A Tea Addict's Journal

Uneven love

February 9, 2012 · 5 Comments

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I got this pair of pots recently, and haven’t had a chance to use them, clean them, or do anything with them yet. They’re an intriguing pair, because of the clay, and the work. As my regular readers would know, I normally prefer pots that are on the rough side, that show the artisan’s workmanship, and sometimes, of previous owners’ attachment to them. This pair, like many of my other pots, show another interesting thing: uneven use over time.

 

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The one on the left has received far more attention from its previous owner than the one on the right, which, although having some stains, is really quite lightly used. As a result, you can see, much more clearly, the shrink lines on the left pot. It is even more obvious when you lift the lid, and see inside – the interior of the left one is far, far darker than the right one, which only has a light dusting of tea patina. It’s not obvious to me why the previous owner preferred one to the other, although I suppose one gets used to a certain pot and just keeps using it. I suspect that if I were to use these, I might end up doing the same.

I guess what interests me, at the end of the day, with these pots is that each one, in its own way, seems to tell a story. At least, I can imagine a story being told by them, which is why I like them over pots that are new and perfect – in those cases, the pots lose their personality and become a mere vessel in which to brew tea. These two pots are imperfectly fired – there are air bubbles on the interior of the pot, but since they’ve been subjected to frequent use, I’m going to assume that things were just fine. Care, such as warming the pots slowly, must of course still be exercised.

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The faith in old trees

February 3, 2012 · 11 Comments

Before I go on – it just occurred to me that my blog is now six years old. It isn’t a very long time, but longer than I probably thought when I first started this venture. Thank you all for your continued support.

I’m reading this book called “The Plan for Reviving the Chinese Tea Industry” 中國茶業復興計劃, written by Wu Juenong and Hu Haochuan  in 1935. Wu was a patriot and an agronomist, while Hu was a tea expert who specialized in Qimen hongcha. Back then, the Chinese tea industry was in a real slump, losing out to India, Ceylon, and Japan on the world market, and with the economy in poor shape, the domestic market was also shrinking. War, of course, would soon tear this plan (and any other) to pieces, and the Chinese tea industry would go on a decades long decline until more recently. In this plan, they set out to list the problems of the Chinese tea industry, tried to explain the decline, and proposed things that they thought could help revive the ailing state of affairs. It all makes for a pretty interesting read.

One section that struck me while I was reading though is in the first chapter titled “Irregularities in production, sales, and operations”. In the section on problems in cultivation, the authors listed one issue as “the aging of tea trees.” In our view these days, aging of tea trees is a blessing, not a curse, but of course, their perspective is a little different. I present you the section, roughly translated, below:

4) The aging of tea trees

The cultivation of tea has a long history. Many of the tea trees in existence are either decades old, or so old that we no longer know their age. Although currently we do not yet have the ability to determine at what point does a tea tree’s quality begin to decline and turn bad, but the fact that old tea trees produce poorer quality tea is indisputable. An especially known fact is that the production volume declines and is no longer fit for enterprise. This is a topic worthy of serious research. After all, although we cannot say that a perpetual plant such as tea has any type of “anti-local” effect, but it is clearly observable that there are signs of retardation among plants that have grown from seed to plant for generations on the same plot of land. Sichuan is the origin of the tea plant, but ever since the Tang dynasty whenever one names famous teas, Sichuan is not listed among them. During the Tang and the Song dynasties, among the famous producing regions such as Yonghu (modern day Hunan province), Qinmen (modern day Hubei province), Shuzhou (modern day Anhui province), Guzhu (modern day Zhejiang province), Yangxian (modern day Jiangsu province)… they have all faded from the glories of yore. As for Huoshan in Anhui, or Wuyi in Fujian that have long enjoyed their fame, these are rare and unique among tea producing regions. As for modern day Longjing in Zhejiang, or Huizhou in Anhui, are all latecomers. Qimen, which is part of Anhui, only really became famous for tea in the past few decades.

This passage makes me wonder – clearly, productivity is a concern for older trees, and I think the same thing happens for grape vines, which is why vinters replant their vines every few years. In Taiwan, at least, I know farmers often replant their oolong trees for the same reason, to preserve productivity because younger trees yield more. Yet, if we believe what we are currently told, then old trees = better teas, in which case men like Wu and Hu were, in fact, destroying good teas by chasing after yields.

I think the situation here might be a bit analogous to organic food – oftentimes, organic food can indeed taste better, not necessarily because it is organic, but also because it is farmed with more care and attention from the farmer, whereas the industrially produced stuff gets relatively less care and comes out not tasting as good. Yet, if all the farms in the world go organic, then a lot of people will starve, because the yield from such farms tend to be lower, with more losses and less production because of the very nature of the farming method. Likewise, winemakers often advertise when they use old vines for a wine, labeling it vieilles vignes for example, to let us know that it is made from old vines, with the implication that this makes better wine. Tea makers are also doing that, most notably with puerh but also increasingly with other types of tea, telling us that this or that is made with old tree teas. But old tree teas don’t produce as much, which, of course, is part of the reason why they are more expensive.

I suspect that this day and age, especially after the ravages of collectivization, there are very few old tree teas left in many of the major tea producing areas in China. What’s left are likely to be destroyed, unless held in private hands, so comparison between the two tend to be difficult, if not impossible. With puerh, I think it is safe to say that there’s a difference between old tree and non-old tree teas. Whether that difference is good or not, however, is really up for debate, as different people have different theories. Old trees, however, command much higher prices, even as raw leaves. It does, then, feed back into the self-fulling loop because if you were a tea processor, and you have a kilo each, one of which costs a lot more to procure, you’re likely to put more care into processing the bag that cost more. This, in turn, may result in better tea simply because you were paying more attention, thus fueling the speculation that old tree teas taste better, thus further driving up the prices. Of course, this is all speculation, but it is nevertheless worth thinking about. After all, Wu and Hu noted that there were quality issues that are distinct from yield issues; it’s too bad that they didn’t say what kind of quality problems there were with such teas.

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New year in Portland

January 31, 2012 · 7 Comments

A belated Chinese new year to everyone, and sincere wishes that the year of the dragon be a year of good tea for all of you!

I spent my new year in Portland, OR, which is more or less a caricature of what one might think of as a hippie northwest city. It’s a wonderful place, if you don’t mind the six months of rain in the winter, and the scenery is truly beautiful, as is true of pretty much the entire northwest coast.

It also is the home to some famous, mainstream tea companies, most notably Tazo, Stash, and the Tao of Tea.  The city’s offering in better, higher end teas, however, is a bit disappointing, at least from what I have found previously and given the context. I’ve visited a few teahouses in the city, all pretty mediocre, and nothing too interesting beyond what you might find in any run of the mill teahouse in the US. Given the concentration of tea companies in Portland, you’d think there will be more, better tea in this city, of all places.

Running a tea blog, however, has its perks, and one of them is that you get in touch with all sorts of people who lurk and who will let you know they’re in a certain place once you’ve gotten to know them. So while I was in Portland I met up with Abx, whose blog is defunct but who is still drinking tea, at a place called Serenity Arts. The shop is not much – it is located in the same building as an Asian market, and the decor is what you’d expect in a place like that. However, it has that all-important ingredient to the making of a good teahouse – an owner who cares about what she’s drinking.

I met up with Abx at the store, where he clearly knows the owner fairly well.  They were already drinking, but since I hadn’t eaten yet, we had a quick meal at the pretty decent Korean restaurant next door (Portland is full of good Korean places) before going back for some tea. The store can’t really be said to specialize in any particular type of tea, and given its location and clientele, it’s probably difficult to do so, but the owner does seem to take some care in sourcing her stuff, and some of the teas that they sell are things that are harder to find in the US normally – loose, aged puerh (raw and cooked), some pretty decent dancong, etc. Despite its location, or perhaps because of it, it offers up goods that you might not be able to find in one of the more famous places in the city, at prices more reasonable than others.

We must’ve had at least half a dozen tea, while chatting with the owner who was brewing the whole time and some of the other clients who dropped in and out. It is clear, having sat there for a few hours, that the store has good tea from time to time. However, they are not offered generally, but rather sold to familiar clients who are willing (and able) to pay the higher prices that such teas demand. What I liked about it though is that she generally refrained from any overt sales pitch, or overly flowery language in describing a tea. I appreciate the no-nonsense approach to drinking tea, and if I were living in Portland, I can see myself going to this store often.

As I was starting to think about leaving, the owner picked up a ziploc bag with some dark leaves in it, and said she’d brew this one – a 1960s liu’an, she claims, that was given to her by some relative or other. I was initially skeptical, since these claims of old tea are often questionable, but once she brewed it, it was pretty clear that this is a spectacular tea – fragrant, lively, still retaining the freshness of the liu’an base of green tea, while having added on a heavy dose of the aged tea taste that is typical of this genre. Oftentimes liu’an can be quite plain and boring, but this one is anything but. We probably drank 15 rounds of it, and the tea was not at all giving up yet. I had to go, but didn’t really want to.

 

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So if you ever go to Portland and want to fish for some tea, stop by here. Abx also told me that there’s a new place that opened recently, but I thought Serenity Arts might have more interesting things. I think I was probably right.

Categories: Teas
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The retaste project 9: Dayi 2005 7542

January 17, 2012 · 11 Comments

Haven’t done one of these in a while – not that I haven’t been drinking any tea, but just haven’t gotten around to some of my older holdings.  So, here’s an unusual one:

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It’s not exactly an everyday occurrence for me to drink Dayi tea. In fact, I almost never do, mostly because I’m not particularly fond of a lot of their newer productions, and the older ones are very expensive, with prices that are often times completely insane for the quality they provide. Most of this is due to the secondary market being very robust and the name brand effect – Dayi is really one of two brands that is truly widely recognized and has some brand value, regardless of what you think of their products, and for what it’s worth, they’re quite consistent in what they produce – the teas are rarely spectacular, but they are reliable.

I got this particular cake at a local shop here in Hong Kong probably one or two years ago, so it hasn’t gone through my storage very much. I have, however, had a good chunk of it already

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I actually have slight reservations as to whether this is the real McCoy, or if this is a fake. If it were real, this would probably be a production 502 7542, as the production date is early May, whereas the 501 I’ve seen is from mid April. Curiously enough, in the whole wide world of Taobao, there isn’t a single 502 production 7542 for sale.

The tea, as you can see from its colour, has been through a bit of traditional storage, although not heavily so. It has a nice brownish green colour, with a nice whiff of storage, but no mold on the surface or anything like that. In fact, I’d say it is rather well aged. I just bought a cake blind, since I didn’t know what to expect at the time.

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The tea actually brews very well, and has a nice, deep character that is normally not present in a lot of 7542s I’ve had that are of recent vintage. It is no longer bitter in that new tea kind of way, and is instead quite pleasant to drink, with a nice roundness and softness that seems to indicate it can do more in the future. In all, I found it very satisfying, and am wondering if I should go back and get more of it – provided they are still selling it.

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If I go get more, say, a tong, this will actually be my first purchase in any real quantity of a Dayi product. It’s coming rather late in my tea career, but I suppose it’s never too late.

Categories: Teas
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The vendor premium

January 6, 2012 · 20 Comments

This discussion happens once in a while with tea friends on and offline: what exactly is fair for a vendor to charge, and what, exactly, are they providing?

I guess first of all, we can account for the costs that a vendor has to pay to keep his or her business a going concern. This may involve a lot of costs, especially if there’s a physical store attached to the business. It might include labour, rent, electricity, water, local taxes and fees, certifications, etc etc. A store that exists only online is going to cost a lot less to run than a store that exists as a standalone teahouse in a small town, which will in turn be cheaper to run than say a shop with a nice locale and decor in an expensive city like Paris, London, or New York. The majority, I suspect, use the proceeds from online sales to subsidize their brick-and-mortar operation. Few, if any, go the other way around. Maintaining the internet store also costs money too, of course, as does the need to keep a merchant account with credit-card processing ability, website hosting (the cost of which, as I’ve discovered, is non-trivial), and other sundry outlays that are necessary to keeping up a store and running it as a business.

Then there are the costs that are necessarily associated with running a tea business. Storage, obviously, is a concern, and with that, the holding of physical inventory, which represents a time-value-of-money type of cost (holding, say, $10,000 worth of tea instead of treasury bonds costs real money, although you can argue about that point with regards to puerh). There are risks of spoilage, floods, fire, and whatever other natural disaster that may happen that can ruin the tea in question, so a certain, small amount of risk is involved, further increasing costs. Shipping the tea from wherever they’re sourced to the vendor’s own location obviously costs money too, and for tea there really aren’t many cheap, good ways to ship tea in bulk.

On top of that, some vendors may be spending a good amount of money traveling to get the tea to begin with. Some vendors seem to make multiple trips a year to faraway places in Asia, ranging from India, Malaysia, Taiwan, Japan, Korea, and China. These trips, if undertaken from North America or Europe, are not exactly cheap, and presumably, all these costs are rolled into the cost of running the business. Some vendors probably buy most of their teas from wholesalers in their respective continents, but then, if you’re an avid reader of this blog, chances are you don’t patronize these vendors too often.

What I’ve described so far, I think, are most of the normal day-to-day costs of running a tea business for vendors based in the Western hemisphere. The question here, I think, is what exactly is the value-added from these vendors?

The first thing that comes to mind is, of course, that they are making teas available that are otherwise out of reach of the average Western consumer. Flying to Taiwan or China to buy oolongs or puerh is not exactly what most people do on a regular basis, so absent that, buying it from a vendor who’s doing it for you is probably not a bad idea. That service, of course, is worth something, but then, there are a number of vendors these days that are based in Asia and who are increasingly branching out to sell to the West, since everyone recognizes that there’s a market there for premium quality teas. Also, more and more consumers in the West are taking advantage of services such as various Taobao agents and buying more or less direct from Asia. So, “making teas available” alone is, I think, no longer a compelling reason for a high premium when vendors who are based on location can provide the same services without the extra cost of travel and airfare.

The second value-added service that vendors can claim to be doing is, of course, that they are selecting out the chaff from the wheat. There’s definitely some truth in this, as there’s plenty of chaff to go around, and as anyone who’s tried to buy tea blind from Taobao would know. Sampling crap costs real money, so yes, that’s work that deserves credit. At the same time though, it is still work that can be done by someone on location. Also, I’m sure many vendors, including those traveling to Asia, are only buying from shops there, instead of going all the way to the farms in all cases. In some cases, such as aged teas, this is a necessity, since they are all held by vendors of some sort or another. In other cases it could easily be the result of convenience and cost, or of the Longjing rule at work. Either way, there are oftentimes multiple layers of vendors between a tea and the end consumer. All of these costs – both the regular running costs, as well as whatever transaction and other value-added mentioned so far, are probably reflected in the prices that the consumer ends up getting charged. None, I think, is particularly valuable above and beyond what some vendor based in Asia can do.

This is why I think what Western vendors must be able to do is to provide exclusive access to teas that are rare or otherwise unobtainable, even if you were on location. In many cases, however, I think that exclusivity is only an illusion, present because of the lack of comparison and alternatives, not because the teas provided are truly unique, great, or both. Not too many people sell real first flush longjing, for example, or a well roasted tieguanyin of top flight quality, or a well aged, 10 or 20 years old puerh cake. If they have it, and you don’t have market access in Asia directly, chances are you can’t find it elsewhere.

In almost all these cases, there is always a tea that is similar enough that can be had elsewhere. Exclusivity is therefore a product of a dearth of selection, rather than a real shortage of teas. Among the selection that is available, very often I find the teas to be very mediocre, especially if they are aged teas of one type or another. Among the aged oolongs people have sent me samples of which were acquired from Western vendors, not a single one has been better than mediocre, with some being downright problematic or fake. The same can be said of pre-2000 puerh, with cakes that are available tending to be the 3rd tier goods that are sold in the Asian market – the top flight stuff are never offered online to Western drinkers, so they never have anything good to compare it against. Instead, what are basically rejects from the Asian market are sold as well aged teas, which is really a bit of a shame. The only exception to this that I’m aware of is my friend Tim of the Mandarin’s Tearoom, who really has some interesting teas, but then, as it will be obvious to anyone who visits his site (so hopefully he doesn’t stop talking to me forever for saying this), there are prices to match.

This feeling of inadequacy in terms of selection and dearth of information on such rarer teas has been reinforced since I got back to Asia this summer. Aged cakes of puerh from the 90s are everywhere, as long as you want them. Some are not very outrageously priced at all, and even late 80s cakes can be had for a relatively reasonable sum, providing that they are not hyped and famous, thus extremely expensive. Aged oolongs are never terribly expensive, if you know where to look and what to look for, but good ones take work to find. As for new teas, the range is endless, and as long as you’re willing to pay the price (which is not cheap these days with prices rising by the day in China), topflight tea is easily to be had.

I’m not sure where that leaves the average consumer without language or physical access. I guess the first thing to remember is that tea is not nearly as rare as vendors generally make them out to be. While some are indeed quite unique, if you spend time in the tea markets often you can end up with something similar within half a day of shopping. Vendors, I think, can do better in providing good quality tea at reasonable prices, given their constraints anyway, but consumers also need to work a little harder. By that, I mean that consumers need to think about what they’re drinking, and seek out alternatives to their usual vendor. Of course, how far anyone is willing to go in that direction is really an individual choice, but I think one’s experiences drinking tea will be that much richer if such issues are contemplated actively and assumptions, statements, and claims questioned. Obviously tea is a drink to be enjoyed, but at the level of connoisseurship, I think part of the enjoyment comes from critical evaluation of the teas in question.

Pursuing my last few lines from the previous post, I think chasing particular teas based on outside factors is quite dangerous, and lead you down a path of high prices and oftentimes disappointments. I just heard a story in a teahouse recently of a certain someone who “only drinks Red Label” (the 1950s puerh that now sells for $30,000 a cake). Well, sure enough, that person bought a bunch of fake or, at best, very inferior quality ones. Just like all those people who went out and bought particular cakes of puerh because so-and-so said it’s the greatest thing ever, many are now sitting on teas that are not necessarily very good and have barely appreciated above and beyond what has generally happened to the market in the past few years. Others follow this or that fad, and end up paying the most for whatever tea is “hot” at the moment, such as how jinjunmei, a rather mediocre black tea, was all the rage in the last two years and one jin of the tea was selling for over ten thousand RMB. All of these are rather senseless, and are mistakes that I think should be avoided if one were serious about drinking tea.

Categories: Teas
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Loose 2010 Jingmai

January 3, 2012 · 1 Comment

One of the teas acquired on this trip, albeit in a very small quantity, is a little bag of this Jingmai 2010 loose puerh.

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Jingmai is a nice area, with teas that are very fragrant and generally having a good body. It’s one of the more pricey teas out there, as regions go, although I very rarely buy it because I prefer teas from other places. Nevertheless, a good Jingmai is a pleasure, and this one is a good one. This is from a friend’s friend whom I met in Taipei this time, who has had a career in tea making/selling and is now semi-retired, as far as I can tell. Nevertheless, he still gets cakes made and sells them, and this Jingmai was one such production.

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The tea is really quite nice in that it is full, complex, and long lasting. By now, whether a tea is good or not is usually quite immediately obvious – within a sip or two it is possible to tell between bad, ok, good, and great tea, and this is mostly in the last category. Teas like this are hard to find, whether among vendors online or off, and drinking it at the time and also this time at home, it ignites a sense of excitement in me that I haven’t had for a while, mostly because of the lack of time to drink good tea. Teas like this is why I keep drinking and searching for good tea.

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Alas, there isn’t much of this tea left – only a small bag or so, as the man himself has sold the rest and only kept maybe half a kilo for his own consumption. Drinking tea that day with him and his friends, my tea friend, and MadameN, I could sense a calmness and satisfaction that is hard to find in a more commercial setting. That is the other thing about drinking good teas – one can’t be too greedy, for good teas, wherever they’re from, will eventually run out. The point is really to savour the moment and enjoy it, not chasing shadows that shape-shift and prove ever so elusive. Determined attempts in such elusive quests will only end in disappointments.

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A good tea trip

December 29, 2011 · 1 Comment

Being close to Taiwan is probably one of the biggest perks of being in Hong Kong, at least from the perspective of a tea lover. I count aged oolongs as the tea that I can drink day in, day out, and Taiwan is probably the best place to find such things. Even though MadameN and I only went there for three days this time, it did not disappoint.

The Candy Store is of course my first stop, and I returned to find that the laobanniang still remembers me and that I was a seeker of aged oolongs. I spent a few hours sitting there, drinking tea and digging through big metal cans with her, and among the teas I tasted there were two or three that seemed quite decent. One, the last one I tried that day, was very similar to The One That Got Away, and I dare not make the same mistake twice. So I ended up taking home the whole bag of tea that she had, all 2kg of it.

There were smaller successes too, as I went from shop to shop in Taipei looking for things. I replenished my supply of aged oolong, which, while not exactly running low, is low enough for me to have withheld consumption of aged oolongs for a while, opting instead to drink teas that are more readily available. Now, I am sitting in my office sipping an inexpensive aged tieguanyin that I bought on this trip that has the right mix of aged taste, sweetness, and throatiness. Yum.

Having then punctuated the trip with a visit to the magnificent Taroko park, we returned to Taipei and picked up the tea I wanted. On the last day, before our departure, I met up with a dear tea friend from Japan who is both knowledgeable and incredibly generous, and together we visited a tea lover/maker/seller who brewed a series of quite interesting, younger puerhs, some of which are the best young puerh I have had in a while. That’s the other thing about Taiwan – in addition to lots of shops, it has a high number of people who are very keen on tea and who spend a lot of time thinking about it, drinking it, and in some cases, making it. Others are then attracted to Taiwan and visit, therefore further exchanging ideas and teas. It’s a very fertile environment in which to advance one’s own tea appreciation, and I can’t think of a better place for tea than that.

With our bellies full of good tea, our tea companion took us to the airport and sent us off. Four days is far too short for a trip, but it was an invigorating one. I’ll be back for more, and soon.

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The tea shop island

December 24, 2011 · 5 Comments

Taiwan was called the Ilha Formosa, or the beautiful island, because the Portuguese sailors who first saw Taiwan thought it beautiful. That it still is, but for those of us who are avid tea drinkers, this is more like the Teashop island.

I just got here yesterday for a very quick trip, and stayinag in the heart of Taipei last night, we went out for dinner around our hotel. Just on the pre and post dinner walk alone, in the space of about a few blocks, I think I saw a dozen teashops. Not all of them are necessarily worth visiting, especially when there are many fine shops to go to, but I think it is safe to say that nobody will die of caffeine deprivation here. In fact, I wonder if Taiwan might not have the highest concentration of teashop per capita in the world.

Now I am sitting here in the middle of Taroko national park. It is stunning, and more than validates Taiwan’s former name. More on that later.

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Grandpa style in action

December 22, 2011 · 1 Comment

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Taken at the local canteen. Note that it is green tea, and the high level of leaves to water ratio. From what I could see, this was some type of green tea.

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The Longjing rule

December 8, 2011 · 9 Comments

The Longjing rule simply stated: Do not go to Hangzhou to buy Longjing – the best has already left town.

I think this is a basic rule not only for Longjing, but applies generally to all teas and teawares. The best of the bunch leave very quickly, and go to where the market is. When I have friends who go to Hangzhou and buy Longjing, they inevitably end up with some mediocre stuff priced like premium tea. The same can be said for Wuyi yancha, where shuixians are sold for dahongpao prices (with nice boxes, of course). Friends who visited Yunnan tea mountains in hopes of finding that awesome treasure usually come back with plantation teas that are very mediocre, without needing the plane ticket and all the hassle. In sum, don’t go to the producing region to buy what you’re looking for. Go to big city markets instead.

This is really simple economics – richer cities can afford luxury goods like top flight Longjing or spring old tree Laobanzhang (regardless of what you think of them). These teas are expensive, and not many people can afford them. The farmer has two choices – sell it to the middleman whom they deal with regularly and trust, and get a good price, or produce it and keep it and hope they can sell it to some tourist walking by for a better price. What would you do if you were the farmer?

Instead, what’s kept for the tourist trade (and this includes many occasional tea merchants who think they’re sourcing it from the real deal) is usually the B grade stuff. Tourists, and occasional tea merchants, go to these places looking for good tea. Among the ones they sample, what they’re buying may indeed be the best of the bunch, but what’s missing, of course, is the stuff that never made it to their mouth – stuff that was locked up months in advance by those with the necessary local connections.

So, in sum, follow the Longjing rule, and don’t go to the producing regions and buy tea. If you want greens, go to Shanghai. Kunming is probably not a bad place to start for puerh, although a lot of the best stuff get dispersed to other major cities too. For oolongs of various types, Fuzhou, Xiamen, Hong Kong, and Taipei are good places to shop, depending on the style and type you like. One of the best places I’ve found for Wuyi yancha was in Taipei, a guy who sold me some incredibly expensive but awesome tasting rougui. It’s not a coincidence.

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