Transparency in the Tea Industry?

383 Replies

After reading through every comment both here and on the Reddit thread, I am still extremely doubtful that the cakes are actually from 1800 year old trees.

However, based on Verdant’s response and the EXCEPTIONALLY GOOD customer service I’ve gotten whenever I’ve ordered from them (for reference, my last order was just a couple pieces of teaware. One of them they e-mailed me about saying the colors would be slightly different, included pictures and fully refunded the price of the item and still sent it for free), I am 100% confident that there’s no ill-intent or malice on Verdant’s end.

Their bad history with pu-erh seems to be limited ONLY to puerh. I can’t fathom that they would be purposely marking up their prices insanely high or trying to pass off 1800 year old cakes as real despite knowing otherwise. You can also see in the Reddit thread that their Laoshan Black specifically was mentioned being appropriately priced by market standards.

IMO, Verdant are good people and got unknowingly ripped off.

OliveEyes said

I agree with this too. I see Yunnan Sourcing’s POV though. We are getting screwed as a result of these mistakes and his anger is understandable. I think it’s clear I have love and respect for them but there is a lot for them to learn here. I just hope they can see this as a learning experience and take the proper steps to turn things around. For their sake. Just still wish this could have been presented more tidily. They are still people.

I had a similar experience with them also. They sent me a detailed response, refunded my money and sent me the item anyway. I was impressed.

Really hoping they can bounce back from this.

Funny, my black Friday tea ware was cancelled and refunded, though I’m still waiting on the refund. I’m supposedly being sent a free mug.

Let’s hope that’s the case. I have seen alot alot of problems with their offerings through the years. Pu-erh is the most complex tea to be involved with because the variety is so vast and there are so many aspects (like terroir, age of trees, age of cakes, etc etc) that can be faked. Without years of on the ground experience and fluency in Chinese and Chinese business culture you shouldn’t expect a vendor to have a good Pu-erh offering.

I haven’t bought pu’erh from them before, which could probably explain why my experiences so far have had no problems. I’ve only bought pu’erh from a few places so far, all of which specialize in it specifically as I don’t trust anyone else. I was actually planning on buying some starter tea stuff off your site for one of my friends as a gift soon.

jschergen said

Nice. YS is the real deal. Considering the time in business and the sheer magnitude of Yunnan Sourcing’s selection it speaks volumes that there’s been virtually no controversy.

I certainly hope it is the case and they were just duped, granted it doesn’t make it right since as YS said they do have a responsibility to their customers to be knowledgeable about what they are selling. I want to believe the best in people, but I honestly can’t say I do in this case, all I can do is hope they were made fools of and inadvertently passed on the foolery and this was not a direct act of malicious business practice.

And now I sip my tea and wait to see if there will be a response from Verdant.

mrmopar said

Fisherman Fizz, you can trust Scott at Yunnan Sourcing. He is a fine seller and I have a good supply of his products. Never any worries. Lots reviewed in my tea log. May have one tonight.

I don’t understand how you have worry-free experience with Scott. I always worry. He puts in all sorts of evil tea samples with my orders, and eventually it drains my food budget. Luckily I can recover some nutrients by eating the leaves.

^ This made me giggle.

mrmopar said

TeaIluminati, I sold the grand-kids into indentured servitude for a credit line extension.

:)

Login or sign up to post a message.

DharmaTea said

I’m new to the community and don’t have much to add but appreciate the depth of knowledge and care here. I’m also grateful to see discussion of compassionate communication in such a charged topic. Drink too much tea and it’s easy to get over excited and perhaps lose skillfulness. Kind of funny when tea drinking and ceremony represents the height of refinement. At our best perhaps we can approach each other as we would a rare tea; taking the time to savor both pleasant and unpleasant qualities, each the product of countless generations of growing conditions and process. May we all ripen well with care.

p.s. both faith and doubt have great spiritual value…

Cwyn said

" Drink too much tea and it’s easy to get over excited and perhaps lose skillfulness. "

(Chuckles lightly) This is too good. :D Also, pee a lot.

:)

Login or sign up to post a message.

Let’s remember that drinking tea is a bastion of peace, tranquility, and friendship. To err is human. I hope that you’ll all join that thought in your next cup.
Much love,
Andrew

Phi said

Words to live by. Steepster should always be a place where people feel safe and welcome.

Login or sign up to post a message.

I’m saddened by this. I’ve had good dealings with Verdant before and have bought tea ware from them that I’m very happy with. I’ve been pleased with their customer service too. I did get some of this tea recently (I wanted to believe!) – but mentally sort of translated the tree ages to “old, older, oldest”. I guess that makes me a bit of a sucker.

Live and learn, I guess.

AllanK said

Everyone wants to believe, that’s how they sell such a tea. If you want to believe enough you may buy it even when you should know better in cases of experienced puerh buyers.

Next you’ll tell me crazy things like a new car won’t make me cool or that fancy face cream won’t make me 21 again!

Anyway, I learned a lot on this thread. I had no idea of the realities of old trees and old tree picking. I feel stupid and smarter at the same time.

I certainly do feel like pu-erh is special and really does enhance our experience of life. What’s important is to attribute that quality to the correct teas. Some of the best pu-erhs I have ever had came from 80-200 year old tea trees. They are in their prime and they have a balanced stable old tree (mature) quality to them but also have a strength (pungency, taste and cha qi) that is better than trees that are even older. So… I hope you don’t feel disillusioned or silly. When I first arrived in Yunnan I would have believed claims like that too, but with literacy in the language, culture and industry coupled with meeting locals who were honest and willing to teach me I was able to learn separate the real from the not real. Life is just like that. I am sure there are things you know that I would totally not understand at first, or would have some notions of that were not accurate.

I do feel just a little silly, but I’m glad you spent time to educate us! I really appreciate it, especially the detective work with the photos.

I see there has been no response yet concerning that rather damning photo! Probably won’t be one….

But I would like to think some good will come of this. I am now resolved to sample more first, be more skeptical, and not be so quick to jump on a new shiny looking tea. I also have signed up for the Yunning Sourcing tea club and that will be the best thing of all, I’m sure.

Login or sign up to post a message.

curlygc said

I was willing to keep an open mind and not judge but honestly, the photo of the tree makes me a little angry. Perhaps I’ve spent too long in courtrooms with liars and crazy people, and maybe as a result I’ve just become a jaded old premenopausal crank, but I simply cannot believe that Verdant didn’t know the photograph of the tree they posted was not in Qian Jia Zhai but in Feng Qing. My gut tells me they knew that, and now I feel like a sucker for taking them at their word in the first place.

It’s a truism in legal ethics that one should comport oneself in such a way as to avoid even the appearance of impropriety, and I think the same can be said in business as well. So what does this appear to be? A misrepresentation, that’s what. Inadvertent or not, a misrepresentation. And honestly, I’m also more than a little pissed off for being made to feel like I’m the bad guy for questioning their ethics in the first place, even though I didn’t do it publicly until now. Well, you live and learn. I am grateful for this forum and how much I have learned here, even when the learning experience hasn’t been totally pleasant.

boychik said

Agree 100%

Login or sign up to post a message.

Brian said

yea. that picture is 100% The King Tree……

Login or sign up to post a message.

I just read through all of this, and really all I have to say is that this discussion makes me sad, on so many different levels. I won’t really add anything other than that.

I’m not a tea expert, I just love drinking really good tea. I’ve been enjoying amazing teas for years, and my opinions of what constitutes ‘really good tea’ are based on my own senses & sense of taste, rather than hype.

JC said

That’s the way it should be :) I think the upset is related to the accuracy of the products. If I sold you a Ferrari and later you found out I delivered a red Beetle, you wouldn’t be happy. With that said, that doesn’t make one better than the other, just not what you purchased. Like the iPhones from ebay that people got sent a picture of an iPhone.

Lion select said

I feel the biggest takeaway of reading all this is to be cautious of lofty claims about a tea’s uniqueness. I have always been in the camp of “buy what tastes good” and not to care so much what the story behind it is, but I also sympathize with those who are more connoisseur than I when it comes to tea and truly want to educate themselves and experience many unique and rare manifestations of tea. I have bought teas at times that claimed to be rare or unique in some way, and can see how that may have elevated my impression and enjoyment of them without me realizing it. I would be very disappointed if I found out those claims were untrue. I wish we had a market where customers could put their money down knowing they are getting what they are told they will be getting, but it rings true in every capitalist market that this is often not the case and should always be a secondary consideration to the primary thought “will I simply enjoy this product for what it is?” not the claims or the story behind it or the prestige it has. This is often where sampling is important, when it comes to tea.

The more I’ve spent time learning about tea and interacting with the tea community, the more zen and kind of anti-social I’ve become about it. The negativity gets old. There are times I laugh aloud at how silly it all looks when people throw sass over tea. Like, congratulations you are the loudest authority/opinion over a dainty, relaxing beverage. Hardcore.

Spending what I can afford on teas that taste good to me, and sampling first when I can, rather than going on the claims or relying on others’ impressions, definitely leads to little disappointment. The tea is true. The descriptions may not be.

I appreciate the exposing of the misinformation in cases such as this, but the vitriol over it is definitely disappointing and a large part of why I’m not very active on Steepster anymore. I’ve had it thrown at me over my own discussion posts over the simplest and most benign of things and quickly learned it was easier for me to enjoy my discoveries of tea when I didn’t share them with anyone else. Not a fun fact, but I’m adjusted to it now.

AllanK said

You always have to take a tea’s rarity with a grain of salt. There is one vendor on EBay who specializes in teas from the 1990s called Fengyuan Tea Shop. His teas are also very cheap, cheaper than any real 1990s tea would be. You just don’t get a 1990 sheng for $40 so I know it is a fake but he calls them 1990 tea none the same. I have actually bought a couple of them knowing they were not what they claimed but I am sure he fools some people into thinking they are really 20 plus year old sheng for that price. They have actually been decent teas for the price.

Zennenn said

I am also very sad. I’ve lost trust in Verdant, who I really enjoyed supporting since they used to be my local tea shop. Although some seem bothered by it, I appreciated their tasting descriptions because although I may not have picked up all they did, the information have me a sense for whether the flavors would be something I might enjoy. As a newer tea drinker, this was invaluable and saved me from buying a bunch of tea I wouldn’t like. This seeming scam or cluelessness has tainted all the Verdant tea I have in my stash.

mrmopar said

Zennenn, just judge the tea by the taste. If you like it drink it. No matter where it came from.

Login or sign up to post a message.

Dr Jim said

Throughout this thread I have been constantly reminded of the excellent book Puer Tea: Ancient Caravans and Urban Chic by Jinghong Zhang. The author uses the idea of a knight-errant wandering in unfamiliar, dangerous territory as a theme for what it is like to try to buy puerh. You never really know where the tea has been or what it really is, but need to develop your own tastes and paths toward finding teas that you like.

As many have commented in this thread, this means trusting your own taste, but also finding sources that you trust. Trust doesn’t necessarily mean believing the hype, but simply learning that your tastes run in the same direction as that of particular vendors. I’ve only been drinking puerh seriously for about a year, but I’m starting to learn where to get tea that I know I’ll enjoy. I’m also a member of the sheng Olympiad group buy and I am eager to try these teas (Liquid Proust has already received the Verdant order). I never really believed the dates, but suspect I may like the teas. That is all that really matters in the end.

This is a point that has been sort of overlooked in all of this. Nobody has tried the tea (or at least nobody spoke up about it afaik). It’ll be fun to see what the TeaDB and steepster folks think come next year.

I personally don’t expect the tea to be terrible, just overpriced and oversold. To put it in perspective, it’s more expensive than YS 2015 Wa Long village, his most expensive 2015 offering, and same as Bosch from w2t. And of course you are well within the range of several aged Yang Qing Hao and other premium teas.

I just don’t expect it to come close to the competition in its price range, is all.

Thank you for the book suggestion Dr. Jim. Just found my Christmas present to myself this year!

Dr Jim said

Check out the video references in the book. They are pretty entertaining as well.

AJ said

I’m glad someone brought Puer Tea:AC&UC up, because I didn’t want to be the one waving it above my head yelling, “hey guys, read this book about how easy it is to get conned in the puer tea industry”.

Login or sign up to post a message.

All other bits of this discussion aside, I’ve kinda shopped for things from tires to tea since roughly 9 years old, so gasps and shock aren’t felt by me about marketing existing… Yelling “Newsflash: Marketing! Zomg secret evil!” just seems weird. Doesn’t matter what type or specific product it’s about, it’s just weird.

I’ll throw in another secret for folks, I guess: the ladies in the insert amazing mascara ads are wearing false lashes.

When I was a child the cry “But everyone else is doing it!” got me nowhere in my efforts to excuse my misbehavior.

I can’t comment more thoroughly in reply as I have such a hard time taking you seriously in it. I assume you must be joking because an adult wouldn’t post that in seriousness.

Login or sign up to post a message.

Cwyn said

I have not tried Verdant’s puerh tea. I did try an order for a fresh spring green tea. Verdant was based in Minnesota at that time, and since Wisconsin does not have tea shops or online tea shops, Minnesota is the closest and also the least expensive shipping distance-wise. The tea I ordered was a prepaid seasonal tea. This tea ended up on either a back order or the shipping was delayed, but two months past the ship date, no tea. Verdant did not update customers on the situation until a number of us complained.

Having said that, I think puerh as a hobby requires the money to afford error and tolerance for ambiguity. No one will avoid the occasional regret or cake that we wish later on we hadn’t bought. The important part is spend what we can afford to lose, whether it will be in misrepresentation or later on during storage/aging. Want a guarantee? 100% oxidized black tea is a consistent product for the most part.

Login or sign up to post a message.

Login or sign up to leave a comment.