Tea Talk on Paper #13: The Current State of Good Ripe Tea in 2016

"Tea Talk on Paper" has written twelve articles, mostly about raw tea. I haven't mentioned ripe tea before, indeed because ripe tea is harder to control, and the current ripe tea market is quite chaotic, with various concepts flying around: ancient tree ripe tea/traditional craftsmanship/master fermentation/off-ground fermentation/wooden box fermentation/floor fermentation/small molecule water fermentation/microbial fermentation... I can easily list a bunch, but from my personal feeling, I've tasted many ripe teas on the market, and it's rare to find one that is clean in the mouth and comfortable for the body. Good ripe tea is truly rare, but raw tea is not like that; there are many good raw teas. Every tea maker, every shop, every tea factory has many classic and delicious raw teas. As far as I know, the consumption of ripe Pu-erh tea far exceeds that of raw tea. The sales data from my 51 Pu-erh website over the years also confirms that about 70% of tea sold is ripe tea. Why is there such an inverted situation?

With this question, I have asked many experts and practitioners, and there are many reasons, which can be summarized roughly as follows.

1. Ripe tea is led by major factories like Dayi, with stable quality, such as 7572, which has acceptable taste and high cost-performance, and will become very delicious after long-term storage. Other factories, due to scale and brand recognition, cannot directly compete with factories like Dayi, so they only make very cheap and very expensive ripe teas, with mixed quality, and passing off inferior as superior is common.

1. Ripe tea needs aging to taste good, including 7572; the current year's tea has taste defects. Dayi, because it has old tea from previous years as evidence, finds it easier to promote new tea. Other brands' ripe teas are difficult to promote, and they are unwilling to invest manpower and resources in research and development, let alone establish storage. Naturally, good ripe teas are few.

1. Most ordinary consumers don't understand tea well. High-end raw tea has a large group of enthusiasts who understand it and are willing to pay. Ripe tea doesn't have such a foundation, so few people make high-end ripe tea. You can see that many second-tier factories produce far more raw tea than ripe tea. With fewer people making high-end, the total amount of good ripe tea naturally decreases.

1. Ordinary consumers drink ripe tea just to have tea, as long as it tastes better than water, and are sensitive to cost, leading to a large number of low-end ripe teas flooding the market. These players rely on cost and scale advantages and don't touch high-end ripe tea at all.

1. Good raw materials are all used for raw tea, which has a short cycle and quick cash conversion, and tastes good right after making. For ripe tea to taste good, it needs at least 1-2 years, or even longer. The cash conversion cycle for ripe tea is long, so business people are not very willing to invest heavily. Many ripe teas are made from moldy or unsellable raw materials that couldn't be sold, so they are fermented into ripe tea as a last resort. Such tea won't be very good.

1. Most people don't understand ancient tree raw tea, and after fermentation into ripe tea, even fewer can understand it. If you really use a batch of ancient tree ripe tea and invite a master to ferment it, the cost is high, and consumers still don't understand it. Isn't that foolish? Naturally, few people do it.

1. To shorten the ripe tea cycle, fermentation tends to be over-fermented. The trend towards over-fermentation is also to adapt to fast consumption, causing many ripe teas to become "fast food" style ordinary teas. Over-fermented tea has a clear liquor, sweet taste, but lacks depth, making it difficult to transform into good ripe tea.

...

In fact, this is the case. Often, peers ask me for high-end ripe tea. I have searched the tea market and factory warehouses thoroughly many times, and classic good ripe teas are really too few. The ones I can appreciate are all priced at over a thousand per cake, and some ripe teas costing several thousand or even ten thousand I haven't even liked. What's wrong with ripe tea?

Ripe tea is in a mess that is hard to clarify.

Fortunately, many of our peers are making changes.

On the tea mountains, I have seen many people controlling from fresh leaf rough processing, storing sun-dried tea for several months or even half a year before piling for fermentation. The smell of the fermentation pile is very comfortable, and we have had the honor to taste the ripe tea from the pile, which indeed performs outstandingly. Unfortunately, the quantities are small, and they are distributed within their circles, with very little flowing to the market. But given time, when they are fully prepared, good ripe tea on the market will no longer be hard to find.

At the beginning of the crowdfunding, I thought about crowdfunding ripe tea, not to change anything, but just to prove that good ripe tea can also be low-cost and can be sold for 199 yuan per cake. Finally, the fourth tea in the Houyue crowdfunding is ripe tea, which will be officially launched in November. I hope to give everyone a surprise in 2016, a good impression of ripe tea.

Articles and images are original. Author: Lü Jianfeng, WeChat: 673998, working at 51 Pu-erh website, initiator of Houyue crowdfunding tea.