1. Is "the older the better" exclusive to pu-erh?
More than a decade ago I wrote that pu-erh's rise rode on two keywords: "the older the better" and "ancient-tree tea". I discuss ancient trees elsewhere. But is "the older the better" unique to pu-erh?
The short answer: no.
Old teas I have drunk
I have drunk green tea several decades old, both Dianlv and Biluochun. The fresh, young aroma is gone, but the taste is mellow with decent sweetness; the fragrance is not flashy, and it has its own charm.
I have drunk several-decade-old black teas - graceful floral aroma, clean, light sweetness, very comfortable.
I have drunk a dozen old oolongs, and they were also wonderful.
Old pu-erh needs no introduction - there are many such teas.
From the drinking point of view, all of these qualify as "the older, the better".
2. Does every tea improve with age?
Short answer: no.
I have drunk several-decade-old raw tea that was hard in the mouth, watery in body, drying in the throat and uncomfortable in the body-feel.
I have drunk a twenty-year ripe cake from a major brand - one word: "sharp". Honestly, that tea was a knife; a single sip made me uncomfortable for hours.
I have drunk many famous "several-thousand-yuan-a-cake" aged teas, and few were comfortable.
This is why I often say:
Garbage left for a hundred years is still garbage - only good tea improves with age.
3. What kind of tea improves with age?
From observation, tea that ages well generally has one or more of these traits:
Tea with good ecology
I infer this backward from what I have drunk: when I pool together the old teas that still taste good, their body-feel tends to be smooth and penetrating - a sign their ecology was good at the time.
High-mountain tea
This is also an ecology concept, but I single it out because some high-mountain teas with mediocre ecology still become enjoyable later. This is verified by many colleagues' experience - I drank the teas and then asked them to confirm.
Tea that tasted good when new
This is from my own experience: I have many samples that were not good when new, and over a decade later they are still not good. There are also plenty of bad old teas on the market.
4. Is there a time limit on aging?
The oldest tea I have drunk was said to be several decades old - I cannot be sure, but it was certainly very old: a woody aroma and woody flavor, hard to call delicious.
I believe every tea has a peak drinking window. Research on other teas is thin; for pu-erh I propose an optimal drinking window:
**Raw pu-erh: 30-50 years
Ripe pu-erh: 25-50 years**
5. My choice
Life is too short, and pu-erh's ideal window takes decades - that is why I chose the fully processed (shou tou) style of tea-making: make new tea good to drink, and old tea more stunning.
Teacher Liang summarized it in eight characters:
Drink it now; age it and be amazed!
A note to you who have read this far
Have you noticed this is the sixth article and the style is a little different from my earlier ones? In many places I only state my view without explaining. Two reasons:
1. No time to expand
Running a website to teach tea, with only original articles, has rarely been done before. Every article on this site is original; most must be written new, a few can quote earlier ones. The workload is huge, so I want to finish the site structure and fill in content quickly, then refine later when there is a chance.
2. Most of these views have been written before
For a topic like "the older the better", I have discussed it in several articles; expanding here would just be repetition.
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