Mei-Leaf Chat
Ultra special old raw Pu-erh. This looks interesting.
https://youtu.be/sRU_OgoxrI0
I’ve tried to stay away from this chat…but thankyou for this, I needed a laugh today.
no it isn’t! so another “fop-aux” from Meileaf :-)))) in 2002 nobody , I repeat …no body was making any Gu Shu tea !!!!! of course if u live in China and drink pu-erh quite a while, you would have known that.
The "church " scent he is talking about..we call it ‘shi cang’ – wet storage, which means the tea went fast maturing transformation in GZ or SZ, so can be any age. The tea looks old , but not necessary have to be ( more in Smart Tea Buyer ) .
Your man there is making a fool of him self , and on public , on youtube…Im laughing as well . U can pass the message.
Regards:-)
I can’t help thinking that’s got to be nonsense. Of course producers have been making old tree tea since forever. What do you expect them to do, leave the leaves to wither in place?
As for this tea, I don’t think the problem is with claiming it is made with 2002 material, but more with why the vendor found it necessary to mix it with a young sheng, rather than selling each seperately. It makes me suspicious they bought an expensive batch that turned out to be a bit flat, and have tried to jazz it up with some young zesty sheng, while giving it a USP to try and offload it quickly. Limited batch, buy a tong! Five hunderd dollar!
For the most part its about the taste and what your gut tells you to be a quality product. I’m not an puerh expert by any stretch of the imagination, but I have tried a lot of different puerh’s from many vendors. Ill let you know in this chat how this one is, when I try it. Is it not common puerh producers to blend multi year blends? Crimson Lotus has a tea called Jade Rabbit which has some 10 year material in it and its a superb tea imo. Any more thoughts on this interesting subject of blends?
Because if you know pu-erh tea production history , you would have known that nobody bothered to separate bush tea from arbor trees ( whatever age ). That time there was no such a commercial concept of separating / grading/ pricing tea into the Gushu, Danzhu , Mushu…etc. Before it was just called Da Shu / Xiao Shu ( big tree / small tree ) tree and people weren’t too enthusiastic to harvest it coz it was just too much hassle for almost same money. Yes, that time nobody would give you much more money for tea made of from arbor coz nobody cared much and not many people understood the difference. Simple farmer was selling tea in amounts not in “names” like nowadays so the tea leafs from big tree were just put into the same basket with leafs from small trees . This all pu-erh marketing ( Gu shu, Dan Zhu..etc. ) started sometimes after 2007 when selling “just” pu-erh tea wasn’t good enough, coz everybody was selling it (100 000 tons was produced ) . So vendors had to come up with something different to make sales happen. Now-days can see even Oolong Gu Shu or coffee from Gu Shu:-)) . no, Im not joking! I live in China, Kunming, Ive seen that.
Other thing is that Gu Shu ( as I believe ) was bought in SZ ( or GZ maybe? ) , that’s why “church” wet notes. If you know CN and local economy , you would have know how much approx is a 1m2 to rent in places like SZ or GZ to open the tea shop , living costs are very near to Europe, some stuff even more expensive ( I lived in SZ 1year ) .
Tea vendors from that area ( Cantonese ) usually come to Yunnan in summer and buy “yi shui cha” – summer harvest which is very cheap and mostly from bushes , not from arbors. Then re-sell it in some package and story for 5-10x price …coz it’s a business!!! Why still foreigners don’t want to accept this fact:-((( …uff
Buying Gu Shu from GZ/SZ can do just absolutely beginner who has no idea about pu-erh tea biz at all. Why still foreigners believe that there are thousands tons of Gu shu available in CN along with aged puerhs from 70’s and nobody here want it , coz CN tea drinkers do not drink such a teas at all :-) . So Gu Shu Bulang from 2002 was just sitting there and waiting for some “laowai” to come around and pick it up:)…OMG! Sooo lucky!!! If you know the real prices of “real name” teas, you wouldn’t have believed that they got even 1kg of it. ( if that tea exists at first place ) .
Your man there just got lured into the simple blabla story which is around past few years , something like : “farmer forgot it in his house so it was sitting there for 16 years” :-))) .
These “farmers” come to our KM tea shop few times per months with story 20y old tea as well.
“I don’t think the problem is with claiming it is made with 2002 material” …Yes! thank you for writing that! …this is exactly on what is the modern pu-erh tea biz based on. Who would prove it is not the Bunalg from 2002, right? Especially if not having purchased that tea in 2002 and stored up to now so can actually compare with the real one..in order to judge legitimity. Or having at least experience with any tea from 2002. So many aspect to consider being involved in final flavor spectrum ( place, way of processing, storage…etc ) . That’s why it’s such a good business! Foreigners find hard to believe that somebody would dare to claim 2y old wet stored puerh to be 10y old dry storage pu-erh tea. YES!!! they actually would :-)))) And if they see your foreign face…I’ll bet U they would:-)))
Other fact: what is Gu Shu for you? Coz Xishuangbanna terms it’s 300y+ in Mangfei it’s 100y+ years old tea tree. plus fact that many vendors call Gushu anything what is not just “tai di cha” tableland / bush tea.
Anyway….Smart Tea Buyer blog has a rest of the info.
I’m getting tired of explaining this over and over again. It’s a battle which just can’t win. Naturally human wants the best , unusual , rare , high quality products …so that’s on what they catch us all!
Mei-Leaf discussion aside, Error’s post, underneath the frustration, explains very well how the puerh “racket” works. I imagine a seasoned vendor could get a good laugh from this post because it is so true. If I could sell leaves from the big tree in my backyard simply with a good story, especially because people can be fooled with the notion of how exotic my country seems to them, I sure as heck would do it.
Correct attitude Wes B. Buy the tea not the story or wrapper.
But my point wasn’t about that.
With great audience comes great responsibility , and trying to convince over 30k followers that you can buy tea from 1600 old tea tree or 16y old Gu Shu is not only hurting the pu-erh tea businesses who actually have clue what they are doing , but also Mei Leaf them selves. Customers are learning eventually , takes more time abroad ( no in China ) but they still do.
If I buy tea from some vendor believing that Im buying tea “A” which market price is $$$ and few years later I find out that I was actually drinking tea “B” which market price that time was only $ , I would never come back to that vendor, no matter if he/ she did it consciously or just because lack of experience. I would just feel cheated…my humble opinion.
If u ever happen come to China ( Kunming ) , go to the tea market and listen the stories of other vendors how they lost their first customers :-)
Pu-erh tea biz is not ordinary tea biz. Has more issues ( faking , cheating etc ) than any other tea biz. Doing it sloppy way will follow with nasty payback.
I believe Don is honest vendor and not doing this intentionally , just lack of experience in such a messy biz. I believe when he goes trough the videos 5y later , he might delete some of them realizing were the mistake was. I wish there was some ultimate pu-erh tea guide, but there isn’t , because market is a “living” thing . Developing , changing , adjusting to demands…creating new categories/ grades / stories..and of course followed by faking.
CN puerh tea market could be as far as inventive like using old not wanted Dianhong balck tea tips ( golden tips ) to mix with shu puerh and make it look like high grade Gong Ting type selling for lots of money.
Things like that you r not going to learn by coming to China 2 times a year and FB is not going to tell u that either. Actually even vendors are not sharing ( if they know ) any of those…it’s either their know-how or why bother.
Lots of “business” is going on around the puerh here and abroad u guys unfortunately getting only " sweet cream " passed by not experienced vendors coming here and getting blablabla from some local seller.
Anyway, as I said before : samples, samples and again samples. If u like the taste / price..buy more. no need to bother about other stuff.
Don’s business can handle a handle a high degree of turnover, so it doesn’t seem to matter that much if he makes claims that turn out to almost certainly be false. People can believe or accept whatever they want to anyway, so if it turns out there are no 1600 year old tea trees or the 16 year old gushu claim is probably nonsense then as long as they want to like the vendor they’ll just say “never mind; the story wasn’t important anyway.” If they’re really drinking ordinary, medium quality level tea that’s being sold for two or three times what it’s worth it would take a long time for that to sink in, and it’s back to that business level not being offset by significant turnover. It’s just good business for Don to pass on every story a farmer tells him as fact, and spin every product as if it’s the tea that hardly ever makes it out of China, and charge a dollar a gram for almost everything he sells. Because it actually works you can’t expect him to do otherwise.
What is Gushu PuErh Tea? CHINA TRIP
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKJdOPk7cGc
In this video Don acknowledges Gushu pu-erh is controversial and invites constructive comments. Perhaps Don is trying to quell any doubt around his Gushu pu-erh?
“However, there is lot of controversy around gushu. Just take a look online and you’ll find lots of forums talking about the authenticity, whether or not it is real gushu, fake gushu, and how we go about estimating the age of the tea trees”
“As always we welcome any comments, but especially with this video I know there’s a lot of controversy around it. So please, if you have any constructive thoughts or comments then put them in the comments section below.”
“I spoke to the official government researcher in gushu. He said to me that really they use two methods to estimate the age of the tree tea:
1. Speaking to the local tribes and looking at history of the land.
2. Looking at the size of the tree, specifically the circumference of the trunk and the size of the branches”
18:00 Don and Celine go to Lao Ban Zhang. He talks to a good friend, the sister of the chief of the Lao Ban Zhang village
just reading it again and sorry for picking :-)))
“He talks to a good friend, the sister of the chief of the Lao Ban Zhang village” ….Im not sure of his valuing the word “good friend” …to me it’s somebody who helps when Im in trouble or listen to me when I needed to be heard. I’m kinda failing to believe that woman who is in that ( not only financial ) status, would be around when Don is in trouble :-)))) especially if old CN saying is applied even in now days : There is no real friend, only common profit . …in Tea biz this applies even more. I guess, he really needs to learn about Chinese culture .
his father was chinese, a big wig exporter from china into UK and europe. part of why i think when he’s wrong he knows better
Not commenting on their marketing/claims, but what I really appreciate is how much time and effort they put into their videos, educating everyone on YouTube about tea.
I’m certainly grateful for the videos. I get the impression that as a result of his getting too caught up in his own enthusiasm he rubs certain people up the wrong way, particularly in areas where he is inexperienced. I suspect that he’s actually a nice guy. I’ve only been on this forum for maybe a week; however, it’s clear that certain issues are toxic. It would be nice if people could work together. I hope that you guys can sort things out. Have a nice day.
well said with education, but as you probably know , foreigners from all over the world come to China with very basic Eng. and still finding English teaching jobs. So depends what do you mean by “education”. I agree that Mei Leaf put lots of energy and time to enlighten beginners , but as "Taste of My own " said : they are getting into the waters they can’t swim well yet. I don’t mind helping and working together but nobody seems to listen. We do write blogs to educate foreigners about the mess around not only the pu-erh tea industry. But this is a very competitive biz , so I don’t see somebody like Don come to me in Kunming and say: " hey, would you mind to explain to me something" :-)))
He prefers to learn ( believe ) from CN vendors ( as most of the foreigners coming here for tea ) coz It’s “safer” ( CN vendor can’t see what he is doing online ) more authentic and somebody who claims to do 10+ years puerh business just “must” be more experienced. Yes , they are , so they are not telling anything what wouldn’t be profitable for them.
I can not imagine some those tea biz men saying here " oh , can’t get any decent gu shu these days coz price is just too high , so I do only tai di cha this year only" .
Also need to understand that the concept of claiming / exaggerating about the age / grade /origin of tea material works well in Chinese marketing. Still the ratio 3 out of 10 would believe and buy could be profitable enough. Maybe the 2 from those 7 non believers would post something negative about the vendor. And if truth comes out , it’s OK to say : “oohh, I was cheated” , and as it was mentioned before by someone, people would just forget about it .
Same concept works in CN tea market. They will tell you whatever and if you proof they’re wrong , they would just say : " oohh , you are the specialist " , but wouldn’t change a thing, they still continue sayng same b****t to other customers. Coz as I said before : 3 out of 10 still works fine.
In addition: I know few vendors in Xiong Da tea market who ran tea shop for 10 or more years and never been to tea mountain. But they mastered the marketing skill : 20cny cake can sell for 300cny, and that’s what counts. I’m repeating my self : Tea business in China is THE BUSINESS !
Never does the phrase caveat emptor mean more to me than those times when I’m buying puerh tea.
Glad that Error is here to be realistic and knowledgeable about a very complex subject. I buy tea from Mei Leaf occasionally, though it bothers me when i do. I find the taste of many of their teas to be quite good, and worth the price. But I do find Don’s mix of genuine education and bullshit stories to be more harmful than helpful.
This.
And Don has such an engaging way of making videos that it really draws in tea drinkers. He seems so reminiscent of Teavana and their ways of educating both employees and guests. I’ve never tried his teas, but I do actually enjoy his videos. I just can’t shake that Teavana bullshit vibe he gives off during them.
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