On 2008-03-14, An Sonjae > wrote:

> Aged green teas? I very much doubt it. The received wisdom is that the
> delicate flavour of Korean green tea (at least) goes away after two
> years at most, and sometimes much earlier.

Well as I understand it, green pu'erh is essentially green tea - the
kill green process is the same, and it's not bruised or oxidized first.

I don't think that aged "green tea" (other than that) is very popular,
but I don't think that means it couldn't be good. It definitely wouldn't
have the same type of flavor as a younger tea, but that doesn't mean
that it couldn't evolve into something interesting over time. There
would probably be a period where it was simply stale, and would taste
the same as when it was new, only flatter, less flavorful, and less
interesting.

I have some wild Korean green tea that I've left sitting around for a
couple of years - if it keeps on sitting around for a couple more, I'll
try it out and see how it is.

> When it comes to aged oolongs, which have recently come to my notice
> (from Taiwan, 15 years old or perhaps more), could someone tell us if
> these are simply left lying around or if they are (as I suspect) re-
> heated regularly to maintain dryness.

I believe some people age teas with minimal or no re-roasting, but
unless kept very dry and pretty airtight, the tea will probably sour
this way. Generally, aged oolongs should be re-roasted every 2-6 years
or so, to remove excess moisture.

> I assume that oolongs, like puerhs, would not age correctly if kept
> hermetically sealed?

Storage varies, and depends on your climate and type of tea / level of
roasting, but I think you do want a pretty good seal. Especially with
greener oolongs, I think people frequently use a sealed porcelain jar
and then put candle wax over the top to keep moisture out. In Fu jian,
some of the aged teas I saw were kept in large tightly sealed,
double-lidded metal jars with a small lid - probably lead and / or tin.

But I've also seen pu'erh style cakes made with oolongs (especially wu
yi yan cha, like shui xian), as well as a fruit (maybe a pomelo or
something) stuffed with oolong tea. I believe I was told that the fruit
is stuffed with tea and hung on a tree (where it gets some little bugs
in it, IIRC). I don't know for sure, but I imagine these are aged in a
manner closer to the way pu'erh is aged, and probably with more
moisture. Probably originally kept more for medicinal purposes than for
taste (as a lot of aged oolong originally was).

Not sure if a total seal is good for more heavily roasted teas (I
believe some people use a full jar with a looser lid), but you do want a
dryer and less breathable environment than with pu'erh, at least that's
what I've read mostly. Like anything else, there's a lot of information
out there, and much of it is contradictory. I think that's more a
product of there being multiple ways to go about it than one person
being wrong and another person being right.

Here in Los Angeles is not such a fantastic climate for aging pu'erh,
because it's very dry, but I have heard several people say it's a good
climate for aging oolongs. I've been kind of informally and
unscientifically experimenting with aging teas in different types of
containers.

> When it comes to puerhs, is it not true that the total collapse of
> trust in the age claimed for them by merchants has encouraged many
> people to look for recently made puerhs that they plan to store and
> age for themselves?

Well I think most people (myself included) take merchants' assurances
about the age of pu'erh with a grain (or three) of salt... in many
cases, the tea has passed through many sets of hands, and with tea
that's older than 10 or 15 years, it's hard to ever know for certain.

That said, it's hard for people who live somewhere that's not the
greatest aging climate to buy too much tea for aging, and for green
pu'erh to be really drinkable, it needs to have a lot more age (15-20+
years) than I want to wait to drink some tea. So I try to buy aged
pu'erh from vendors I trust.

Of course it's hard to know the exact age of tea, but it's difficult to
fake the taste beyond a certain point. And even if you have the wrong
idea about a tea's age or pedigree, if it tastes good, it tastes good.

w