Tea Talk on Paper XII: Does It Really Get More Fragrant with Age?

I came to tea from the internet industry and am very sensitive to keywords. If we discuss the popular keywords of Pu'er tea, we can easily list a bunch: ancient tree tea, aged tea, ripe tea, raw tea, Tea Horse Road, Lao Banzhang, Bingdao, Dayi, Xiaguan, cake tea, pure material, state-owned forest, health, tea culture, Zen and tea as one... and many more. But if we have to say which keyword ranks first, I think it must be 'more fragrant with age'.

Regarding the 'more fragrant with age' of Pu'er tea, it originated in 1995 when Taiwanese scholar Mr. Deng Shihai published the first formal monograph on Pu'er tea, "Pu'er Tea", in which he first proposed the saying 'more fragrant with age'. According to some research, this was the first time Pu'er tea used the phrase 'more fragrant with age'. My Taiwanese teacher Liang Xiangtian has said many times the origin of 'more fragrant with age'. At that time, Mr. Deng originally wanted to say that Pu'er tea tastes better with longer storage, but that was obscure and too long for dissemination. 'Better with age' was also not quite appropriate, so 'more fragrant with age' was formally proposed.

There is also information indicating that the theory of 'more fragrant with age' was proposed by Wang Shuwen (currently the president of Kunming Tea Promotion Association):

Wang Shuwen was the first in Yunnan to systematically propose the concept and theory of tea. In 1989, he published an article in the magazine "Yunnan Tea" systematically proposing the narrow and broad concepts of tea, which are still recognized by the tea academic community today.

Wang Shuwen was also the first in Yunnan to propose the viewpoint that Pu'er tea is 'more fragrant with age', completely negating the traditional concept of 'wine should be aged, tea should be fresh'. As early as 1984, he published the theory that 'Pu'er tea is resistant to storage and has the characteristic of becoming more fragrant with age' in "Yunnan Tourism Products and Arts and Crafts Collection". Subsequently, many media reported his theory of 'more fragrant with age' for Pu'er tea. (Source: Yunnan Legal Network's article "An Ascetic Promoting Yunnan Ethnic Culture: A Record of Wang Shuwen, an Old Tea Man Who Started Midway")

Since then, Pu'er tea has benefited from these four characters and achieved significant development, reaching its peak in 2007. I only started 51 Pu'er Website in December 2008, and later many peers described the grand occasion to me. Because Pu'er tea becomes more fragrant with age, a lot of hot money entered for speculation. At the craziest time in 2007, a batch of tea bought for 200,000 yuan today could be sold for 250,000 yuan the next day; as long as the packaging had the three characters 'Pu'er tea', it would be swept away; as soon as goods arrived in the store, someone would immediately bring out a pile of money to collect them, even the sample tea on the shelves; many stores had no tea left, all sold out.

On April 20, 2007, in Guangzhou, Dayi 7542 dropped from a high of 23,000 yuan per piece to 17,000-18,000 yuan per piece in one day, and on May 20, it dived from 16,000 yuan per piece to 11,000 yuan per piece. This is the famous Pu'er tea crash. On November 15, 2007, Tian Xiaomai published an article in "China Securities Journal" titled "Pu'er Tea Prices Experienced Soaring and Plunging: Market Value Evaporated 15 Billion Yuan in Vain". What is the concept of 15 billion? In 2015, Yunnan's dry raw tea was 362,000 tons with a total output value of only 11.1 billion yuan, of which Pu'er tea was only 125,000 tons. Even if Pu'er tea has a high unit price and accounts for about half of the output value, roughly converted, it evaporated nearly three times the annual output value of Pu'er tea in 2015. Another example: a certain brand's iron cake in 2007, the wholesale collection price for a large batch was 4,500 yuan per piece. In 2010, I collected a large amount at less than 400 yuan per piece and sold them on 51 Pu'er at a price of over ten yuan with free shipping. Even today, nine years later, the price of this tea per piece is still around 1,500 yuan. The media's title of 'crazy Pu'er tea' is not an exaggeration.

'More fragrant with age' brings confusion.

After natural transformation over time, the taste of Pu'er tea indeed becomes richer, and the initial bitterness and astringency of new tea disappear naturally over time. It can be said that this is the most charming aspect of Pu'er tea, and it is also the biggest selling point that tea factories and merchants introduce to tea friends. 'More aged' is a time concept, 'more fragrant' is a quality concept. 'More fragrant with age' means exchanging time for quality: the longer the time, the better the quality, and the better the quality, the more popular it is, and the more people chase it, the more expensive it becomes.

Smart merchants have long prepared various auxiliary arguments, such as 'store old tea, drink new tea'. Selling cake by cake is tiring, so they directly tell you that Pu'er tea needs to be stored, and if you buy a whole piece or many pieces at a discount, it will taste better when stored. They imply or even explicitly say it will appreciate in value. So merchants store tea and sell it when it is old, and consumers also store tea to drink old tea at a low price in the future. Various funds enter the Pu'er tea industry to hoard tea. On one side, there are reports of big shots hoarding 7,000 tons of tea, and on the other side, people say that is not much at all, and someone hoards tens of thousands of tons or even more.

I have specifically investigated many tea hoarders from around 2005. Their current situation is that they do not know who to sell to, and their previous downstream channels also have a lot of inventory, resulting in prices lower than new tea but still not selling. The most terrifying thing is that they do not know how low the price must be to sell. From a market perspective, for them, it may not be 'more fragrant with age'. I have obtained many samples. Compared with new tea, I personally think their taste does not necessarily have an advantage, and some are even far inferior to new tea. From a taste perspective, these teas may not be 'more fragrant with age' either.

When Deng Shihai was interviewed by "Pu'er" magazine in 2008, he gave a new interpretation of 'more fragrant with age'. He said: 'The concept of "more fragrant with age" is not my invention; I just brought it out. From a scientific point of view, tea certainly cannot become more fragrant with age, but from an artistic level, it does exist. Science and art are two cultural systems. We cannot view art only from a scientific perspective. How to coordinate the relationship between the two is very important. It is not good at first, but gradually becomes good, which is 'more fragrant with age', but everything has a limit. When is the limit for Pu'er tea? People engaged in art do not need to consider these things, nor do they need to study and define it. They just need to return to their own artistic level.'

Why is it not necessarily 'more fragrant with age' from both taste and market perspectives?

Today is an era of rapid development. It is difficult to succeed with a single trick. The new generation, which is individualistic, does not care whether it is old tea or new tea; what matters is that they buy it happily and drink it comfortably. The Pu'er tea industry has developed from the single model of 'more fragrant with age' to a diversified model including ancient tree, 'more fragrant with age', mountain tea, state-owned forest, high-stem, private customization, etc. With the diversity of the marketing market, it is natural that sticking solely to 'more fragrant with age' leads to increasing loneliness.

In the past, people drank old tea because new tea was hard to drink, but these are changing. Previously, there were few primary processing stations on the tea mountains, but now standardized primary processing stations are everywhere. In the past, Lao Banzhang used woks for cooking to stir-fry tea (see my article "Tea Talk on Paper VI: Reflections on the Standard Samples of 2016 Spring Ancient Tree Tea"), but now almost every household in Lao Banzhang has a primary processing station, and tea is stir-fried in large woks with specially delivered firewood. In the past, women stir-fried tea, but now only experienced masters are qualified to stir-fry. The defects of primary processing in the past, such as the hardness, astringency, sharpness, bitterness, thinness, and green, foul, and miscellaneous tastes of new tea, can now be solved through reasonable processing techniques. The process concept of my current crowdfunding teas is: drinkable immediately, and also surprising after long storage. The unique fresh fragrance of new tea is not present in old tea, and the mellow harmony of old tea is not liked by everyone, nor is it a necessary condition. With improved processing and greatly enhanced taste of new tea, the foundation for large-scale drinking is established. From a taste perspective, old tea becoming increasingly niche is a trend.

The previous crude primary processing led to many teas not tasting good even after storage. Garbage tea, no matter how long it is stored, is still garbage tea. This is also a major reason. Some merchants' storage orientation led to a large amount of old tea stored in humid conditions, and many other improperly stored old teas are mixed with normally stored old teas, resulting in worrying overall quality of old tea. Storage is another major reason. The new generation is willing to try new things and be touched by continuous concepts, which is also an external factor. It is very reasonable and a fact that some new teas are more expensive than old teas. 'More fragrant with age' was the biggest driving force of Pu'er tea before, but it also caused an inversion between tea storage and actual consumption. More and more people are storing tea, and the quantity is increasing. Some estimate that even if no Pu'er tea is produced for ten years, it cannot be consumed. It is time to face this issue. When a large number of old tea hoarders see no hope and rush to sell, that will be the crash of old tea. Of course, some old teas with good quality and scarce quantity are not in this category.

It may be more fragrant with age, or new tea may also be good. There is no right or wrong; it is just your choice—this is the consumer's choice, and of course, also the market's choice: it is best to respect this choice!

The article is original, and the images are from the internet.

The author is Lu Jianfeng, CEO of 51 Pu'er Website, and the initiator of Houyue Crowdfunding Tea.