I've been writing a good bit about this subject lately, related to trying a couple more sample sets. But it has been a running theme for the past decade or so, even though I really only completely switched over to mostly drinking sheng pu'er within that time, maybe something like 8 years ago.
I still only guess about transition patterns, and the effects of varying storage environments on teas of different character, expressing different aspects. But I've been guessing about it for a long time, based on varying exposure. I first bought sheng right around the time I started this blog, maybe within a year of then, so I've been dabbling in that exploration for around a dozen years (or looking back the first post about sheng pu'er was 13 years ago).
It's interesting thinking back to how badly some of those initial trials went, the earliest of which wouldn't have been covered here (although buying that one cake 13 years ago was an early venture). It's no wonder lots of people don't like sheng early on, given how new factory teas or bad versions can go.
I'll separate this out by individual topics to make them approachable. These won't be in any particular order, maybe starting with more of what comes up first, and some of what I like best.
The context that I've been trying two different sample sets recently is interesting; that never goes exactly how I expect. One was from a favorite vendor, mostly newish versions of "gushu" from a Swiss vendor, Tea Mania, and the other was known Yunnan area versions from a Malaysian vendor, of even more varying age, with storage occurring there adding an interesting twist. Final outcome is always complicated, and in between 3 and 4 years or 15 to 20 there's a broad range of fermentation levels that make less sense, that vary a lot by starting point. It would be nice if I could summarize that more clearly than I'm able to.
wet versus dry versus natural storage: this is really a better topic for an entire 1500 word post on the one storage conditions input. But I'm limiting this discussion to quickly framing a lot of related inputs, so it makes sense to only add a little about it here. I don't necessarily think that cooler and dryer storage is really a bad thing, but that kind of environment does preserve tea, slowing it from changing in any way. Maybe a slow, gradual change is better under some circumstances, and there might be typical negative trade-offs related to that, other aspect input experienced as less favorable. A limited sourness or cardboard flavor can come up in dry-stored teas, but long-term storage in cardboard boxes may be a part of that.
For factory tea, aggressive, intense, unapproachable tea that really needs at least 15 years to be approachable, more humid storage is better. The effect of temperature can be a bit complicated; reading up on some Late Steeps blog post experiments on that is interesting. I think teas I keep in Bangkok change fast and change differently because of both the humidity and the heat, but I can't really break that down, even to the extent he does there based on testing. The heat might cause heavier flavor range to emerge, just to add something.
I've not really said much about more conventional cases; what about boutique style teas, or factory teas that aren't as clearly in need of lots of transition, as a Dayi 7542 cake or Xiaguan tuo demand? How variations of styles and character age in general is a bit complicated, and my own guesses aren't much of a clearly acceptable baseline. I'll add more about types and get back to those later on.
factory tea: this is what people encounter first, not my own main preference. Dayi /
Taetea 7542 is a main example (a "recipe" number), and Xiaguan tuocha versions I see as the other main example (and the cakes they produce). This general style, as much as it represents one, typically requires a full 20 years of aging to enter a pleasant and drinkable range, and under conventional conditions 30 years might be better. You can get away with rushing that when hot and humid storage conditions rush the process, as occurs here in Bangkok, or someone maintaining high humidity in a cooler place would work, just not in the same way. I think the faster transitions happen the better for these teas, since in cooler and dryer storage they may not be well-transitioned even after 30 years.
The change is what people expect, what they think of related to pu'er transition in general: harsh, astringent, bitter and intense general character gives way to smoother, deeper, warmer tones, that is much more drinkable. There is no partially aged stage that also makes sense for most factory teas, in general, as occurs for versions that can be exceptional with some rough edges smoothed out, after "only" 3 to 5 years of limited change. Then again that's probably a statement about my own preference, over-extended a bit related to what could possibly occur. There was just a Reddit thread about someone liking some 5 year old Dayi 7542, and that preference opinion isn't invalid.
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nearly 20 year old Xiaguan, aging fast due to storage time in Bangkok |
A truism comes up that aging won't turn bad tea into good tea. This can be taken as meaning completely different things, all of which may only apply to a limited extent. One potential meaning is that if a tea tastes bad originally it may never recover from being of bad quality (which already mixes different inputs as assumptions). A limitation of this is that aging potential doesn't necessarily always relate to a tea being approachable when young; factory teas are the main counter-example of this. Another factor is that maybe being approachable when young relates to good aging potential, and maybe it doesn't. Considering the relatively opposite style of sheng categories can help place this.
drinkable when young pu'er: this is the opposite extreme. It's not really a single, unified category, because sheng can be more drinkable for a number of different reasons. Autumn harvest versions can lack intensity, or more wild origin material can seem quite different, less bitter and astringent, and quite flavorful. Processing variations could lead towards this general nature, but the result wouldn't be the same as when these other two causes were primary. Breaking this range down by these distinct inputs makes sense, even when they would tend to combine, and not enter in as just one input.
Some areas tend to produce much more drinkable versions, probably related to a combined set of these kinds of inputs (plant genetics, local climate input, typical growing conditions, and processing choices). Yiwu area teas might be interpreted as mostly sweet, approachable, and floral, but saying that brings in a limitation and risk of over-generalizing: that's a broad area, and the teas would surely vary a lot from different places there. That general pattern might often hold because expectations have evolved in that direction, again for different reasons. Then it wouldn't necessarily have to be accurate.
autumn harvest versions: spring teas are typically more intense, often more flavorful (range is greater, not just intensity), and are more desirable. They'll often have more aging potential, and can reach favorable intermediate age stages that work out better, in some circumstances. So why drink autumn tea? Mainly because it costs less. Sometimes a vendor will obtain and sell a highly in-demand origin area tea version from the autumn, because they have trouble finding a version they can afford to buy and resell from the spring. Once their applied mark-up involves trying to sell a tea at over $1 a gram they might naturally see market demand as a likely problem.
Could an autumn harvest version be more favorable in some way, beyond just being less intense? This goes beyond my experience range to answer. Those kinds of absolutes seem to never fully hold up, but you don't hear much about exceptions either. It brings to mind a Chinese Wuyi Yancha producer describe how they never do more than one harvest per year for their teas (from their plants), because the cost is too high related to offsetting positive character of the tea and general intensity. I think pu'er material sources are often harvested three times a year, twice for pu'er, in the spring and fall, and once in the summer for making black tea, although who knows, maybe that's completely wrong. I'm passing on standard hearsay.
wild origin / varying genetic material teas: this mixes two radically different inputs that tend to go together, growing conditions and plant types. It's hard to say why a tea plant growing in the midst of other types of trees would produce more flavorful, more distinctive, and less intense and less challenging tea. Maybe a lot of shading would reduce intensity. Maybe plants do carry over flavors of what is growing around them (this generality is often repeated). It could be that plantation tea tends to be more managed, weeded, and fertilized, the types of inputs that allow plants to grow at maximum speed and produce a lot of leaf compounds. Who knows.
We tend to want one or two causes to explain any given thing but in the real world a mix of lots of inputs can enter in. Maybe it works out that monoculture oriented, high volume production plantations are often located at lower elevation, and more natural gardens higher up, and this one input alone changes things.
Genetic variation of tea plants is an even more complicated subject. Some plants probably would interbreed with other Assamica or Taliensis versions, as people often speculate. Just the normal range of variation of genetics by different locations is hard to place.
effect of varying pressed forms on tea aging: there isn't as much effect as one might expect. A very tightly packed tuocha, or larger well-pressed cake, probably would age slower than a smaller, looser packed cake. I've not seen much speculation about how dragonballs or tea coins age differently, but in general those aren't as favorable for brewing for other reasons, per my experience. Maocha, loose versions, could potentially age a little faster, but it's still much more standard for vendors to carry and sell pressed versions.
Related to shapes like dragonballs and tea coins, you end up taking 4 or 5 rounds to get all the material wetted, so you are brewing the outer material well into the transition cycle before the stuff in the middle gets started. That still works, but out at 10 infusions in or so you have relatively spent material having been infused for longer than normal, to push the pace of wetting the inside, and to get enough intensity out of a fraction of the tea in early rounds. So that starts contributing characteristic bitterness and off flavor before the infusion cycle ends, maybe green wood, as brewed-out sheng still produces well past 10 rounds.
This is more about aging, and I'm not sure how that would be different. It might age faster in small forms, since most of the material is relatively near an edge. For a hard-pressed dragonball maybe that's not as true. A loosely pressed 357 gram cake might afford a lot more air contact exposure. It makes sense to me that vendors have moved on to pressing everything a bit less tightly, making the tea easier to access, and potentially enabling more uniform fermentation.
optimum fermentation transition range for different types of tea: this comes down to preference, as everything does. Some people might only love well-aged sheng. To me for factory teas, of a conventional style range, those really do work much better fully aged, so it's on to considering a now more dominant style range, more whole-leaf, higher quality, often narrow origin sourced (versus blended) range of teas. Sometimes these are referred to as boutique style teas, but people probably mean different things by that reference. Some would fold in quality concerns, not just style. Some of these can be much more drinkable when young, and intermediate aging levels may make more sense, drinking them new, or within 3 or 4 years.
There are too many variables and potential outcomes to frame it all as being that simple though. To me, as a general rule, a high level of bitterness and pronounced astringency, a rough feel versus fullness and richness, are the kinds of starting points that enable positive transitions, and to the extent these are very pronounced maybe more transition could be better for a tea. I've kind of already said that, and this is more about the opposite range.
People sometimes criticize young sheng for being unapproachable (typically early on in their exploration), which could relate to different things. Maybe they're just not acclimated to any bitterness yet, or a significant level. Rough astringency feel can correspond with broken leaf or lower quality material; that's usually not so pleasant. It's funny hearing different descriptions for off flavors in young sheng, like describing it as tasting like kerosene. That kind of thing might relate to a quality issue. A brand new 7542 cake doesn't taste great, per my exposure to those at different ages, but it might not actually taste like kerosene (like it smells; people don't end up tasting that).
The generalities only go so far; to some extent you need to try different types of tea at different ages to see what you like. Something might really click that you don't expect, doing so. Interesting flavor changes can occur, beyond the transitions that you might come to expect.
a few intermediate range patterns: I've been trying teas of different ages lately, and lots of different patterns emerge. These are higher quality, relatively whole-leaf, origin specific, relatively less blended versions, again which one could think of as "boutique" versions. Or not, the label doesn't change much, beyond narrowing things a bit further for some people.
One pattern is that some teas just fade away after a medium-long storage time, within 15 to 20 years. Some can lose lots of intensity within a decade, even if the character doesn't change over to a relatively aged form. I suspect that it's not so difficult to experience and identify a range of initial aspects or character that relates to the negative or positive transitions, it's just hard for me to draw clear and conclusive links.
Another negative pattern is that some teas end up expressing off flavors, eg. tasting like wood. This is separate from less favorable storage conditions either adding negative flavor input (eg. mustiness), or suppressing fermentation transition altogether. In general I think a range of styles and initial aspects probably tend to link to this outcome as well. I'm not sure it's a one-to-one mapping of what you might taste in a new tea shifting to that later; it may work out that non-standard initial character could change negatively in different ways.
Then there are a range of positive transition patterns. This can relate first to some teas being quite pleasant after very limited transition time, maybe 2 to 3 years of storage. Rough edges can settle, and some depth can emerge, with bitterness and astringency mellowing. Usually flavors won't completely shift over this short a time, but teas can change a lot. The next two ranges of concerns are more complicated, an intermediate in-between stage, where it all can make less sense, as younger and older (more transitioned) aspects mix, and then finally, after 15 to 20 years, the final aged form can emerge, which is often interesting and pleasant, but not always remotely close to optimum.
atypical processing inputs: this relates to a theme I've encountered a lot in South East Asian teas, with sheng pu'er often more oxidized (only one pattern, that overlaps with another topic already mentioned, drinkable when young versions). That makes it sweeter, a little warmer in tone, and more approachable, at the cost of swapping out some aging potential (my take, at least, which does tend to keep changing). How do I know that oxidation level was higher, in any given case? You can taste it, and also see it in browning of the leaves, often more noticeable in the stems.
Per input from one vendor (a main one in China) this can relate to not drying the tea to a normal level at one step. Per input from another tea producer, and a researcher, this can be a very intentional style choice. One producer even mentioned that they add more rest time to allow for oxidation after the heating / kill-green / fixing step, which isn't something I would expect. I would've expected a long wither and initial oxidation to be a main input instead. I suppose both could come up, used differently by different producers.
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two examples of that, subsequent years from the same Vietnamese tea producer, both young |
Some of my overall favorite teas have seemingly been processed in this way. They can be sweet, warm, fruity (which relates to different inputs), and less bitter and astringent right away, very approachable and pleasant as relatively new tea. I've not tried much of this range of tea aged for a decade to confirm that it wouldn't age well, or maybe none at all, it can be hard to keep track, since I've not been buying and tracking aging progress for lots of tea versions for over a decade.
Some other versions don't have this included as a noticeable input (although that may be hard to identify), and those other versions can also be sweet, mild, complex in flavor, and approachable over the first year. I have confirmed that one of my overall favorite sheng versions--from Yunnan, sold by a main vendor--was best within the first year, still ok by the second or third, and then not as positive when I tried it later on. I suppose that could have related to a processing input I've not identified, or mostly to plant type, or some other cause. Even when you see interesting transition patterns play out you don't always sort out a clear cause or set of causes input that explains what had happened.
If some tea versions are a blend of lots of different versions of material, balancing out initial character, offsetting flaws, making the most of positive contributions from several, then it might be quite complicated what led to what as such a tea changes over time.
If a tea version is heated too much during the kill-green / sha qing step it will just seem like green tea. That can still be ok; I've tried a version that worked out well for. Related to input from a vendor it's possible for a cake pressing vendor--that kind of thing can be outsourced by producers--to overheat cakes during a drying step, and a comparable effect can occur, pushing the style towards green tea. Again it's conceivable that the outcome could be positive, but more likely that wouldn't be regarded as a positive input, by the tea producer or by a endpoint customer.
problematic teen-age middle years: I comment on this all the time, but left it out of the initial posted version. People often mention that there are years in between early fermentation and final aged form that just don't make sense. The tea can come across as flavorless, or else aged and young flavors can not match together. It's such a standard theme that just mentioning that adds nothing new to the discussion, so I'll extend this line of thinking a little.
This can happen at different actual ages, at a different number of years, because dry and humid storage happen at different paces. A tea can be a decade old and still express young character, when dry stored (often in Kunming, but anywhere). Where I live, in Bangkok, natural humidity is often around 70% RH, sometimes higher, and the heat seems to change and speed up transitions as well. Within 5 years all of the newer characteristics have transitioned, and teas take on a relatively aged character within a decade, a bit ahead of a normal schedule. It still takes about 15-20 years for a full transition process to occur, but this can take 25 to 30 under different circumstances.
Can a tea character be positive right at this stage; could preference lead to someone liking this character? There's no reason why not, but in general no. Teas just don't make a lot of sense at this stage. Some greener aspects mix with warmer tones, but it all doesn't really integrate. Flavors can come across as muted. Feel doesn't transition over yet, and bitterness can be at an odd level, not gone, not pronounced as when young, but not matching the level of the older, more developed, transitioned range (jujube, medicinal herb, incense or root spice, etc.).
It wouldn't even be easy for people to evaluate how the next step would go at this stage, per my experience. With enough practice maybe to a limited degree, but it seems to me that it might be easier to identify how a tea will age within the first 5 years than in between 10 to 12.
real cases being a bit complicated: people tend to not write meandering, overly general descriptions of this sort of range like this, because too many variables enter in for the presented ideas to be cohesive and helpful. The last half dozen posts about sheng versions highlights how that works, but I can't really extract an extra helpful few hundred words of description to pin it all down. When you try a half dozen teas you see a range of outcomes, snapshots at a certain point in time, but you can only ever guess about specific inputs, or next steps, the further potential.
It makes it all the harder that the goalpost is a match to personal preference, not some range of objectively desirable outcomes. Maybe shared consensus about what is positive lets those two themes map together, to some extent, but probably variations add up to as much range as the shared space.
This can seem to contradict what some online tea discussion expresses. People more than a decade into exploration, more experienced than me, tend to discuss tea in shared, common ways, and agree on patterns and outcomes that they prefer. Often these people learned those preferences together, even if they weren't sitting at the same tea tables regularly. Tea groups discussing teas tend to collect and form into informal "classes," self-sorting to end up that way.
What does this leave out? Probably as much as it includes, with parts included on the "getting it all wrong" side. Whatever I write I often second-guess as my opinion and understanding evolve over time. It seemed like a good time to collect some thoughts, but these will keep changing.
I didn't commit to whether gushu material tea really will typically offer more aging potential; lots of limitations like that must be included as well. At a guess that depends on the tea style, largely tied back to processing choices, and other factors, more so than that one plant related input (plant age). Probably in another 10 years I'd express that completely differently.
I think people with different exposure, with more budget to throw at their sheng pu'er habit, and draw on more input from a group of fellow pu'er enthusiasts, might be onto different patterns and outcomes I've yet to experience. Or maybe they could "poke holes" in some of what is offered here. I never do get much feedback about writing; that part of blogging never worked out. It's understandable; I should be part of a set of friends who explore together so that more-interested parties read the content. Even if we've never spoken it would be interesting to hear from you, about how your experiences work out, whether they're the same or different. Or not; the standard paradigm of just putting ideas out there has been ok for me.
If you are a vendor who has sent me samples, supporting my exploration, then many thanks for that contribution. This wouldn't have went as well without your help.
