Best Places to Buy Puerh

I would have to disagree with you Dr Jim, I think Yunnan Sourcing is the best and White2Tea a close second. But then again I still prefer Shou to Sheng and Yunnan Sourcing definitely wins in the variety of good quality puerh tea they sell. As far as US sellers, Mandala Tea offers some good teas although you pay more for a US vendor. I also like Puerhshop in the USA and have found they have some good tea. If you are looking for Raw Puerh Tea there may be an advantage to buying from White2Tea over Yunnan Sourcing, fewer choices to decide on and good quality across the board.

YS is very good, so it’s hard to disagree with that, but I’m not a big fan of puerhshop. Their prices are very good, and the tea offers fair value, but I haven’t found anything there that really excites me (and I’ve tried >20 samples).

Seeing the note below, emphasizing “affordable” might make puerhshop a reasonable option. YS is still good since their stuff ranges in price, but price/quality ratio is relatively constant.

Yeah, I flat out don’t trust Puerhshop. I have heard rumors about fakes, but those were rumors and I have no personal knowledge of it but they come from people I trust. Regarding the site in general, there are products and information, and a lack of information (particularly regarding storage), that when I read it I find myself thinking “huh, that seems a little sketchy.” So I avoid it. But I suppose everyone has to decide for themselves. If you really think someone made a “premium” ripe cake from real Laobanzhang material for $23, and that skipping meals and drinking a crapload of ripe puerh will help you lose weight (and is a smart choice for your personal health) then by all means, have at it. I know that last bit has nothing to do with the actual tea they sell, but it hits me the wrong way, like claiming a tea comes from 1800 year old trees.

The thing about Puerhshop is not to me that they sell fakes, they have been accused but I didn’t see the viable argument in the accuser. They have definitely sold me some good Puerh. They have some good house ripes that I have liked. They also sell some that is not as good while I would not use the word bad to describe them you do face more risk in a Puerhshop purchase than in a Yunnan Sourcing purchase. I did once get a cake from Puerhshop with mold on it. They gave me a full refund but expected me to send the cake back. They did pay for the shipping. If you are considering a purchase from Puerhshop I would look to Steepster reviews of their product first. I have definitely got some excellent tea from them and I have got some from them that were not as good.

Part of my advice should have been to buy smaller amounts of quality tea rather than a lot of average tea. Especially if you think you are going to put it away for future years. I’ve got a bunch of Xiaguan tuos and plantation teas that are OK, but I never seem to feel like drinking them. That’s really the crux of my argument against puerhshop: lots of average tea.

@curlygc I bought that fake LaoBanZhang ripe knowing it most probably wasn’t real. I have no idea where I put it in my collection. But I remember it as being good. A lot of vendors sell fake LaoBanZhang and it’s usually easy to tell which are fakes. The ones that are just too cheap are usually fakes. If I refused to buy from every vendor selling a fake LaoBanZhang I would have to cut my vendor list in half at least. When it’s too cheap just assume it’s fake but it might still be good tea. Sometimes the fakes taste quite good. I think there is another possibility too. I don’t know what they do with the lower quality leaf produced in LaoBanZhang village but there certainly is some. Some cheap LaoBanZhang tea may be made from these lower quality leaves. If the tea just isn’t up to the high quality level they’re not going to get $500 a pound for the maocha.

@curlygc There is a prominent brand called LaoManE LaoBanZhang. This brand is actually pretty good but from neither the LaoManE or LaoBanZhang regions. There are a multitude using the word LaoBanZhang as a brand and these teas should be differentiated from fakes unless the seller is trying to claim that a LaoBanZhang brand tea is LaoBanZhang material.

Anyone know what the deal is with LME vs LBZ? Similar in taste, also expensive? etc? or is it just the name is similar? I remember seeing some LME from Tea Urchin but havent ever tasted any

I haven’t tried real LaoManE tea but I do know it is expensive, but on a par with Bing Dao tea expensive, not LaoBanZhang. I don’t remember seeing any real LaoManE tea offered from a good vendor either. I think it is quite rare and often doesn’t make it to the internet for sale.

TeaUrchin has some Lao Man E. It is strong and bitter like turpentine.

World famous turpentine aroma?

That must be similar to cakes I’ve seen advertised as “more stale”.

Turpentine thick and bitter. Not stale kind of viscous and whole mouth coating.

Also strips paint? :)

Allan! lol @ more stale. I love bad translations

Not quite paint stripping but very strong, forceful and bitter. Right up my alley.

After mrmopar’s comment, I had to try my sample. No turpentine. Must be the storage :) Certainly is potent though.

I have some here somewhere Dr Jim, I need to find it and see if it has settled a bit. I remember it being STRONG when it was young.

I think this is one of the cakes we shared in the group buy. I got 1/4 cake, and you got the remainder. 4 Peaks Lao Man E, 2011.

I remember that one. Summer blend if I recall correctly. I have a sample of the Spring somewhere around here that had the hard hit to it.

General profile for Laoe is thick, strong and bitter. It’s like a normal bulang cranked up to 11. There is also some supposedly sweeter leaf laoe as well. LBZ is generally very sweet. The 2 sweetest teas I’ve had were from lbz. It also can be massively thick and legit ones will have otherworldly qi.

That’s all said….There is A LOT of varation for each region. Trees, processing, when the tea was picked. Did it rain that day? How shaded are the trees? Etc. Stuff like that matters quite a bit. It would be pretty easy to fool even the most experienced drinker into thinking said tea is from someplace it isn’t. You probably can’t make a yiwu tea taste like something from Menghai but you can certainly blend tea from 1 or more Menghai villages to make it taste like tea from another village in Menghai.

As always, what’s in the cup what matters most. Good bad or somewhere inbtwn. Most tea is blended anyway, even if it’s labeled as a specific village or region.

As for the original question asked in this thread. W2t, YS, CLT, Bana are vendors I’ve had experience with and they have a wide range of tea to sample through

Personally, I believe Tea Urchin to be a strong first. They have some interesting and fantastic gushu that is by far some of the best “young” sheng I’ve ever tasted.

If your looking for teas made from single village sources, most of Yunnan Sourcing raw teas were made from a single village and are not blended tea. Although they do also sell blends, but these are labeled as such.

Tea Urchin is indeed good at young shengs. The main issue there is they don’t offer the same variety of other vendors for more mature shengs.

and this too https://teadb.org/puerh-vendor-guide/

I should add there is annother good EBay store called Streetshop88. They sell primarily no name or off brands but have excellent service and have sold me some good tea over the past couple of years. They have what is just about the fastest E Packet shipping in China.

Longrun has their own website too, Spring Tea Group

+1 on Bana.

Bana is on my list of Puerh sellers I will eventually get around to trying. They have an excellent reputation. Another on that list of sellers I have not yet bought from but whose reputation is good is Bitterleaf.