Mike, that was very useful. Thanks a lot. Some of the very young
pu'ers that I have sampled taste strong and somewhat zingy or peppery,
and have a kind of intense energy about them. I'll lay down a few of
those and see what happens. It's interesting because the quality that
I think you're talking about is exactly what I like best about young
pu'er anyway.

As far as the risk of buying bad tea, I don't know. I feel that, while
I am certainly not one of these Robert Parker (or Teaparker) types that
can tell you what farm on what mountain produced the tea, and what was
wrong with the water and pot used to brew it, I can tell good tea from
bad, and more importantly, I can tell tea that I like from tea that I
don't like. I think the idea of laying down bingchas as an
'investment' (rather than as something for me to drink when I'm
retired) is a ridiculous one, all the more so because of the current
boom. What are these investors expecting to get as an annual return?
And when it comes time to sell the things in twenty years, how are they
going to convince the buyer that it's not fake? I would think it's
easier to tell fake young pu'er from fake old pu'er, no?

Tea is one of the primary pleasures in my life. I like wine a lot, and
I like good tobacco, but I like tea a lot more. And, it's cheap. A
single glass of good wine (at least, of the best wine that I ever buy)
can cost $12. Hou De is a dependable and good, but certainly not
inexpensive, retailer. Their most expensive cake is from the 70's, and
costs a (to me) stunning $525. Weighing 350g, I would get about 70
pots out of that (mmm ... 70 pots ... what a nice thought) which breaks
down to $7.50 per pot. So each cup would end up costing me less than a
dollar!

Tea is cheap. Chinese nouveau riche are just as dumb (if not dumber)
as nouveau riche anywhere, and they have tons of money to throw at
stupid stuff, but they are going to have to throw a lot of money at
pu'er for a long, long time before even the really expensive stuff is
out of reach for the average Western consumer. Japanese and Taiwanese
buyers drove up the price of first-growth Bordeaux in the 80s, and
drank it mixed with Sprite (true story), but that didn't mean that it
was impossible for us plebians to get our hands on very good wine at
reasonable prices.

Anyway. I like this Nan Nuo very much. It's got a real eye-opening
quality to it. I think I'm going to spend another couple months buying
and drinking samples before I go spending hundreds of dollars on cakes,
but right now, this one is a prime candidate.

At the moment I'm drinking a 1999 Hai Wan raw 7548 that was graciously
included in my order as a free sample from Seb and Jing. It's very
smooth and tasty but not quite as good as a 2000 Fu Hai that came in
the same batch. Thanks again everyone for your thoughtful comments.

Alex


Mike Petro wrote:
> 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