming amount of smoke in the teas.
Travel well-trodden paths and don’t cheap out. There’s a lot of teas and batches. Your rate of success will be much higher if you use other’s recommendations rather than selecting randomly. Spending up is usually good. $80 vs $60 isn’t that big a difference in the end. My batting average got much better when I started corresponding with Toby, who is a true Xiaguan man and had lots of recommendations. Thanks sir!
I also have a very loose calculation scale, which I use to estimate ~biological age of teas. It’s not hyper accurate on a case by case basis, but I find it useful to estimate how far along a tea has been without the need for subjective judgements.
Formula: AGE SCORE = 2x(years of aging in humid place) + 1x(years of aging in non-humid place)
The formula implies that two years in a more humid place like Taiwan or Guangdong is worth 2 years in Kunming or Seattle. Is this accurate? In some cases maybe, in others maybe not – but I’m using it as a quick approximation to compare biological maturation. I would guess that these teas probably need about 35 in terms of an age score to start to become drinkable for my tastes. I used AGE SCORE to filter out a couple dozen teas that I have around to make life easier on myself.
Goals:
Stash check and updating the review archives! Determine how Xiaguan is doing in my storage. As I’ve gotten back into a tea rhythm, I’ve been surprised how useful old TeaDB content on teas has been for myself. The videos can be useful, but the reports in particular are interesting as time capsules and to see my own history with these teas.
Establish an average Xiaguan to benchmark against. And an average factory tea.
Composting things and giving them away when appropriate.
Finish off whatever else I have laying around.
A couple teas I did not get around to including (a) a few pre-reform teas I ordered from Shunfeng that did not arrive in time. (b) what has been described as the 2011 Xiaguan Budget Bangers.. Xiaguan Jinse Yinxiang, 2011 Xiaguan Jinse Chuanqi, 2011 Xiaguan Huangjin Yun, and 2011 Xiaguan 8113 Spring Bulang.
These Teas Require Good Storage
Xiaguan is a tea that needs good storage and time. I am judging the tea I am having under its current conditions, not the tea production overall. The storage conditions play very heavily into my own enjoyment and ultimately rating of these teas. For instance I ended up preferring the 2005 T8653 January Thick Paper from southern China over the 2003 T8653 presumably stored in Taiwan. It’s very possible that the 2003 has better material, but its still abrasive, leading me to prefer the 2005. The 2005 XG FT8653-5 vs. 2006 XG TFT8653-6 is another case where the 9 years of storage in Seattle for the FT5 haven’t done it any favors. Given a storage reversal, I may end up preferring the opposite tea. So why not judge the base material of the tea? Frankly, it’s too much mental gymnastics and I’d rather judge what is in my cup and use the presumed storage history to add a small amount of context rather than apply some theoretical base material ranking. Adding to the storage confusion, even though Xiaguan is best stored in a hot and humid climate it is still possible to be too wet. There are a few teas this report that have had their potential muted by over-storage.
This is a category of tea where most of the teas I’ve acquired have been from the mainland and not Taiwan or Malaysia. A huge chunk were purchased through MX Tea, a taobao XG specialist, whose storage generally agrees with me. Selecting storage is also a big reason to use stores like TWL that curate their teas heavily. This will prevent potential errors like storage and batches even if the price you pay is a bit higher your batting average with these teas will also be pretty good.
The Teas
A quick note on ratings… I’ve tried to update my system to allow a bit more of a spectrum rather than grouping up everything together. So the rating update will not line up 100% with past ratings.
12/23/24 Schedule…. Tuos: The Day of the Crane
If there’s anything that typifies my feelings as a Xiaguan Masochist, it was a morning designed and dedicated to drinking through a pile of tuos. Why spend a torturous week drinking one a day when you can power through a bunch at once!? I ended up successfully getting through 8 and I feel pretty good about my judgements despite being pretty burnt out by lunchtime.. Here’s the rough schedule I had sketched out.
6:30AM Wake. Drink mediocre XG ripe pu’erh. 8AM Wife goes to work. 9AM Daughter takes nap. 9:02AM Operation Crane begins. 10:20AM Daughter wakes and dropped off at daycare. Temporary pause of Operation Crane. 10:45AM Operation Crane resumes. 11:47AM Runoff Crazy Crane Body Qi (just lots of caffeine) 12:42PM Eat pizza to restore body to equilibrium.
I used my bag of tricks to get through these… Double rinse, and being quick to dump cups once I get an assessment. This is limiting in some ways, but I do feel like I get reasonably good judgements without drinking too much caffeine.. The end result, two ended up in the give away bin. Here are the tuos in quick succession.
2004 Xiaguan Jiaji (6.4)
Pretty much all acquired from MX Tea. I didn’t feel the need to subject myself to all the Jiajis I have. The 2003, 2004, and 2005 are all pretty similar with a slight quality improvement by going back in years. I did that comparison before (see below).
Started with this as a reference tea. This is solid as far as Xiaguan goes. I don’t want to drink it that often, but it is satisfactory for a 20 year old factory tea. I wanted to start with the Jiaji to use it as a reference. It is thick, dense, and woody. Little sweetness. A bit of retired smoke. Sturdy little thing.
2004 Xiaguan FT T004 (4.8)
I bought a few sleeves of this from MX on a 11/11 deal in 2018. Supposedly an acclaimed tuo. I hadn’t had this in years and was hoping it’d be ready to drink. Unfortunately it’s not that great right now.. Sad, slow Seattle storage hasn’t moved it much. It does have a couple nice things going for it: the texture and smoothness. Although it has some density, it is thinner than the Jiaji from the same year. Both teas have an age score of 35, but this tastes relatively greener than the Jiaji. I suspect this has had lighter storage despite both coming from MX. Sometimes 20 years isn’t enough.. Back into storage..
2004 Xiaguan Canger FT (5.4)
This is much fruitier than the other tuos and is probably at about a 1:1 fruit to wood ratio. Depending on how you brew it, it can be somewhat sweet or quite astringent. It has a cohesive but simple profile. It doesn’t really hit my spots, but it’s alright if you like this profile (fruit forward). I’d give this away, but I think it’s OK as a reference since it’s quite different from the Jiaji.
2004 Xiaguan Songhe (3.2)
One of the least impressive teas of this run. Very thin, astringent and just really not much there. EVICTED!
I had assumed this was MX but found out later this was Kunming stored, makes sense..
2006 Xiaguan Purple Box Fangcha FT (5.5)
Muscatel and wood nose. Higher notes and more refined than the burly Jiaji in general. Body is a bit tangy but mixes in sweetness, wood and a bit of fruit (although not as much as the Canger). This is OK, but if it doesn’t meet my standards and I have enough similar stuff that I don’t really want it around. EVICTED!
This tea was one of the better teas in the original Xiaguan report. Sad!
2006 Xiaguan Gold Ribbon FT (6.6)
This was a Toby rec and I’ve always liked these mid 2000s gold box productions. They feel like an attempt at a slightly fancier product that doesn’t require the heavier storage hand others do. Interesting to have this back to back with the Purple Box. They both have a similar muscatel-wood profile. The Jinsi (Gold Ribbon), however, is more enjoyable. Nice silky texture, smoother, and good balance of sweetness. The density is still nice and it feels more substantial than the Purple Box. This is not an amazing tea, but is one of the highest rated tuo of the report. It’s good and solid provided expectations aren’t too high. I think the Nanzhao fits into this same niche, but even one more step in the refined direction.
2008 Xiaguan Xizi FT (5.7)
This is higher noted with more florals and brown sugar. Probably a byproduct of not having undergone as much southern Chinese storage. Similar to other FT products it is a bit sweeter with a bit of retired smoke. It’s OK.
2005 Xiaguan Yincang (6.4)
After all those tuos, I was in the mood to evict this but it ended up winning me over. Wood, resin, nice texture. Maybe the tea most similar to the Jiaji, in the sense that it leans heavily towards a woody and not particularly sweet profile. There’s decent density here too. The main reason to go for the Jiaji over this is the fact that it is such a standard reference.
After enduring all eight of these in a single morning, I felt about as alert and sickened as I would if a tatted up yakuza were shouting at me.
Other Tuos
2010 Xiaguan DX Tuo (5.2)
Recommended to me by Toby. This has an annoyingly bulky box that makes the Jiaji box look reasonable (sleeves are the best).
Definitely somewhat different from a standard Xiaguan tuo. Maybe a second cousin from out of town. The age score is a lot lower (25) than anything else this month and it really does show. It has two standout features that set it apart, (a) a more refined silk texture and (b) decent mouth coating sweetness. It is intriguing, but too green to drink now. Also on the downside it’s body isn’t as dense or as substantial as other Xiaguans that rank higher in this report which is a bit concerning long term. Scott sells a 2010 brick from DX that might be interesting as an easier purchasing channel.
2004 Xiaguan FT Nanzhao (6.7)
A last minute addition picked up from LP’s January releases. I’d always had this one on my radar as it’s a well known tea and while you can technically get it cheaper on Taobao, I was also curious about the Malaysian storage. This production specifically (2004) may or may not have Banzhang material in it. My previous notes with it a decade ago had it as a tea of note, coming across as a highly atypical Xiaguan. This is the first year of this special production which makes it more sought after. First year productions are also sometimes a bit better than the same product a few years later.
Redrinking it 10 years later my notes line up closely. Even more than the XG gold ribbon the Nanzhao really doesn’t taste like normal Xiaguan or for that matter Banzhang. It does however have some nice throatiness, texture, and a good aftertaste. It is lightly oily, not particularly dense, leaning more towards a refined profile. Taste profile is antique wood, herbal with some light raisin sweeetness. This is one of the nicer tuos of the month, but it just doesn’t really feel as dense and packed like more standard Crane Brand. Firmly represents the softer side of Xiaguan.
2011 Xiaguan FT Nanzhao (5.6)
Sent by Emilio at The Jade Leaf as a sample, conveniently making this a nice comparison. Like the 2004, the 2011 has a softer profile and is much more drinkable than you’d think given its relative youth. They both feel like cousins to the Gold Ribbon Tuos. Nice sweetness, texture, smoke in a pleasant way. Mostly woody with a touch of fruit. Lacks the density and strength you’d expect from a more typical Xiaguan, but this is cheap and cheerful if you want something inexpensive and softer than 90% of Xiaguan teas.
2003 Xiaguan FT 7623 (5.5)
This one was from Chawangshop back in the day. It’s ultimately very baseline. Starts out with a bit of fruit to accompany the standard wood Xiaguan taste. It is not bad but if I haven’t drank it in the 10 years of having it and does not show anything intriguing in this session that would change that. It’s just not interesting enough to keep around. Evicted!
2003 Xiaguan Jiaji (5.8) via SF
Tried blind from Phobos after another blind sample. Thanks! Very woody. Has undergone some lightish traditional storage or gotten a bit wet. The tuo is very woody, and creamy, a bit milky. It’s not bad, but I don’t find it to be very satisfying. Having this after the superior 2003 Xiaguan 8653 does the tea no favors.
I was somewhat surprised as the tea does not resemble the 2003 XG Jiaji I have from MX at all. The tea could’ve masqueraded as even older and it would not have shocked me. Storage for Xiaguan can be too light, but also overdone as is the case here. Storage is king!
2002 Xiaguan Teji (6.0)
This one is not from MX, but from a Shenzhen vendor that kept his tea on the dry-side of things. Unfortunately this is a tea that could’ve used more of a push and similar to the T004 is a disappointment despite its age score being relatively high (42). It crosses me as a classical wood, retired smoke, lightly sweet Xiaguan that was stored dry and isn’t as juicy or as substantial as you would hope for a 23 year old tuo. It is a similar level to the Jiaji but I enjoy it less, likely due to the storage. This one will go back into storage.
FT Tuos – sweeter, softer, a bit more texture, a little better?
Having all these teas in a short succession has some definite advantages and disadvantages. One disadvantage is it’s a pretty unenjoyable way to drink and appreciate tea. Teas I enjoy like the Gold Ribbon or even the Jiaji were used as more of a measuring stick rather than something to appreciate and enjoy.
One advantage is that you can more clearly see possible patterns. FT seems to have a reputation for being a bit less brash than vanilla XG. In the tuos I found FT were on average more textured, a bit sweeter, slightly softer, with improved longevity. I’d probably describe them as a little better, but it depends a lot on the individual production and year. I also wouldn’t make any hard rules like always buy FT or never buy regular XG products.
Note: I wouldn’t describe the difference in XG vs. XG FT cakes the same way, although (IMO) the FT Pink #4’s most notable attribute is its texture.
Cakes
2013 Xiaguan FT Love Forever Paper Tong (7.1)
Really a XINO (Xiaguan in name only). For those unfamiliar with the alleged origin story… The tea is made of aged maocha that was supposedly leftover from famous Dayi productions (Jin Dayi) in 2003. Sure! Whatever you say FT..
It is hard to know what to believe but the profile is far more Menghai-ish and aged than a typical 2013 production. The tea used to be quite burly and bitter, but turned the corner shortly after I got gifted a tong for my wedding in 2017. The tea is very tasty now with a fruit-wood profile. Good thickness and while it can certainly get bitter its sharper edges have softened a lot. Others have noted a cherry like note to this, and while I wouldn’t quite describe it that way it has some brightness to it that vaguely resembles a cherry note. This has also always been a cake that people complain about inconsistencies, but since I’m experienced with the material (I’ve finished a cake) I’ve learned to lean in or out of the tea and don’t really get bad sessions with it.
One small tip on this one: don’t be stingy and brew up lots of dust. This is probably good advice in general, but especially true for something that is punchy and sensitive to a heavy hand like LFPT.
2009 Xiaguan DX 7223 (6.5)
Picked one up from MX at the end of last year on a whim. Like Love Forever this uses aged maocha and is a special production, made by Dehexin who supposedly had their hand in the Double Lions along with the Malaysian teahouse. This is a Bulang blend from 2005-2007 and the less expensive production they made this year. The more costly production allegedly has Banzhang.
The tea is overall pretty good, but not as big a hit as I had hoped. Certainly not a home run or even a double.. Maybe a single. It has a nice fruit sweetness that coats the throat. A bit woody. Mostly it is not as big as I hoped, feeling a bit narrow and not too much Bulang bitter. Some retired smoke. Still a bit resinous and has some room to improve. Overall I prefer the stronger Xiaguan LFPT, but I could easily see an alternate universe where this tea garners a similar level of popularity to LFPT. Not a bad one to seek out if a relatively affordable ($50ish) aged Bulang blend sounds appealing.
2006 Xiaguan FT Pink #4 (6.2)
Recommended to me by Toby ages ago. I was surprised by this one as it was better than my memory. Nice aroma and this tea hints at smoke more than other teas in this report. Woody, reasonably thick, and some residual sweetness. I do think the ceiling is limited for such teas. It is mostly just decent and expectations have to be tempered. But it has solid density and the texture does stand out. You can still track this one down easily for a pretty reasonable price. Compared to my previous notes it is considerably improved. I pulled my cake into rotation where we’ll see how it does on the speed test.
2004 Xiaguan FT 8653-3+1 (7.4)
Turned onto this by Toby and Emilio of The Jade Leaf in 2017/2018? I had the TW stored version which I believe Emilio sells. This is an interesting tea.. It is extremely pungent, resinous, oily, menthol-heavy and woody. It also feels substantial with good strength and density. After a challenging Christmas Day, this tea was particularly satisfying. I think this tea is worth checking out even if you’ve had the conventional T8653. I quite enjoy it and it crosses me as significantly different from the 2005 T8653 Thick Paper or the 2003 T8653 which are much more similar to one another. I do think the FT8653-3+1 is very likely to be polarizing due to its very pungent characteristics. This is one that isn’t talked about that much, but perhaps should be.
I did manage to re-try this before the end of the report and indeed still like it, even as it wasn’t as pungent and intense as my Christmas Day session. The notes aren’t that different from normal Xiaguan 8653, but it presents very differently in ways that are obvious if you have them side by side.
I unexpectedly had the opportunity to pickup a few cakes of this for an attractive 2000NTD, so did end up buying 3 more cakes. Thanks Quiche!
2005 Xiaguan FT 8653-5 (6.6)
Bought a cake from MX back in 2015. This is decent and serviceable and basically a more palatable version of the 2004. Unfortunately it does suffer a bit in comparison with the 3+1 and falls on the wrong side of boring at times. The base flavor profile is the same: menthol, wood, some oiliness but it does not feel as substantial. It is unclear to me how much is the original material vs. the storage, the experience it offers is a significant step down from the 3+1. Consumed against the thick paper later and it holds up reasonably well. The thickness and oiliness is impressive but it is also a bit hollow in comparison with the standard Iron Thick January.
2006 Xiaguan FT T8653-6 (6.8)
Perhaps due to being an iron cake, this is a bit different than the 2004 and 2005 FT I have. Some smoke that seems like it is on the way out. I think the extra time in a humid climate (the 2005 FT has been in Seattle for nearly a decade) has benefited it. Profile is a mix of wood, pine, menthol which sounds similar to normal T8653, but does present itself a bit different than standard Xiaguan. Consistent with some of the other FT products it has a pleasing, refined texture. Still powdery and can use more time but definitely heading in the right direction. Not as satisfying as the 2004 FT 8653, but more than the 2005.
2003 Xiaguan Xiaofei 8653 (7.2) SF
Blind from Phobos. Smells like 8653, menthol wood, oily, mouthcooling. Herbal, nice texture, a bit of depth to the back of the mouth. After having this revealed, it’s nice to know that non iron 8653 can follow a similar cake trajectory as iron cake 8653 provided it has the right storage.
This is pretty close to my ideal storage for Xiaguan. Interestingly it comes from Shunfeng who is all over the map on storage, some too wet and others like this pretty good.
2006 Xiaguan XY BGT (6.3)
From a part of a blind sampling a few years ago. Made by XY.
This is technically a decent tea just generic and boring (to me). It is also very un-Xiaguan like. It has decent thickness, plum sweetness, wood. It’s fine and has nice clarity with its profile just pretty dull. I’ve had the 2012 and had similar feelings.
2001 Xiaguan XY 8853 (7)
Stored by a Shenzhen dealer who keeps his teas drier (same as Teji). Also made by XY.
Similar to the 2006 Xiaguan BGT, this has a very clear profile that is a bit different than XG. It is also technically a decent tea, but I find it dull for its pricepoint. Rather than the classic wood-pine-methol, this is far more wood dominant. It is oily but a lot less than a T8653. Also a bit more retired smoke than those teas. Good mouth sweetness and thickness.
I’ve heard there’s a few versions of the 2001 8853, so that could perhaps account for some of the difference here.
2001 Xiaguan XY Green Chawang (7.4)
These two Chawangs were generously supplied by Emmett, thank you! They both have the Yang storage, but neither one really tastes like his warehouse.
The storage has moved this to a much better place than the 8853. Ye Binghuai (the maker) says this is an Yiwu and while I don’t have a firm opinion, I do not find that completely unbelievable. Although the processing is obviously far more in a factory style, the tea reaches deeper and has a stronger throat feel than almost all the other Xiaguans in this report. Soft, woody, silky texture. It is not an overly complex tea but it is a satisfying one with a good lingering sweetness.. I finish the session feeling quite nice.
2001 Xiaguan XY Yellow Chawang (7.4)
Also from the Yang warehouse. Thanks Emmett! This is roughly the same caliber tea as the Green with a few differences (keeping in mind I’m judging from just a couple sessions).
It feels like it is also turning the corner, and is perhaps a few years behind the Green. It has a greener fragrance, more resin and retired smoke. The tea is also a bit more flavor-forward with wood, muscatel sweetness, and a light tang. Texture is a bit more syrup rather than silk. Overall, I’d say this is more complex with an interesting mouthfeel and a bit more active than the Green but with less depth and throat feel. I liked my session with the Green more but this is also a satisfying tea.
2001 Green Sun (7.4)
Not a Xiaguan, but made by Ye Binghuai as well. And also supposedly an Yiwu.. Also from Yang’s storage (thanks again 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. Pleasant, soft, sweet, potpourri, resin, wood. More “Yiwuish” than the Xiaguans. Has a nice throat sweetness.. I am a sucker for these teas, even if this has relatively short longevity.
Iron Cakes (non FT)
2005 Xiaguan T8653 Thick Paper January (7.2)
Bought four of these in 2021 from MX with no regrets. It’s one of my reference cakes and I’ve drank quite a bit of a cake. The profile is a familiar one if you’ve drank any Xiaguan iron cake 8653 from this period. Oily, thick, menthol, heavy wood and pine profile. No smoke. Longevity is just OK but it is very satisfying. In this case, the batch is clearly good and the storage helps to complete the tea (MX is a Xiaguan specialist). Very nice all around and easily passes the speed test.
For those that are curious about the thin version or non Iron I’ve recorded a video on the Thick vs. Thin vs. a non-Iron. I’d heartily recommend a well-stored thick paper version (January/February/March).
2005 Xiaguan Grade A Iron Cake February (6.8)
I bought this back in 2020 for reasons I no longer remember. Someone said it was sort of like 8653 and MX didn’t have any at the time? This is the first batch and while it doesn’t quite live up to the T8653 it is good and enjoyable. Oily, menthol, wood. Resinous.. Just a little thin compared to the iron cake, but overall satisfying. Decent aftertaste.
2004 Xiaguan? 8653?? Iron from Malaysia (6.9)
This was picked up by a local tea buddy on his trip back home to Malaysia. Thanks Meng! Meng, Garrett, and I split four cakes three ways as a fun way to sample some of the local offerings. It was supposedly T8653 like or going for something similar. They were mostly around $50-60 and all were good for the money. This ended up being my favorite of the batch. I was curious to see how this tea would match up with all the other iron cakes being consumed.
It stacks up pretty well! It is thick and very oily, with the familiar heavy pine/wood/resin. It is very believably Xiaguan like. Doesn’t brew out forever but it has a likable 8653-ish profile. Even my wife who normally does not enjoy non-trad sheng, didn’t mind a couple cups I gave her.
2003 Xiaguan T8653 (6.6)
From a sample a couple years ago. Xiaguan is one type of tea where I don’t own many TW-stored stuff. This was an interesting session, partly because it was (surprisingly to me) a bit less satisfying than the MX Xiaguans. In this era, you’d expect earlier productions to be a bit better, so this ran counter to my own expectations.
I think it boils down to storage. In the case of the others, they were stored in Malaysia (2004 XG Iron) or by MX (a XG specialist in Guangdong). This tea while not poorly stored has not yet ironed out the more rough acrid edges that make it an inferior experience, despite what is possibly superior material.
A bit tart, acrid, and bitter. Gets very oily with a nice mouthcoat. Familiar wood, menthol. Hints at more retired smoke than other iron cakes. Above average longevity.
2001 Xiaguan T8653 Da Hongfei (6)
This is a Kunming stored Da Hongfei version from Yunnan Sourcing. Supposedly the Heifei has more potent material. Info on the different 2001 versions (Thanks Phobos).
This is quite slow to get going, and does start out smoother than one might expect. It does eventually get heavier, very resinous with some bitterness. While it isn’t particularly thick this is quite green. Storage is king when it comes to Xiaguan. It hints but doesn’t quite get to the menthol, wood note that the wetter stored teas have. You can get a thicker brew, but are hit with a potent bitterness.
1999 Xiaguan T8653 (7) Shenzhen Vendor
From the Shenzhen vendor who keeps his teas dry. This is both one of the better teas of the month and also a disappointment.
On its own it is an enjoyable enough brew, but I do not find this meaningfully more enjoyable compared with the 2005 T8653. It gets very oily and extremely woody. Curiously missing the menthol note, but otherwise fits into the nice pine wood profile. Overall pretty simple and I think it’d be pretty satisfying if I could set my expectations more appropriately. Similar to the 2001, I’m left wondering what an MX stored version of this would be like.
1999 Xiaguan T8653 (7) Shunfeng
From Shunfeng on Taobao. Same rating as the one from Shenzhen, but very different drinks.
While the Shenzhen vendor keeps his teas drier than my preferences, this one unfortunately swings too far the other way. This seems to have gotten some traditional storage early on and has aged beyond that menthol, wood phase. It still resembles a Xiaguan cake and it certainly isn’t Yee On level of traditional storage, but the storage is not ideal. It is a pleasing easy drinker, oily, woody, and in the end quite a simple tea. Slightly younger 8653 give a hint at what might’ve been. Interestingly, neither 1999 T8653 had that cooling menthol note that I get in the 2000s XG Iron Cakes. Until I try a more ideally stored one I will chalk that up to storage.
Iron Cakes > Tuos
After all the tuos these iron cakes were a refreshing change and on average much better than the tuos. I am noting to myself that iron cakes stored in popular hot and humid hotspots are starting to get into a very nice place at around 20 years.
Brewing these is a bit different than normal caked pu’erh. I used a gaiwan, which I found effective because of the fuller feedback you get. You can easily see the liquor color and leaves unfurling very easily. This allows you to modulate the brews more easily than in a pot. In my case, I believe it outweighed the positive of extra heat retention and allowed me to brew more evenly. I also got into a good rhythm with them as I brewed them relatively regularly for this report.
For Comparison’s Sake
One thing I like to do towards the end of these themed drinkings is brew something that would make a good comparison. In this case, big factory raw from the mid 2000s from other factories, Dayi and Mengku Rongshi.
2006 Dayi 8582 (7.2)
This is probably my favorite Dayi recipe, and I’ve always found it does better on the speed test than 7542. Nice big, broad body, woody, coats the mouth in sweetness. This one is ready to be consumed: thick, reasonably smooth, with a pleasing texture. Similar to the 2005 T8653, very satisfying and refreshing after mediocre Xiaguan. This beats most of the teas from this month. Sorry Crane Gang, but Big Benefits > Shimonseki.
2004 Mengku Rongshi Qizibing (7)
Similar to the 8582, this one fits as a comparison point. An aged factory production from the mid 2000s. It was also probably one of the best value buys I ever did, costing something like $25. In some ways I prefer it to the more esteemed YYX from an earlier year. This has the added benefit of being northern as well.
The tea is nothing crazy, but a solid workhouse. A clear profile that isn’t very dynamic but simple and enjoyable. It’s the sort of tea you drink a bunch when you’re more settled in your taste, provided you like the profile. This easily passes the speed test in my case. Wood, coco, mid-level thickness. Brews out for a while with a generally warming and not cold profile. Compared to Xiaguan teas in this report, it is very different. Basically goes for very different profiles with none of that menthol, pine, wood, resin activity that dominates the 8653 and other XGs. Interesting to try but not especially informative in this context.
2000 Mengtong Jiaji (6.4)
An off-brand tuo sold by YS. It’s decent and drinkable. Relatively on par with Jiaji. It has ideal storage that has moved the tea along but not too wet. Lots of retired smoke that hints heavily at a previous life as a smoke heavy tea. Otherwise, woody, burly, with some sweetness.
Trad. Stored & Old Ripes
These don’t really fit with the other teas but are fun easy drinkers made by Xiaguan.
2001 Xiaguan Pine Crane Jiaji Tuo (8)
Sold and stored by Yee On.
A pretty ideal traditionally stored tea. Oily, rich, wood. Has a heavy earthy, beetroot sweetness. A bit of syrup texture. Makes me wish there were more well done traditional stored XG available. You could add a bunch of notes that are synonyms to earth, but it’s mostly just a richer, nicer traditionally stored pu’erh.
1994 Xiaguan Tuo Ripe (7.5)
Another one sold by Yee On.
This is not a complex tea, but a simple profile that is very satisfying. Rich, creamy, ginseng, beetroot. Fairly thick and lightly sweet. For me this is chuggable tea. If you are someone that thinks they just like raw and have avoided traditionally stored ripe, please consider trying some of this and the cheaper Yee offerings.
1990s Xiaguan Brick (6.6), friend
Picked up by a tea friend in the last couple years. Fairly low grade material (as one would expect), and possibly traditionally stored early on. It is an easy to drink, smooth brew. It has a nice silk texture. Nothing crazy but an interesting time capsule towards the humble tea blue-collar big factories were cranking out in the 1990s.
1990s Xiaguan Brick (6.7), Houde
A sample bought from Houde. This is more or less as expected. Solid, medium-thick, wood, hints of dates (feels like a cousin of 7581). One reason I like traditionally stored ripe is it adds an interesting herbal+ginseng element to it. This is a perfectly functional drinker that while solid is also kind of dull. I do think teas of this caliber will depend a lot on the individual preferences. There is certainly some enjoyable characteristics. It is a tea that knows what it is and offers a clear, defined profile. I rank this a slight bit higher than the other brick as the base material crosses me as a bit better and it offers a thicker, denser brew.
VOATO: What is the Average Factory Tea? What is the Average Xiaguan?
One of the goals here was establishing the ATO (Average Tea Owned) in this category (Xiaguan). The average is probably the 2004/05 Jiaji, a relatively ordinary tea that can still be bought for under $0.20/g. If single tuos or cakes are worse than that, they should probably be removed unless they can bring something else to the table. The 2005 T8653 January Thick Paper is better than the average but is probably the better benchmark particularly for the cakes.
If I were to extrapolate this out to factory tea I own, I think the Jiaji would fall a little below average.
These Teas are Inexpensive
Many of these teas have not appreciated that much in price. The tuos in particular are good budget buys provided you like their profile. On the day of the crane, those 40 grams of ~20 year old tea probably set me back something like $3. Hard to beat.
The cakes and iron cakes are a bit more, and probably also where most people should start as the quality is on average higher. The January Thick Paper can be acquired for very reasonable $/g prices, the challenge is finding good storage. The TWL is pricier than other sources, but they do a good job vetting so it’s one I’d likely recommend if you don’t want to shop around too much.
For Your Consideration: $15 2004 Jiaji vs. $10 2005 Jiaji
Consider this case. The $15 2004 Jiaji and the $10 2005 Jiaji.. These teas sold for approximately these price from MX not long ago. They have a similar profile but the 2004 clearly has better material if you side by side them. The 2004 cost $5 or 50% more. Is the tea 50% better? Definitely not.. Perhaps 15-20%? But the $5 additional cost is spread across several sessions. A 5g session, costs a measly $0.25 extra per session. In my opinion a worthwhile tradeoff if your budget isn’t super tight.. Consider spending up for better quality even if it isn’t value optimization.
Why Own These Teas? What is the Upside of These Teas?
I am dubious of these teas aging into anything great. Things like the 2006 Xiaguan Pink, which improved a bit, are unlikely to be anything beyond a solid daily drink.
I bought a lot of the Xiaguan as a low-risk way to get diversity into my stash inexpensively. The positive case is that some of them, especially the ones I own in some quantity, should be decent workhorse teas. And since workhorse teas are the majority of teas I drink, there is a distinct and clear purpose. That all being said, even this more positive case isn’t that exciting. All those cakes of pink do take up space that could be something else.
What do I Actually Own? & Would I Do it Again?
I own quite a bit of:
2013 FT LFPT (no regrets)
2010 XG DX Tuo (minor regrets)
2006 FT Pink #4 (minor regrets)
2006 Jinsi Gold Ribbon (no regrets)
2005 T8653 January Thick Paper (no regrets)
2004/05 Jiaji (no regrets)
2004 FT T004 (minor regrets)
If I were to do this over I’d buy more 2005 Thick paper and avoid the T004 and Pink. I’d probably also get some 2004 Xiaguan FT8653-3+1. The T004 and Pink aren’t huge mistakes as they’re OK and inexpensive. The main thing they take up is space. Their price also hasn’t gone up much, so I would’ve been better off buying them after they’d gotten a few more years of superior storage. I’m still curious to see where they’ll go even if I would not buy them again. The DX Tuo is kind of annoying due to its huge box size but it’s still too young to decide if it’s a dud, although I probably should’ve waited 5-10 years before buying that too.
Storage matters a lot and makes a big impact on your cup. I cannot give these teas accelerated aging, so buying something that is already in a decent place is important. It makes sense to be very particular and fussy about storage in the same way that we are with boutique tea. If you have a hotbox or are in SE Asia, the calculation might be different. But for those of us with an unheated pumidor I think its a good reminder to be very choosy about the storage on teas we buy for later.
Recommendations
Buy these teas:
2005 Xiaguan Thick Paper Jan/Feb T8653 (Stored Somewhere Hot+Humid)
2004/05 Xiaguan Jiaji Tuo (Stored Somewhere Hot+Humid)
2004/06 Xiaguan Gold Ribbon Tuo or 2004/2005 Xiaguan Nanzhao Tuo (Stored Somewhere Hot+Humid)
Why the T8653? A good version represents the appeal of the Xiaguan very well. I am very happy with the cakes I own. There are of course other Xiaguan recipes but I’ve been relatively unenthusiastic about my experience with the 8613 and 8673 (episodes are out for both). The Jiaji iron is decent enough, but I think the January Iron 8653 is the better bet.
As for the Jiaji tuo. There are other tuos I prefer to this, and I like it significantly less than the iron cake but its decent and representative of a certain Xiaguan profile. The profile is also pretty different from the T8653. MX still has this in stock as of early 2025.
The Gold Ribbon and Nanzhao occupy the softer, more approachable Xiaguan niche, something that hasn’t been well covered in the west but should be. Both are nice blends, smoother, and less abrasive. I recommend everyone check them out as they are ready to drink much sooner than conventional Xiaguan.
If you want to try more:
2004 Xiaguan FT8653-3+1 – Unique character that sounds similar but is different from the standard T8653.
2013 Xiaguan Love Forever Paper Tong – Highly atypical XG with some inconsistencies, but a decent Menghai-ish blend. I would not spend over $100 on this personally, but if you can get it for the right price.
Back to Their Cheap & Cheerful Qualities… Xiaguan Budget Propaganda
There’s a lot of tea besides Xiaguan. Heck there’s a lot of northern tea that hardly ever gets talked about or sold to the west, like Baichatang. But.. If you were stuck in Xiaguan jail with $ per day to spend ~$365 and you drink 10 grams a day, what would you buy?
Here’s one proposal. Disregarding shipping.
$120ish – 357 grams 1x 2004 T8653-3+1
$100ish- 357 grams 1x 2005 T8653 Thick Paper
$39 – 600 grams 6x 2007 Gold Ribbon (48RMB for 1 on SF)
$68 – 1000 grams 10x 2005 Jiaji (248RMB for 5 on MX)
$30 – 1428 grams 4x 2019 T8633 Ripe (55RMB on MX)
$357 – 3,742 grams.
And there you have two pretty good Xiaguans and a lot of daily drinking teas that are 18-20 years of age. The rest is filled in with a decent amount of ripe filler from a reliable Xiaguan recipe. I would not be excited about drinking this for a full year, but that’s not bad for a modest budget and a decent tea appetite of 10 grams a day.
Will I Buy More?
My buying has slowed down and I tend to only buy multiple cakes of things a few times a year. I also do not care about value like I used to, so the inexpensive nature of these cakes has more limited appeal than it did to me in 2016. That being said I am still likely to acquire two teas in the future. More T8653 (likely from 2005 or earlier) and the FT8653-3+1 (which I have since acquired). Despite both carrying the 8653 banner and being just a year apart they offer different experiences. The T8653 2005 January is a solid tea and a good reference point. I own 5 cakes already, but I think this is one I can drink for a long time. There are a number of similarish cakes to this here, but this production does standout for its quality and price.
As for the FT 8653-3+1 when I made an instagram post on it, Emilio of the The Jade Leaf commented that the pungency of this tea was compared to the phermones emitted by mature women in a popular Taiwanese blog. A suitable description to a highlight tea in the Xiaguan Masochist report.
I’ve been fortunate to meet and get connected with a variety of drinkers and pu’erh collectors throughout the years. One of these fine folks is Geraldo of Far Wenwa, who was a collaborator for the old tea blog Chadao. I recommend people check out his store if you want a taste of US stored tea (based a couple hours east of Seattle). He is in the first wave of western pu’erh drinkers, a nice guy, his prices aren’t bad and the storage is interesting. Geraldo bought the bulk of his tea back in the mid 2000s, when the pu’erh scene in the west was in its infancy. It was acquired partly through traveling, places like Taishunhe, some from Jing Tea Shop and some through a very young ebay store called Yunnan Sourcing.
One tea I had from Geraldo is the 2005 Dayi Menghai Peacock. This is one of the fancier products from what has become an increasingly expensive year for Dayi. A friend bought some back in 2016 and I ended up with a cake and some leftovers. At the time I dismissed it as needing more time and put it in my storage. It’s now hung out in my storage for about nearly a decade. The tea currently sells for a very high (dumb) price in China, so I decided to retry it, given it is now 20 years old, and stored almost exclusively in Washington state.. So how is it?? You can tell there’s high quality material here, but it still needs more time. It brews a faint orange and the green edge of younger sheng is still quite prominent. And most depressingly, the tea is 20 years ago. This is true not just for the Menghai Peacock but for a lot of the teas that have been exclusively western dry-stored. I tried a few teas with lesser pedigree (2004 6FM Youle/Yiwu) and the results are not anymore promising. This is not to insult Geraldo as a large chunk of the storage time was spent in my care!
I originally thought 20 years or so would be a good amount of time to age a tea to achieve a satisfactory level of aging. 20 years is a long time! It is also a long enough amount of time that you can trick yourself into waiting. Western dry storage on decent factory teas, even with humidity added, has only slowly moved it. Some people talk about teas eventually turning a corner. It hasn’t happened yet.. Perhaps in another 20 years? In unheated pumidor land we are most definitely not on the express train for aged tea.
You could argue that many of the classics needed more than 20 years of dry storage, but I think we’re talking about an entirely different beast (slow western storage vs. HK Dry).
There is Very Little Exclusively Western Stored Teas Aged to a Satisfying Amount
This is the sad state of (unheated) western storage. I’ve had teas that are moving in the right direction, but there’s very little that has been exclusively western stored that I’d consider to be a good aged tea. This is a bit unfair as there’s not many people that have stored tea for 20 years. I also don’t doubt someone like shah, based in the south, will have some decent enough aged tea given enough time. Still, the lack of track record 20 years after Geraldo and the early western pioneers bought pu’erh is concerning.
Ways Around The Long Term Aging Question (Buying Already Aged, 6FM, Hotbox)
I get around the aging dilemma by buying teas that are a lot more aged from a hotter and more humid climate than my own. Taiwan, Guangzhou, Hong Kong, Malaysia, etc.. This has more or less worked especially for certain types of teas that have the greener edge already taken off before purchase.. For instance, Yiwu and other 6 famous mountain productions are a category I’m alright drinking with around 10ish years of Taiwanese or Guangdong storage. After some time in Seattle, it’s not totally clear how much they’ve changed but I still like them and my storage has at least maintained them. Even something like the 2006 Chenguanghetang Yiwu Yecha stored in Houston and Seattle isn’t bad, although I’d probably like the tea more if it had a decade in Malaysia instead.
Less successfully, the factory (Dayi and Xiaguan) teas just need longer. Despite a generally favorable opinion of Dayi teas and following a similar buying strategy of purchasing semi-aged tea, there’s very few I’ve bought that I enjoy drinking. Not because the material is bad, they’re just too green and abrasive for my tastes and need more time. Most are moving in the right direction, but aren’t at an acceptable point to be easy enough to drink. Part of this is my preference for smoother, darker tea that not everyone shares. But a lot of it is simply that the good versions of these teas were not created for immediate drinking and certainly not for storage in western climates. Drinking them you can also tell they are not close to their potential yet. As a final caveat, it is possible 10 years from now many of them will have turned the curve and changed my own feelings on that topic..
Another potentially promising storage method would be Marco-style hotboxing. Heated storage has really caught on out west, especially amongst newer pu’erh enthusiasts. I’ve tasted the Bosch from Marco a few years back and it seemed promising. For myself, this sort of storage is unlikely for reasons mostly related to my personal life. I have too much tea that takes a good deal of space already (unlikely to change) and I doubt setting up another huge project will improve my WAF (Wife Acceptance Factor). Despite this, if I was a part of the new generation of drinkers without a huge quantity of cakes, it’s likely I would’ve been one of the hotboxers.
Final Note: If you’ve been hotboxing for a few years and want to donate a sample, I would be curious to try.
Like many western tea hobbyists I have a strong openness to culinary experience, translating into trying new (to me) foods. At one point in my early 20s I was introduced to a place called Sichuan Cuisine in Seattle. They have a couple locations in the area and I really liked it. It was something new and different from the Cantonese cuisine I had grown up with. It had distinct dishes, like twice cooked pork, boiled fish, and Dandan noodles. I was introduced to the “mala” spice of both spicy and numbing. I brought my parents and then-girlfriend to it, who all liked it as well… After that, I tried Sichuanese food at a variety of other places, most of which were similar to my introduction. Fast-forward several years and a new well known Sichuan place was opening up in Seattle that had roots in the San Gabriel Valley (one of the best locations for non-Cantonese Chinese food in North America) called Chengdu Taste. When I looked at Chengdu Taste’s menu it looked somewhat similar to Sichuan Cuisine. They had a few different things but many of the dishes were the same (Kung Pao Chicken, Boiled Fish, Twiced Cooked Pork, etc.). However, once I visited Chengdu Taste the differences between the two restaurants was obvious. It forced me to realize that Sichuan Cuisine was a tapered down version of what the more pungent Chengdu offered. The spice levels at Chengdu Taste were not only much higher, it was way more numbing and it was less sweet and salty. For some dishes it mattered more than others.. In a dish like boiled fish, rather than a scant eighth teaspoon of Sichuan peppercorns, the fragrance of the peppercorns wafted up and the numbing was many many times more intense than versions I had previously.
I had gotten hints of what the more intense version was simply by reading and making them, but it really took trying Chengdu Taste to understand what the flavor profile could be. You can learn by reading, but experiencing something is better. I like to make some of these sorts of dishes, and tasting Chengdu Taste once, immediately improved my own versions of these dishes.
Learning With Wuyi & Aged Oolongs
Sometimes learning and leveling up with tea more closely resembles a linear pattern… Grinding, drinking lots of different samples, taking notes, and getting repetitions. Doing this, you’ll slowly improve naturally. Other times it doesn’t and it takes getting introduced to something superior and/or different at the right time. In the case of my own appreciation of Sichuan food, this was an immediate realization and a quick level up. Just a few bites in I realized I was in for something very different from the many experiences I’d had with other Sichuanese food before. I’ve had similar realizations in aged oolong as well as Wuyi. In the case of both of those tea types it was through Origin Tea (see: The Box), who had a short but glorious existence.
With Wuyi tea I had mostly drank alright stuff from places like Yunnan Sourcing until I tried Tony’s $/g Shuixian which opened my eyes to what a Yancha could be. The tea was very good, but it’s also not something that can be communicated easily through tasting notes. The base notes were similar to an average Shuixian but the tea was richer, thicker, more textured, and better than anything I’d had before it. This hasn’t necessarily reduced my enjoyment of other Yancha, since the good stuff remains expensive and very hard to get. I’m perfectly happy drinking decent enough teas from WuyiOrigin. And even if you don’t drink the good stuff every day having experience with it helps to contextualize, get a strong reference point and form a fuller picture of the possibilities of tea.
At what point you try the tea is important. In the past, I’ve served what I think is pretty nice pu’erh to newcomers and I can tell that they fail to impress in a way that something cheaper and more flavor forward might have (various oolongs are usually best). It is not just about providing the tea, but about the person drinking tea. What sorts of teas have they had? Have they had pu’erh before? If the $/g Shuixian from Origin was my first Wuyi tea ever, I definitely would’ve liked it. But it also probably wouldn’t have been as meaningful as it ended up being. The grind of lesser Wuyi teas was helpful in allowing me to distinguish what made Origin’s Shuixian a cut above.
Raise your levels with these teas! OK. Maybe not that high.
Tea w/Other People & Pushing Other’s Baseline Up
Drinking and learning from those with more experience is a great way to learn. In the west many of us are very isolated and while we can certainly improve and appreciate tea on our own, learning as a tea hermit is different from learning in a more social environment. Yes reading Marshaln’s blog front to back is a great way to learn and online is better than nothing, but there is quite a bit missing when you are doing tea strictly online. There is not necessarily a surefire way to “level up” in tea easily, but you improve your chances by aiming for good tea & interacting with others, ideally those who know more.
If you want to introduce someone to more serious tea or push a newer drinker, be thoughtful about their experience with tea and try to go a level or two up. If someone is not a tea drinker or has never had mediocre quality loose leaf tea, it usually doesn’t take too much to push their palate and find something different or interesting to them. If someone drinks more ordinary oolong everyday, try introducing a really nice Yancha or aged oolong. If someone is just getting into pu’erh with younger tea, serve something nicer that you don’t think they may have had like an older tea. I suspect most who are reading this blog have access to far better tea than 99% of the western world. This makes you qualified to help a lot of people reach higher tea levels.
The very low baseline tea level for US tea drinkers (probably western?) is likely a reason why so many inferior vendors exist. Even these vendors can impress people with slightly less crap loose leaf tea if a person’s only tea experiences are old tea bags.. These unimpressive vendors are technically raising people’s level, but we can and should aim higher.
Lastly, some people will also taste or get introduced to a certain profile that is considered better and not see the hype or not care for it. Other members of my family still love Sichuan Cuisine, despite a couple introductions to the (IMO) significantly better Chengdu Taste. This is fine.. After all, everyone has their own preferences and even if someone recognizes something as better it doesn’t always equate to enjoying something more.
