May 2014 - Two Dog Tea Blog

Puer Storage Questions

Everything in puer tea comes in varying degrees. There is a range of bitterness. A range of quality in processing. Huge differences in quality of material, from very bad to transcendent, with one million variations in between. Puer tea storage is no exception.

When I recently steeped my way through a glut of 10-20 year old dry stored teas, I kept recalling Jakub and his pained Luke Skywalker “Dry Storage” meme. Some of the teas did indeed have “Darth Vader is my real father” level of poor quality storage, while others were dry stored and excellent. So, where does that leave us in the overall storage debate?

D Duckz — I certainly don’t feel this way about dry stored teas, but Mr.Skywalker does.

The online comments on the subject often deal in absolutes that make it difficult to get to the heart of the issue. Comments about how terrible dry storage is or how humid storage will turn your tea into a moldy abomination are ubiquitous on tea forums. Depending on which coterie you belong to you may have gotten involved in some heated discussions on the matter.

Rather than the “DRY GOOD! WET BAD!” arguments, the more nuanced conversation that ought to be taking place is how to improve the storage which you yourself have available.

Humid Storage Star Wars Luke Skywalker Yoda — The Star Wars universe has a lack of ideal storage options. Maybe the Ewok homeworld?

Unless you plan to build a personal puer tea warehouse in the climate that you deem to be perfect storage, you are probably going to use the home that you have. Your family, job, school, and other circumstances are far more likely to dictate where you live than what kind of tea storage you prefer.

Without a doubt there are puer fanatics who go to great lengths to store their tea in the place they most desire, whether it be South China, Taiwan, or Mozambique. But rather than discuss which storage is perfect until we all turn blue in the face, let’s address a question that can help any tea drinker in any location; How can you improve your home tea storage?

Regardless of where you live, the basic puer storage suggestions are:

No direct sunlight
No heavy aromas
Any situation that would cause mold (dripping water) or dry out your cakes (being on top of a heater) will ruin your tea
Use common sense

In addition to these puer storage rules, the best advice can be summed up in one sentence:

Take the middle path.

If you live in a dry climate, add a bowl of water to the closet where you store your puer tea. If you live in a very humid climate, make sure their is sufficient air exchange so that dampness doesn’t settle on your cakes. Whatever extreme your storage situation is leaning towards, take measures to bring it back to the middle.

There are high quality teas that have been stored in both dry and humid environments, just as there are teas that have been ruined by their storage on both the wet and dry sides of the fence. If you avoid the extremes, you will also avoid the destructive results that can come out of the bone dry warehouse or the sauna basement.

The changes that occur in any given climate will have different speeds and characteristics, and that is OK! The same ten cakes stored in ten different cities will turn into ten wonderfully unique puer teas, and thank goodness for that; Puer would be so boring if every tea was the same. So, the next time you see tempers flaring like this on a message board about which storage is “the best”, just smile, nod, and follow the middle path. Or rock out on your guitar.

Finally back to my perch in Beijing after spending two months and change in Yunnan scouting out Spring puer tea.

Spring Puerh 2014 — Tea in Menghai, Yunnan, China. Spring 2014

There are too many stories of great people, teas, and adventures, so I thought it might be easier to bullet point some broad observations about the puer tea and tea market this year:

It was an excellent year for early Spring puer. There was very little rain. Some places noted that the last rain they saw was in October of 2013. This drought is by no means good for the region or good in any sense, other than the fact that tea which sprang forth in 2014 was strained, concentrated, and powerful
Most of the best teas I experienced this Spring were low on fragrance but had flavor and fragrance buried deep within the soup, rather than “on the top” or surface fragrance. This might make people who are fragrance chasers upset, but for fans of aging puer with depth 2014 is ideal. Many villages still use a fragrance heavy method of production, but in my book those teas are all flash and no guts.
This Spring had more tourists than I have ever seen on tea mountains. Lots of people with big hats, fanny packs, Coach bags, and sunglasses coming up to the more famous locations like Laobanzhang, Laoman’e, and Jingmai. Some people flew in to Xishuangbana just to go and visit Laobanzhang. They all assured me they purchased some very real Laobanzhang because they know some guy there or something. They likely all left with fake crap.
Lots of problems with fakes in areas that were previously not full of fakes. Big factories like Yulin and Chenshenghao set prices high enough to make it lucrative for the farmers to bring in material from their cousins in other villages and sell it off as their own. This was always the case in places like Laobanzhang, but now it is happening all over. No point in buying Yulin cakes, they are expensive and chocked full of low quality material.
Processing skill in smaller villages seems to get increasingly better. Many tea entrepreneurs are mentoring tea farmers about how to best process their leaf. Some of the villages that had poor quality processing in 2013 improved greatly over the last year.
Prices are high almost everywhere. You can still get cheap teas in far flung Lincang, but for consumers who are demanding top tier quality teas from Yiwu or Menghai, there are very few bargains. Best to look to some aged teas if you are on a budget.
Roads continue to improve. The paved road to Laobanzhang is almost completed and they are building a paved road to Laoman’e. This bodes well for tea travelers and tourists, but is not good news for anyone anticipating a price collapse of of Laobanzhang old arbor tea.
Construction is everywhere. Villagers are upgrading from wooden homes to 5 story cement buildings with 20 rooms. One person in Laobanzhang was building a 20+ room guesthouse!
I am very excited about the teas I pressed in 2014!

Laomane Tea — Construction in Laoman’e. New homes being built everywhere.

All of my Spring cakes are pressed and on the way to the warehouse. They should be up on the site in the next week or two.

Share your thoughts and discuss on twitter or in the comments.

Month: May 2014

Not all Puer Storage is Created Equal. Just as it Should Be.

Puer Storage Questions

Reflections on Spring 2014 Puer Tea