Alex_fred said

What do you want when you say transparency?

Sparked from conversation on Reddit early today, I was wondering what people are looking for from vendors. I think there’s a bit of a fad right now in the community to go on witch hunts looking for “transparency” from vendors. While I agree that this is important and there’s far too much blatant lying done on many levels, what exactly are people looking for from a vendor?
Do you go with lengthy descriptions of elevation, location, age, cultivar, etc.? At the end of the day it still isn’t completely verifiable and you’re going to be taking the vendors’ word on what they’re selling even if it seems well researched.
Do you take the white2approach and say nothing but descriptions of flavor profiles and even further trust in the vendor’s credibility? I think Paul’s tactic with this year’s spring teas will be watched very carefully by other vendors. The sheer cockiness of it is impressive and could spark similar strategies adopted by others if successful.

Cwyn recently touched on what I think is pretty prevalent opinion on the puer community right now. Even greatly trusted vendors have to be careful with what they do. They are not infallible, in fact they’re often under a microscope because of the number of people reviewing what they are putting out there.

61 Replies
mrmopar said

The tea don’t lie. When it is in the cup it tells its story.

Wocket said

While I agree with this wholeheartedly, we’ve now reached a point where there’s too many teas for them to all reach my cup, and this is more a matter of which ones even will get to audition.

mrmopar said

I can agree with the audition as well. I think we are all a bit more critical nowadays.

Alex_fred said

That’s what I’m getting at. It’s easy to compare a tea to what it’s being sold as after purchase, but in the growing market what warrants the chance to compare?

mrmopar said

Knowing a sellers taste profile helps. There are a couple that have tastes similar to me and I really pour through their descriptions when they post them to see if they interest me.

This is how I approach each tea we sell. If it can’t prove itself in the cup it doesn’t matter what it is being sold as.

DrewT-MN said

I think this platitude is nice, but it’s being overused – in fact I’ll go on to say that this particular platitude is being abused by vendors.

I’m in full agreement with Wocket regarding the ‘audition’ process. There’s a ways for tea to go before it gets in my cup. All that being done, and the tea makes it to my cup, my tastes may reject it. That tea isn’t going to prove anything to me but that it’s unsuitable.

But what if it is suitable? If I like the tea, I want the knowledge regarding where it was grown, the trees, and the storage, so that I can use that to find more teas to my liking. Not giving me that information as a way to force me to remain a customer seems somewhat underhanded.

toby8653 said

I have a dilemma when I was planning for the tea box I curate. I want to include a 2016 spring tea of a certain region ( 9g pearl) in the box but I don’t want to name names. And if I don’t, people would think. ..hey…why is yr box so pricy.

If I am Paul,I could just call it A Love Supreme or My Dark And Twisted Fantasy

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Cwyn said

Transparency definitely means different things to different people. Some apply this idea mostly to vendors with regard to their own pressings. But I’ve had feedback from other people regarding teas I bought that are factory teas, and not pressed by those vendors selling them. The teas were sold at a very fair price, or even bargain prices. Because the person objects to something about the vendor’s house teas, however, apparently this means not buying anything.

On the positive flip side to transparency, it is interesting to me how many people say they approve of the minimal information approach that w2t is taking this year, but then say they are not buying until they get more information from bloggers or someone else.

So what one person’s idea of transparency is could be a completely different idea to another person. Which is relativism… relative to the individual, yes?

Thanks for starting the topic. :)

curlygc said

White2Tea is one of my favorite vendors, and I will probably always buy from Paul because he is a purveyor of fantastic tea. Having said that, while I love the names of the cakes, I don’t like the minimalist descriptions at all. I haven’t purchased a single 2016 tea (other than club offerings). If money were no object I’d happily take my chances. But it’s the object that pays my rent. Can’t there be a happy medium between ridiculous and irrelevant “Farmer Zhang Family” and “1000 year old tree” marketing bullcrap and descriptions that say a bit more than “tea?”

Brian said

curlygc i know the feeling. so i just bought samples of every tea and am going to do a blind tasting. see what i like best that way. no prices. no names. try the teas and ill choose my favorite. (with the exception of Last Thoughts and Old Arbor)

Alex_fred said

I feel like once a few bloggers put up reviews of the 2016 line up people will start buying like crazy. Right now it’s a weird in between time where absolutely zero reviews of these teas exist. Between knowing 2dog’s taste and a blogger or two who you like, that’ll make buyers much more comfortable dropping money.

TeaLife.HK said

Brian, that’s a very Mainland Chinese way of selecting teas…try until you find something you’re happy with. :) In the end it’s what is in the cup that matters.

While W2T’s names and packaging aren’t really to my taste (I guess I’m old school), their no BS approach to descriptions is refreshing after some of the outrageous claims we’ve seen from pu erh vendors in the last few years.

If those whose palates I trust on here tell me they like a particular tea, that is a great incentive for me to try something new out. There are a few vendors whose in-house productions I trust, but flowery description or not, I prefer to purchase what I know is of quality, either from experience with a vendor or from reading other people’s experiences.

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+1 Great thought provoking post by Cwyn!

I would add that as tea drinkers we first need to be clear in our minds what we want from tea when it comes to ENJOYMENT and EDUCATION.

1) The first question is what you want from your tea?

If it is simply ENJOYMENT then you only need to find tea you enjoy drinking. For EDUCATION you can only further your knowledge with information and not knowing anything about what you drink won’t serve in this regard. This is a problem with tea from unknown origins.

2) The next question is what you expect from your tea seller/producer?

Are you content with simply finding a seller that can match your quality and price level for your ENJOYMENT? Then it is simply about finding a seller with similar preferences in tea as you and charges within your budget or have products as such.

Do you expect your seller to be knowledgeable and trustworthy to source you genuine tea products that can EDUCATE you? Then a seller that is willing to prove his knowledge and earn trust by showing accountability through his products is important. This comes in the form of clearly labeled tea products and their source of origins. For a knowledgeable seller that understands the regional characteristics of puerh this should not be hard to do for new tea.

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Arby said

I go mostly on reviews by other to see if I will like it before I consider buying that flavour. I am fine with buying from lesser known sellers, but I want to know which part of the plant it came from and a bit about what they expect the brew to taste like. Stuff like age of the plant and elevation aren’t concerns for me because I’m not that fancy and educated yet. I always look for ingredients though (for flavoured blends) because sometimes it lists a tea as fruity and bright but then you see they add stevia and grapefruit peel which leads you to decide against buying it.

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Bitterleaf said

I think as Cwyn said, it’s all relative.

For some, transparency is saying the word over and over until it becomes true. For others it’s taking pictures with farmers and documenting travels and the process. Unfortunately, even that’s not verifiable. Was that really the farmer who grew the tea? Are those really the trees used? It’s not hard to take pictures and make up words. Hell, the person might not even be a farmer at all, and you have no way to hold them accountable. Good luck googling, or even baidu’ing, “Tea farmer Zhang in Yunnan” and hoping for some something useful.

I’m equally guilty of using the word, but ultimately I don’t think true transparency can really exist. Unless you come to Yunnan and drive down to process tea with me and keep your eyes on the leaves from picking to pressing, you’re just going to have to compare my words to the tea. And to be honest, nobody else is coming with me because I have sources to protect… sorry about that.

I think Cwyn’s article had a good point in relation to accountability in terms of older teas. If a tea head opens their doors and has publicly documented things about some aged teas they are now selling, then you have more transparency about its history and storage than some vendor may offer. But this doesn’t really extend to new teas.

I think the best approach is what more and more people have been saying – let the tea speak for itself in the end. If it’s good in the cup, that’s all that matters. I worried a lot more about what to say about teas and whether it would be received with skepticism when starting out, but care a lot less about that now. I still like the idea of sharing whatever interesting information or background I have, and only relay information that I’m sure of. Whether people want to believe that or not is up to them, but I feel I’m held accountable by the tea above all else. If it falls short, then so do I.

Max said

I do believe that true transparency exists. We’re showing people on a daily basis who grows our CLTeas, because he’s literally our co-founder. Our case is pretty rare because we’re vertically integrated, but it still stands as transparent, so it does exist :)

Bitterleaf said

That’s true, and a good point. I’m not trying to say that nobody’s transparent, just that there’s almost always some trust that needs to come into play – and for some vendors who share a great deal of the process and behind the scenes stuff, it’s much easier to establish that trust, as opposed to a handful of grainy pictures or something vague.

TeaLife.HK said

I think we may end up at the point where people start faking the pictures to add credence to their claims…which brings us back to the ‘proof is in the pudding’ thing again

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More beenghole pictures, less wrapper art focus.

Alex_fred said

This guy
He gets it

Cwyn said

In as many ways as he can. :)

what if there’s a photo of the beenghole on the wrapper?

TeaLife.HK said

^ The pu erh universe would be in a paradox and time would stop.

Sorry, been watching Dr Who

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Netherhero said

If someone isn’t telling you something about a product they are selling you they are either A) Hiding something B) Don’t know themselves, or C) Don’t think it’s important. All of these are negative qualities to me.

curlygc said

Or they assume their buyer is too stupid to know the difference.

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AllanK said

In the end what I want for transparency is I want to get what I paid for. This means no claims of thousand year old tea trees. No claims that it is Lao Ban Zhang tea but it is only $25, etc. I want the sellers claims to be reasonable and true. The year should be accurate. The seller should say if the tea is dry stored or wet. The place of the storage should also ideally be listed as well. Yunnan Sourcing usually tells you where the tea was stored. They are one of the few vendors in China where I actually trust what they say is true. A while ago there was a thread on here with a seller claiming their tea was from 1800 year old trees. I don’t like obviously false claims. When they tell you that the trees were more than 200 years old it is quite probably a false claim. Anything older than 200 year old trees is in my understanding quite rare. Even that is rare with young tea trees less than fifty years old being the standard.

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nycoma said

good tea should be the standard, and sent out only if it reaches that expectation

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MrQuackers said

Buying from an actual tea company that is located in a growing region as opposed to a chain store based out of Montreal that hires McDonald type employees.

TeaLife.HK said

That is no guarantee of quality. I heard some really outrageous claims in Kunming that made me chuckle, and there are actual tea companies in Taiwan that happily sell Thai and Vietnamese oolongs as Taiwanese gaoshan.

MrQuackers said

Excuse me, but in general it is a guarantee of quality. I’m sorry you had some bad experiences, but perhaps you should consider the part of the world you are dealing with. There are many local growers who are proud of the tea the tea they produce. They want to showcase that quality, not trick people. The further you get from the source, the more likely it is that you will not get what you were looking for.

In fact, if you think about it. The difference between a reseller and a grower is that the reseller is turning over product to make money. While the grower has a stake in the reputation of their particular region. A reseller can switch products, a grower cannot.

TeaLife.HK said

That’s cute and all, but those who actually deal with growers could tell you some stories about bait and switch that’d make you rethink that position! :) Which region of the world would you consider better? If you think Indian growers would be more honest, I think you’d be surprised to know how much Nepalese tea is passed off as Darjeeling nowadays…

Sure, there are some very honest growers who take pride in what they do, but there are lots who use pesticides and fertilizer haphazardly and misrepresent what they sell with glee. “Actual tea companies located in growing regions” run the entire gamut from very honest to completely dishonest. People are people, after all, regardless of the industry.

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