Category: Ripe Pu’erh

  • W2T’s January Tea Club — TeaDB James InBetweenIsode Episode #69

    Featuring guest star Meet. This episode features the W2T January tea club, including some 2008 White Tea and the Ol Reliable.

  • Pu’erh, The Body, and Are You Confused Yet!?

    In the west, tea is annoyingly difficult to separate from its health claims. Will this help me lose weight? Will this cure cancer? blah blah blah… Due to its post-fermentation, pu’erh has its own set of purported health benefits many based off its status as a chic probiotic. Most seasoned vendors and drinkers roll their eyes at these, but most everyone has their own set of beliefs on how the different types of pu’erh can affect the body. You don’t have to look much further than a tea vendor’s FAQ to find a smorgasbord of questions and answers about the supposed health benefits of tea. This article is not intended to be a health guide, nor an advertisement or critique of any particular school of thought. (more…)

  • Two Thoughts on Hitting Hard & Buying Pu’erh

    Two Thoughts on Hitting Hard & Buying Pu’erh

    Find Tea Worthy of Hitting Hard (Aim High, & DO NOT CHEAP OUT)

    Repeat that five times… Here’s a few buying scenarios…

    1. You buy too much of truly great tea and run out of money and tea. You end up in tea exile quaffing some crappy sea dyke or *gasps in horrs* teabags! We’re all deathly afraid of this but it almost never happens. I’ve yet to hear a single instance of this is happening.… it is also really not too hard for most of us, except for the most picky, to find drinkable tea for a not too ridiculous price.
    2. You hit it right and have a good chunk of tea to drink and a good chunk of tea to set aside. Good work!
    3. You buy a lot of cheaper tea. WARNING WARNING!!!! Not only do you have to worry about space but there’s a very good chance you’ll grow tired of your purchase.

    From what I can tell scenario #3 is really common and about 1000000x more likely than scenario #1.. One danger with hitting hard is becoming attracted to the idea of buying lots of tea for the sake of buying. Wanting to buy a tong, because well it’s a effing tong! There’s bamboo.. And seven cakes.. Good shit.. This is where the risk of cheaping out is high for people choosing quantity over quality, especially for newer drinkers. Before impulse buying loads of pu’erh, you should think long and hard about the quality and availability of suitable replacements for pu’erh. (more…)

  • Time Machine! Pu’erh Snapshot… 2008

    Time Machine! Pu’erh Snapshot… 2008

    If only I got into pu’erh 5 years earlier…
    -Every single pu’erh addict (regardless of when they got into pu’erh).

    The year is 2008. Obama was elected. Lil Wayne was weird but still OK to like. In the midst of the steroids crisis, MLB considered A-Rod the great clean hope. The world economy took a dump… And perhaps most importantly, the commodity known as pu’erh had just busted.. in the autumn of 2007. With the power of hindsight and the way back machine, let’s search the depths of the internet and see what the pu’erh scene looked like in 2008… (more…)

  • Cross Tea Price Comparisons

    I’ve written in the past about relative price comparisons and a couple different models of how we frame tea cost. Tea vs. coffee. Tea vs. wine, etc. How about inner-tea comparisons. Aged pu’erh frequently gets put up against younger tea, Taiwanese Oolong high-mountain tea, low-elevation, Yancha. One comparison I only occasionally see made is types of tea put up against one another. If you focus too heavily on specifics of raw pu’erh like 2015 $100/beeng gushu A vs. 2015 $120/beeng gushu B, it can be easy to miss the big picture. You may forget that according to your taste perhaps raw pu’erh as a whole is under or overvalued. Instead of asking if a $0.40/g ripe pu’erh is twice as good as $0.20/g ripe pu’erh, maybe you should ask if you’d rather have the $0.40/g ripe pu’erh or $0.40/g Taiwanese Gaoshan. This is a casual, fun little thought experiment that tries to make these comparisons. As expected, It’s impossible to make this comparison clean. Vendor markup varies one to one, but here’s what I would choose at these ranges! (more…)

  • Yunnan Sourcing’s 2015 Green Miracle Ripe Pu’erh [Episode 126]

    A lightly fermented ripe pu’erh from Yunnan Sourcing.  Good base material and tasty now, but will likely improve with time.

  • Tea Reports 2015 & 2016, Soliciting Feedback & Looking Forward

    As many of you may have noticed the tea of the month reports haven’t exactly been on schedule. They’ve often gone longer than expected and I still have countless unfinished samples which I am trying to drink through. First things first.. I’ll be finishing the last two reports at the end of 2015, Taiwanese oolongs to age & the box (aka aged oolongs). While it may seem premature to brainstorm/discuss how to continue these sorts of reports, it often takes a time to get these together without placing extraneous orders. These reports are the most personal tea journeyish projects that I do on TeaDB, but I’d certainly be curious to solicit some feedback. (more…)

  • CNNP Zhongcha: Inconsistency, the Bubble & Bargain Hunters

    CNNP Zhongcha: Inconsistency, the Bubble & Bargain Hunters

    Editor’s Note: After the episode on the 1997 CNNP 7581 (acquired via Yunnan Sourcing) (a good tea) we received several emails showing other options for late 1990s 7581. Some were drastically cheaper and others were more expensive. Such inconsistency in pricing indicates either faked age or drastic difference in quality/mark-up. Much of this inconsistency is associated heavily with the Zhong Cha brand.

    Established in 1949, CNNP, or Zhong Cha, is one of the oldest, most classical pu’erh brands. CNNP wrappers are perhaps the most iconic, featuring the tea character surrounded by the Zhong (China) character. This logo is found on the majority of pu’erh beengs from the 1950s to the 1990s, including all of the famous pu’erh vintages from that time period. Productions in the 2000s used the same logo and similar wrapper as the original Zhong Cha wearing cakes printed in 1951, Still, the brand and the label on its own means very little in terms of a quality product. Far less than a consistent Menghai or Xiaguan product. In the opinion of many, these labels have become increasingly watered down over time but neither has fallen as far as the CNNP brand. In fact, contemporary CNNP of the last 20 years is almost renowned for its inconsistency. (more…)