A good tea friend who has gotten a lot of reps in with boutique pu’erh brands recently discovered a tea brand he really enjoyed called… Xiaguan. While he had of course drank a handful of crane teas, he hadn’t dove in enough to realize there were some teas that really hit the spot. This all despite Xiaguan being perfectly accessible, well known and much cheaper than the teas he’d been buying… He had somehow missed his natural affinity to one of the largest brands around..

We are All Shaped by Circumstance

Every drinker is molded by which teas/vendors we stumble upon initially. Someone who hears about pu’erh on TikTok from Jesse’s Teahouse will have a different trajectory than someone who discovered tea on reddit and buys from White2Tea or Yunnan Sourcing. People also tend to follow trends according to what teas they observe other people are buying and discussing. When I started drinking pu’erh, young pu’erh from labels such as YS, W2T, EoT, and TU were getting the bulk of bandwidth and conversation. Places like teachat, steepster, and instagram were buzzing with the new releases of the year. It was not uncommon to run into drinkers who bought a single cake of each their favorite western pu’erh vendor’s lines. Pu’erh with any significant degree of aging was the distinct minority of teas being offered by the handful of vendors that actually sold it. The Taiwanese boutiques that had been sold 5+ years before through Houde and Origin Tea, were mostly unavailable.

When YQH started being offered by Emmett in 2015, the western pu’erh audience (myself included) was starved for semi-aged boutique pu’erh. With virtually no competition, it is easy to see why it was so popular. Things would’ve been different depending on the year.. If I had gotten into tea in 2006, I would’ve likely been amongst the generation of drinkers eagerly awaiting Houde drops of factory and Taiwan boutiques. Or in 2025, perhaps I would be mining the discord and buying from places like TWL or LP. But in 2015 other than Houde scraps, YQH was by far the easiest to access Taiwanese boutique with teas of age.

One problem with having limited points of exposure with just one vendor or producers is they tend to have house characteristics and you are subject to their preferences. In 2015, during the western mini-YQH boom your alternates were mostly not that similar (factory, young western boutiques) or difficult to access (travel to Taipei and buy Wistaria). Probably due to a lack of comparison points, I anchored my own preferences towards the smooth YQH style of tea, and discounted other brands with stronger taste and perhaps more traditional processing. While I still enjoy YQH pu’erhs regularly, the ones I’ve bought are mostly good price performers rather than my absolute favorite boutique brand. I don’t regard YQH and myself as a total mismatch, but the amount I bought does not match up with my own appreciation of the tea.

Match Quality: The Importance of Trying Lots & Matching With The Right Pu’erh

David Epstein uses the term match quality to describe the fit between the work someone does and their abilities. I think this can apply to tea as well in terms of one’s own preferences. One piece of advice I give to new drinkers is to get reps in with the major categories of pu’erh. I’ve divided this into five categories that are quite different from one another.

It is important to dive in with good intentions and purpose. Choosing good examples is important. You shouldn’t judge HK traditionally stored tea from sketchy amazon pu’erh and you also shouldn’t judge boutique pu’erh off of the cheapest northern noutique cake available either. Do some basic reading on good examples. Try to like the tea! If you approach a tea in bad faith, you are not giving the tea a fair shake. If someone has in the back of their mind that traditionally stored tea is going to give them cancer that will impact the actual sensorial experience of the tea. Each of these five categories isn’t equally easy to find either. Good examples of traditionally stored tea was very difficult to find online until Yee On started selling and even now we have to contend with tariffs.

There is a very wide variety of pu’erh and it is important to match with the types you will enjoy the most. Your tastes will change and you’re not married to that same tea type forever but it can help to give you a strong foundation to start from. That foundation is intended as an entrypoint and springboard to start and explore more. One logical second step is to subdivide the categories you like even further. As my friend and Xiaguan shows, there’s a huge variety of pu’erh even within those categories. Those would technically fall into the semi-aged factory hot + humid category, and within this very massive group, you have prolific factories like Dayi, Xiaguan, Mengku and a variety of accompanying storages. It is an understatement to say there is a ton of variations within each group.

If you asked me to project my drinking % in 2012, I would’ve been wildly off, likely estimating a high amount of oolong. If you had asked me in 2015, I probably would’ve still overestimated oolong but I probably would’ve also overestimated my young raw consumption. Only by 2017 would I have a reasonable estimate of drinking habits now in 2025. Until your tastes are settled it’s hard to answer, but you should not overbuy too early assuming how your tastes will end up.

Questions you’ll want to answer:

• Of the major categories of pu’erh what do you like? Does it pass the speed test? Subcategorize the categories you like and ask these questions again. How much do you want to drink factory pu’erh? Boutique? Which brands?

My Own Tea Diet

At one point I think my pu’erh stash was close to 80% boutique pu’erh and my drinking followed accordingly. Fast forward to the present, I’d say at least half of the pu’erh I drink is factory pu’erh. So what happened? I think I’ve slowly moved towards what I’d say is my ideal match in terms of type of pu’erh.

I’m amongst the most exposed western drinkers to what is available and have always sampled widely. Still other distractions and a lack of availability prevented me from fully exploring factory teas to the extent that I actually enjoy them. The boutique craze (both young and older) of the mid 2010s also messed with me enough that I overvalued a soft, smooth profile to a fault. The factory teas were rougher and it was frankly hard to find satisfying examples.

With Xiaguan, there is quite a lot of workmanlike tea that isn’t going to appeal to everyone so picking the right examples is important. Only after sorting through a ton with some help from people like Toby, do I have a few Xiaguan teas that I’d actually drink regularly. There’s also an advantage towards being a late comer, as you can take advantage of the knowledge and channels opened up by those who came before you. Similar to Xiaguan, Dayi has become increasingly easy to buy. At one point, they had non authorized taobao retailers like MX take down all their listings, making finding well stored, sufficiently Dayi difficult to find. The higher production years in the mid 2000s have also gotten older and have become more and more drinkable.. Contrary to the belief that pu’erh will always go up, Dayi prices have also gone down quite a bit in the last few years so it’s a great time to buy Menghai Tea Factory, tariffs be damned.

Try lots of tea and don’t assume you know exactly where your tastes are going to end up. Boutiques are often the most expensive teas in certain years but they’re not necessarily going to be everyone’s ultimate endgame.. Some people are naturally more inclined towards factory teas just as some people like HK Trad and others like Kunming storage. I thought I’d be a nearly exclusive boutique drinker at one point, but I’m a lot closer to 50/50 these days. Keep an open mind and don’t get tunnel vision.