Tag: Quiche Teas

Four Reasons Why You Should Get Your Baseline in Mid 00s Factory Pu’erh
Since diving back into tea at the end of 2024, I’ve done a lot of thinking on how the tea scene has changed and what the ideal intro to different tea types are. In many ways the ideal way to approach Taiwanese oolongs or Yancha is the same as it was in 2012. Identify specialized vendors in that tea type and sample a bunch. You’ll pay more and have less choices than someone based in east Asia but that is the reality of being based in a different continent. As is often the case, pu’erh tends to complicate things more, due to the variety and diversity of approaches. The easiest way to make sense of this is to break down pu’erh into simpler components and categories, like Five Types of Raw Pu’erh You Should Try. A decade ago the conversations mostly centered around young boutique and larger regions, like Yiwu. In reading about specific teas I was highly influenced by bloggers like Half Dipper and Jakub (Marshaln didn’t focus on reviews). Scroll back to what they were drinking in 2013, and you’ll see a wide array of young recently produced pu’erh many under western vendor’s labels. Factory pu’erh seemed to be an afterthought. Not to say it wasn’t around, Yunnan Sourcing sold some stuff or you could go to various ebay vendors who hopefully would sell the real deal. But factory teas simply weren’t a huge focus of conversation in the pu’erh community a 10-12 years ago. No doubt TeaDB was a part of this same movement pushing things in the young boutique. Looking back, I think this was suboptimal and perhaps even a bit strange. If someone came to me and wanted to get into pu’erh, besides directing them towards the different types I’d encourage them to get their baseline from factory pu’erh made between 2005-2008. Here’s why.

1. They Are Old Enough Now & Have Aged Good Enough to Give a Good Baseline

This is a math problem. Factory teas are mostly made to be stored and not consumed young. Back in 2014, teas between 2005-2008 were not even 10 years old. Now they are 17-20 years old, firmly semi-aged. The time allows these teas to darken, mellow and get to a more drinkable place. I’d still generally recommend people try them from places besides Kunming where they’ve seen real heat and humidity (Taiwan, Guangdong, Malaysia, etc.).

As production expanded throughout the 1990s and 2000s, there was speculation as to how the tea would age. Generally speaking it seems like factory teas has aged fine. While the 2005-2008 are not nearly as strong as their predecessors (say 1980s/1990s Dayi), they do exist along a similarish aging trajectory, unlike many boutique teas.

2. It is Easy to Find

Yunnan factories crank out a ton of tea every year. These are not boutique single tree runs and even the limited special products operate at a certain scale. But besides the handful of Dayi and Xiaguan that Yunnan Sourcing or other western vendors sold these products were largely unavailable from the western market. Sure you could risk Taobao, but that is a lot of hoops to jump through.

Now it is much easier. You have all of the original channels, the generally reliable King Tea Mall, Teaswelike, Quiche Teas, etc. Taobao is considerably easier to navigate than it used to be. There are multiple established Dayi flagship sources and there are a lot more people with taobao experience that can help you (join a Discord!).

3. Reasonable Prices

You’d think with another decade of storage these would now be extremely expensive. Teas that were 17-20 years old were not cheap in 2012. I’m happy to report that is not the case . A huge part of this is simply the quantity of pu’erh made. The last few years have not been kind to Dayi stocks and their prices remains at a bit of a low point, where you can snag cakes through reputable channels for under $100 cake easily. Xiaguan and other factories are generally priced even less than Dayi teas.

You may ask, why not go a bit older if prices are so cheap? Unfortunately it remains difficult to find reliable pre-reform (earlier than 2005) tea. These teas are generally considered stronger and better, an assessment I agree with, but because of the more limited quantity they are much more expensive than an average factory production from 2008.

4. Boutique Pu’erh is Complicated and Weird (Not Just Western Boutiques)

Boutique pu’erh is weird. It is easy to be allured by the promise of fantastic tea leaves from old grove trees. Seems like a simple enough idea. Unfortunately it has ended up being anything but.. Boutique products being smaller runs allow more variability in how the leaves are processed. In trying to create a product that can taste better young, the tea can be processed in ways that make it taste good but age poorly (underrolled, green tea pu’erh, honged). This is fine if you want to consume the tea young, but not great for those that prefer aged pu’erh. Conversations prop up regularly about certain products not aging well or being processed in a way that makes the tea taste good young but age poorly (see Green Tea Pu’erh). It has both complicated and expanded the variety of pu’erh by a wide margin. Now you have to learn about proper processing and be able to taste if there are processing flaws if you want the tea to continue being decent. It can be quite difficult and frankly tedious.

Being a pu-head in the 1980s/1990s would’ve been comparatively quite dull, choosing between a handful of traditionally stored productions. In 2025, the amount of productions, boutique and factory is quite overwhelming.. It is part of the rabbithole, but it is easy to get confused.. Factory tea from the mid 2000s (minus the wrapperology) is back to basics.

A veteran drinker complained about how drinking Taiwanese boutique pu’erh is generally not worth it because you have to drink through all their strangely, processed perfumed house note to even get to their base taste. Now that I’m semi-experienced with pu’erh I immediately understood what they were talking about. If I were to do over my tea hobby, I would not have focused nearly as much on boutique pu’erh from the get go and instead shifted it towards factory tea. In this alternate universe, I think I probably would’ve bought some boutique pu’erh at some point but I think I focused far too heavily on it for my first 5 or 6 years of tea drinking. Imagine getting recommended Xizi Hao from the start as some sort of endgame of tea and getting your baseline set with these teas. Many boutiques will give you experience in a very specific little niche of the pu’erh game.

Many of my favorite pu’erh teas I own are boutique productions. These do have real upside if done properly. I tend to think of boutiques as a high potential ceiling, but also a low floor that comes with an expensive price tag compared with factory tea. There are good boutique teas, but it can be a morass getting to them.

Which Teas?

So the list is still subject to change over time, but these are the recommendations as of Summer 2025. I think this list would be similar to one from 5-6 years ago or so as these teas are large scale productions and don’t skate in and out of availability as much as boutique pu’erh.

My advice is to focus on Dayi and then Xiaguan, with potential add ons from places like Mengku or whatever.
1. 2006/2008 Dayi 8582
2. 2006/2007/2008/2010 Dayi 7542
3. 2005 Xiaguan T8653 Thick Paper (Early in the Year Batch)
There are a ton of factory productions but I think these three will give a steady foundation for pu’erh that you can use as a springboard to dive deeper into factory tea or branch out into the wild world of boutiques.

Where Should I Buy These?

It is easiest to purchase these from TeasWeLike or Quiche (dropships Taishunhe). For those brave enough, the lowest prices are probably on Taobao (you need you to use an agent like SuperBuy or ShipForwarder).

You can try some of the Dayi Flagships or Chentang for Menghai Tea Factory. For Xiaguan, MX is the most reliable and decent option.
January 4, 2026
The Evolution of Hobbyist Pu’erh Vendors

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.

July 8, 2025
Non Mainland Pu’erh Vendor Guide

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.

Which types of pu’erh should I buy?

Asian, Non Mainland Chinese Based Pu’erh Vendors

TeasWeLike (link)

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.

Quiche Teas (link)

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.

The Jade Leaf (link)

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.

Teapals (link)

Malaysia based vendor who sells mostly semi-aged Chenyuan Hao but also some other semi-aged pu’erh. No samples and a relatively small selection.

Xizi Hao (link)

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.

The Guide to Puerh Tea (link)

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.

Yunnan Sourcing US (link)

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.

Liquid Proust (link)

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.

Bana Tea (link)

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.

Yangqing Hao USA (link)

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.

The Steeping Room (link)

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.

Chensheng Hao (link)

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.

Crimson Lotus Tea (link)

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.

Hou De Fine Tea (link)

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.

NWPuerh (link)

Idaho-based collector who ended up with nearly 5,000 cakes of pu’erh!

European Based Vendors

Tea Encounter (link)

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.

Pu-Erh.sk (link)

Long running Slovakian vendor that sometimes presses their own tea, but also carries a decent stock of tea from the 2000s and 2010s.

Puerh Guy (link)

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.

Puerh.uk (link)

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.

Moychay (link)

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.

May 14, 2025