Old grandfather stories on anything collectible from teapots, antiques to stamps, and also travel, wines and much more.
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Saturday 8 June 2013
My Puerh Story
I have been collecting puerh tea since the late 1980s. I have now a lot of puerh tea in a great variety of shapes from brick, disc, to bowl and mushroom-shaped. They are all stacked in my store room, under the drawers and in cabinets. The age of this tea ranges from late 70s to early 20s. My tea collection is going to last a few generations (if I don't sell it off). You may be interested why on earth do I need to keep so much tea. Sometimes I do wonder why I collected so much tea.
Puerh Tea of the 80s
A 500 g piece
It all began when I started work in Singapore in the early 80s. The colleagues I mixed with were all tea drinkers and they only drank puerh, good and high quality puerh that used to cost $250 per disc back then. Later I found out that this puerh was actually more than 100 years old (Song Ping Brand which has become so precious nowadays that the tea often appeared in auction houses). This aged puerh gives off a deep fragrance and aroma that is difficult to describe. The tea is dark brown in colour and the taste is very soothing and with a unique aged puerh characteristics. Those were the last memories I had with this aged puerh.
During those days, drinking century old puerh was only possible for those with deep pockets. Of course if one likes puerh, he can always settle for tea that is 20 to 30 years old which costs under $30 per disc of 300 grams. There were puerh bricks, discs, bowls and mushrooms in tea shops and supermarkets everywhere in Singapore. I used to buy them from my colleague at $20 to $30 per piece.
Then one day, I walked into a tea merchant in Chinatown and saw a great variety of puerh tea on display in his shop. The prices were very reasonable.
Puerh piece of 100 g
Puerh mushrooms
After a few purchases with the tea merchant, I found that the quality of the tea he sold was very good and the price was very affordable. Then I began to chat with him. Later we became good friends and then I started buying puerh tea in large quantities. He even gave me wholesale price, the price he quoted to his business associates. I started buying the tea bricks in boxes, one box contained 256 pieces. At one time, I used to own more than 1000 pieces of such tea bricks. One day, the tea merchant told me, old tea was for consumption. You had to keep some newer tea so that in future, when all the old tea was consumed your newer tea would become old and fetched a good price. I listened to him and started buying newer tea as well.
Besides tea bricks, I also collected large quantities of round puerh discs (some came in one bunble of 7 wrapped in bamboo leaves), puerh bowl and mushrooms. If you ask me why I have collected so much tea. The obvious answer is I like the tea and would like to own a lot of this tea so that I have unlimited supply of this tea. I wasn't even thinking of any financial gain as I didn't think that the tea could become so pr icy. Of course I was wrong. The price of aged puerh went up and up in the last decade. It all began in the late 90s, people all over the world began to like puerh. When people are affluent, they will go for the best thing in life. The rich were going for the top grades that were selling at a few thousand dollars per piece. Century old puerh becomes hot item in auction houses in China. Even the humble bricks of the 80s are now selling at 600 USD per piece at internet outlets.
In early 2000, collecting puerh becomes a hobby as people start hoarding the tea in huge quantity. Many stories were told on how people get rich by selling off their old tea. This is particularly true for some restaurant owners in Hong Kong. These people stocked large quantity of puerh from China for their restaurant business. Traditionally, Hong Kong people like to enjoy morning sessions of 'Yum Cha' in restaurants where they consume 'Dim Sum' with puerh tea to go with these delicacies. In the late 90s when restaurant owners wound up their business, they realised that the tea they had been stocking over the decades was so valuable that when they disposed off the tea, they made more money than running the restaurant business all these years. Now the art of collecting puerh tea spreads to the western world. There are many web sites dedicated to puerh tea drinking and collecting. These western web sites are created solely for westerners to have a better understanding of puerh tea; things like where the tea is harvested, how it is processed, the various type of tea, its health benefits and how to appreciate the tea. Very often you can hear a foreigner asking the shopkeeper the vintage year when he picks up a piece of puerh cake in a tea shop.
There are two types of puerh tea, one is the 'cooked' or 'riped' type and the other is the 'raw' or 'green' type. The 'cooked' tea has gone through a fermentation process artificially. When the tea leaves have been dried and chlorophyll removed, water is sprayed onto heaps of tea leaves. Plastic sheets are then used to cover over the leaves for a couple of days to start the fermentation process. The fermented tea is then pressed into various shapes, ready for storage or consumption. This type of puerh can be consumed straight away after manufacture but the smell is rather smoky and the taste is like burnt grasses. The tea can be kept for a few years then the taste and flavour will improve but its quality can never be compared to the green tea which has been aged naturally. The 'green' puerh is processed from green tea leaves and pressed into various shapes. This green tea will taste rather harsh and bitter and is damaging to health if consumed in large quantity. To remove this harshness, the tea needs to be stored for at least 20 years or longer for the tea to go through the fermentation process naturally before it is fit for consumption. Of course the longer the tea is kept, the better the taste and fragrance and the higher the value. This explains why hundred year old puerh tea costs a fortune.
Another form of packaging
1980s puerh bricks
In the late 70s and early 80s, tea producers in Yunnan experimented blending 'cooked' and 'raw' puerh and presses the tea into bricks. The result was incredible. The tea produced had a deep fragrance and the flavour is soothing and remarkable. This is the famous 1973 puerh bricks which is a gem in the collectors' eyes. Market price is more than a thousand US dollars per piece. Of course there are other more expensive tea like the 'red label', 'yellow label', the branded type like the 'song ping', etc. Recently I saw one piece of puerh disc selling at $33000 in a downtown supermarket! I could not imagine who on earth would fork out a whopping $33000 just to drink this tea. Its really crazy; well there may be crazy people around, who knows.
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