Hi ALex,

This is a tall and heavy subject.

The problem is that most of us can only relay what we have been told
as very few have collected puerh long enough to know for themselves
first hand. To find someone who "really" knows you need to find
someone who bought a cake thirty years ago, tasted the same cake every
year, and kept good notes about his tastings. There are not many of
those people around, and the vast majority of them do not speak
English.

Collective wisdom based on what I have been "told" is to look for a
cake with a certain energy about it, a certain strength, a certain
"qi". Mild and mellow cakes that taste good now are allegedly not good
candidates for storage. Look for even compression, not too tight, not
too loose. Definitely look for cakes that were made from maocha that
was sun dried and NOT mechanically dried (ie baked). Storage is
probably the strongest influence over the final quality, assuming it
was good leaf to begin with. There is also a great deal of luck
involved, if people could accurately predict which cakes would be
great the entire productions would get snatched up by investors. Even
the Masters are only speculating, albeit with much better results than
us laowai.

To further complicate matters it appears that 2005-2006 maocha is not
of the same quality as maocha from years gone by. China's newly
affluent families have created such a demand for puerh that almost any
maocha is being used regardless of quality. The standards appear to
have been lowered. There is even speculation that the puerh bubble
will crash in a year or two. To sum it up, 2005-2006 cakes may not be
the best choice for aging.

I hope this was useful....

--
Mike Petro
http://www.pu-erh.net