Extra-old puerh trees offerings
Well everyone, I’ve found it. The tea to end all teas.
You know what the problem is with puer made from extra-old trees? You may be thinking “It’s those charlatans trying to pass of 500 year old trees as extra-old”. This is a serious concern, but I’m speaking about something far worse: the risk of aging. As we all know, until its been properly aged, a tea cannot honestly be called ‘puer’. And lets face it, extra-old trees aren’t always cheap, which means aging puer can come with significant risk. Well feast you eyes on this beauty:
https://www.amazon.com/1990-1000-year-old-Menghai-Brick-1000g/dp/B00COCNZVI
Not only do you get the real deal 1000 year old trees, but 27 years of aging is done for you. Sure, you ideally want your raws aged 40 years, but this is a ripe, so you’re good to go. It even comes in a convenient brick form, which will make for easier stacking in storage when you stock up. Not only that, but it comes with free shipping. You heard me: FREE SHIPPING. No need to thank me.
For those on a tight tea budget
1000 Year Old https://www.aliexpress.com/item/Top-Quality-Xi-Gui-Ancient-Tree-Tea-Puer-400g-2012-yr-Chinese-SHUANG-TIAN-raw-puerh/32342881822.html
1998 500 year old Ban Zhang https://www.aliexpress.com/item/Freeshipping-Old-Ban-Zhang-Yun-1998YR-500-g-cooked-Pu-er-ripe-tea-cake-15-years/1468508393.html
HOTDAMN
There are almost as many fakes on Aliexpress as their are puerh teas for sale, almost. A few are really good like King Tea but all the really blatant fakers seem to go on Aliexpress. My favorite type of fake is the one selling ripe tea made in 1960 or so when ripe was only invented in 1973. I have come across a few fakers faking the age of ripe tea to have it older than the actual production method.
The company that makes that cake actually isn’t bad, at least their highest grade dianhong is quite nice, I’ve never had their puer. I don’t see anything on the wrapper claiming 500 year old trees.
I have made seven or eight purchases from King Tea and can tell you they do sell some good tea. I tend to buy his ripe. I never noticed that one. If he has one fake out of 4000 puerhs that isn’t too bad.
There is a brand in China called LaoBanZhang LaoManE or something like that. They don’t actually claim to be from either region but use the names as a brand. Their tea is pretty good actually. You just have to know you are buying LaoBanZhang the brand, not tea from LaoBanZhang village.
I think you are thinking of the Banzhang tea company. I have a cake of their Lao Man E, purchased in one of Liquid Proust’s group buys. It is actually pretty good tasting, and could be Lao Man E since it is made up of small bits and scraps rather than whole leaves. When I saw your post, I started a session.
Most tea being sold by western vendors is between 20 and 80 years old. Only the very top quality and priced cakes are coming from trees older than 100 years and those are mostly in the 1 to 200 year old range with maybe a little bit of something older mixed in.
There is a tree age “arms race” going on with all these vendors. One claims the trees are this old so then the next vendor has to one up them etc etc etc till all of a sudden you have insane claims of 1000+ year old tree. An even bigger issue (since those 1000 yo tree claims are obviously inflated and not being taken seriously by anyone, I hope…..) is that claims of 2, 3, 4 or even 500 years old seem reasonable now. I mentioned this in another thread but I feel it’s worth repeating. Trees much older than 200 years make up much less than 1%, I’d estimate something like 1% of 1% is closer to the truth. On top of that, not all will produce good puerh. A good 100 year old tree that’s been carefully selected and taken care of will most likely make much better puerh than a 500 year old completely wild tree. Start doing the math and you can see the supply just isn’t there for everyone to be selling tea from trees of this age.
Lastly, on village claims….A popular hotspot village right now is BoHeTang. That village contains 6….SIX trees. While I don’t know the exactly annual yield you can imagine it’s tiny. My guess is that these BHT labeled puerh come from trees outside and around the village. These could very good or even great but they aren’t BHT and shouldn’t be claimed as such. Just another false marketing tactic used to boost sales.
It’s worth adding that “wild” tea is also not a thing. Actualy wild tea will make you shit yourself. If anything, teas labelled as “wild” usually refer to abandoned or unattended trees.
A good point too about villages – most noteworthy ones are (much, much) smaller than people realize. BHT actually has 32 trees though, all of which are numbered. Still, that’s not going to produce very much material at all.
Yes as I understand it “wild” tree tea is not the good thing many vendors would have you believe. That was one that caught me off guard. I had no idea that “wild” tea was not actually better.
The age of the tree isn’t the end all of puerh anyway. I recently bought the Hai Lang Hao Lao Man E ripe brick. It is supposed to be some of the best ripe out there and it is only plantation material. Of course plantation material can mean 80 year old trees too. This tea was very expensive and no claims were made about the age of the trees. It was considered very valuable anyway. There are other factors other than the age of the tree that are important too.
Yeah, true wild tea trees are ones that were not planted or cultivated for consumption. You can still theoretically process them for tea, but they won’t necessarily be enjoyable. You can also get “semi-wild” trees that usually exist on the periphery of more remote tea gardens, which are more or less in between tea that we drink and true wild. Those can be exceptionally bitter, and not something you’d want to buy.
Tree age isn’t completely useless, but quality of land and farming methods are much more important, imo. 80 years is still old though! Sure, maybe you can’t call it ancient or gushu or whatever, but that’s pretty decent in my books. By that point it would be hard to consider it plantation tea, as that style of farming can’t be sustained for too long unless the trees are transitioned to fang yang/untended and some are removed or relocated to prevent crowding.
Global Tea Hut
This vendor has a tea that from 800-1,800 years old trees: https://www.globalteahut.org/mountaingate.html
I think you can also pay whatever you want for it.
I was looking at Puerhshop to see if they were selling any tea marketed as from 1000 year trees. While they had an incredibly large amount of ancient tree cakes for sale, somewhere around twenty or twenty five. None were marketed as 1000 year tea tree teas. In fact, in no instances do they give ages for the trees, just calling them ancient tree. Some of them, however were suspiciously cheap for ancient tree material. They also do not say what their definition of ancient tree is. They could be talking 150 year old trees for all I know.
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