Ageing any tea

Just because they make them into cakes does not in my opinion mean they will age as well as puerh. With puerh you conceivably have decades to age the tea. I think a black tea cake probably lasts a little better than a loose tea but any cake you buy needs to be finished in maybe five years. I guess the exception to this seems to be certain oolongs but in my opinion the jury is still out on that.

The major difference between aging puerh and aging anything else is the conditions you need to keep it in. Puerh thrives with oxygen and humidity — the two things that make other teas stale. For instance, aged da hong pao needs to be re-roasted every once in a while to keep the moisture content low. You could theoretically age any tea in the right conditions, but I doubt many of them would produce a very interesting brew.

A few things that make pu-erh age well is that it is the assamica varietal and that it’s not dried by heat, which I’m pretty certain (not 100% sure) allows the natural microbes in the leaf to continue a slow aerobic fermentation. C. s. assamica varietal contains more nutrient-rich leaves than C. s. sinensis, which is a big reason why most puerh is produced with assamica, so if you want to try aging something that isn’t traditionally aged I’d definitely go for an assamica tea.

On black, green, oolong, and white tea cakes, you’re likely going to have your tea stay fresher longer, but definitely not a significant positive change over a longer period of time.

P.S. – If I’m wrong, someone please correct me. We’re all learning here ;-)

Silver tea cakes are rumored to be the next big thing in aged tea, at least in Chinese press I have read. One reason for this may be due to aged puerh all spoken for, difficult to find any to buy so maybe people are turning to other teas in the collector market.

I have had aged red tea cakes, which is what we call black in the west. Some Liu Bao like Guangxi is a mix of oxidized black/red that is pile fermented like shou. It does taste better with a few years of age. Personally I like these. I don’t believe the straight oxidized changes much. But the compression preserves it a lot longer.

White tea ages well mostly for its health benefits, and I personally love the taste as well. Green tea doesn’t do well in terms of aging, similar to yellow tea. I don’t really age black tea, but good black teas do require 1~2 years to reach its climax. Dark tea is the same with sheng pu’er, they are the perfect candidates for aging, for example shu pu’er and Liu Bao Cha. Oolong is a fun one. Lots of greener oolong (lighter fermented roasted) doesn’t age so well. However, quite amount of oolong can be aged and the performance of the tea increases. Re-roasting the oolong or not during the aging is actually a kind of criterium to evaluate the quality of the original processing. Real good oolong doesn’t require re-roasting during aging, but it’s so rare nowadays.