Pu’er tea is an ancient variety, one that’s developed by leaps and bounds lately. But up to now, there are some fundamental concepts that still aren’t clearly understood. When Da Dian chats with any new tea friends, no matter whether they’ve been drinking Pu’er for 8-10 years or are just starting, in the first encounter the same topics come up: single origin and blended raw material; qiaomu and taidicha; drink now and store for aging. But the way Da Dian does things challenges the way most veteran tea friends think. Making tea, Da Dian mainly uses single origin raw material, but it does sometimes blend; but we definitely don’t belong to the single-origin-material clique, nor to the gushu crowd. It would be very unreasonable to line up these concepts in antagonistic, black and white pairs. We are about to lay down some ironclad evidence, so pay close attention!
I don’t think anyone can deny the above-mentioned four points, which are briefly explained below:
The reason tea made before 1949 was mainly single origin is the logistics of that era when transport was inconvenient, so normally what got pressed was local raw material. As extant tea from that period attests, haojicha brands were manufactured mainly from Gu Liu Da Chashan tea; they can be sorted according to single origins. Tracing backward a thousand years to the beginning of pu’ercha, it was always manufactured mainly from single origin material. Da Dian’s basic priciple has been around since ancient times.
The history of pu’er blending begins in 1949. The only reason the state monopoly then resorted to blending was to be fair to all the Yunnan tea producing regions by using their leaves. Blending was not at all begun to improve the quality of the product, but rather to benefit the economy. Throughout the history of single origin tea, more than a thousand years of competition, the Gu Liu Da Chashan were the world-renowned best source. But sixty years’ blending wiped out the terroirs’ individual identities, their authenticity, their purity. Originally pu’ercha’s producers, merchants, and consumers could know clearly the tea’s origin and how it was made; thus they could determine their needs according to each terroir. But blending obliterated individuality, creating mysterious so-called recipes, changing pu’ercha itself into something mysterious; eventually, aside from the recipe formulators, nobody — not producers, not merchants, not consumers — could know what these teas were made of. As a result, those who controlled the recipes gained a kind of privilege, and these unstable recipes, manipulated and hyped by a number of people, yielded the great 2007 pu’ercha bubble.
Looking back on the trend toward single origin since 2008, it’s reached the point where even consumers can follow the market: Lao Banzhang maocha costs how much, Mahei material’s price is what, and so on. As the price of prestige terroir maocha has risen, blended-tea producers and vendors have shouted with one voice that it’s all a bubble, but this so-called bubble has yet to pop. Why is that? Top quality tea goes for high prices, and that’s no bubble; it’s only a bubble when mystery tea yields crazy prices. I think most tea dealers and most tea friends have trained their palates on post-1990 tea. Sadly, as a result they’ve been educated during pu’er history’s shallowest period. I would call 1990 to 2007 pu’er history’s darkest period, when the main trend was blending and taidicha, all in all the work of troubled times, when fine workmanship was extremely rare! Consequently, poorly educated consumers see themselves as connoisseurs. Trying to judge all pu’ercha using 1990-2007 tea as a benchmark, it’s easy to misunderstand what you’re dealing with.
Let’s look at the important watershed year of 1990. Tea made before then is mainly single origin qiaomu. Why is that? Ask yourself, when did Dayi start planting its bases of operation in Bulang Shan and Bada Shan? 1986! The Eighties were the peak period for the Yunnan government getting tea farmers to plant huge taidicha tracts. In the Sixties taidicha was experimental, in the Seventies it started to be popularized, and in the Eighties it was widely planted. The results of this were that pre-1990 annual pu’er production was less than 1000 tons, while current production is between 50,000 and 60,000 tons. At its 2007 peak, annual production was about 140,000 tons. Due to tea trees’ growth cycle, production can’t begin till about five years after planting. Thus we can choose 1990 as the moment when taidicha became the dominant source of pu’ercha raw material: not precisely, but close enough. From the history of taidicha production we can draw a conclusion: pre-1990 pu’ercha’s raw material is mainly gushu and qiaomu.
I looked up pu’ercha’s production history; in the Eighties average yearly production was about 500 tons, just one percent of the current level. Comparing haojicha and yinjicha with today’s mainstream pu’ercha, the raw material has changed byond recognition. With regard to raw material, there’s no way to justify the hope that you could age taidicha till it attains the mouth feel of haojicha. In order to restore the reputation pu’ercha had coming out of the Qing Dynasty, it seems reasonable to think about the dependability of its raw material. Gushu and qiaomu leaf should become the basic requirement for pu’ercha worth storing; up to now, using taidicha leaf hasn’t yielded any impressive product, which only goes to prove the point.
The 88 Qing Bing, the 99 Yi Chang Hao, the Lü Da Shu, and the Da Baicai, which have all gained some fame in the market, have what in common? It seems they all relied on qiaomu or gushu material, either that or on the ye fang or ye sheng concepts. Because genuine high grade tea is too scarce, and too inaccessible to most tea friends, they still learn about tea from the ordinary stuff, which is to say, blended taidicha. Even though twenty years of drinking run-of-the-mill pu’ercha can form a basic understanding of pu’ercha, it neglects what have historically been fine pu’ercha’s essential qualities.
To treat 20 years of blended taidicha as the standard for judging pu’ercha would be calamitous, and the worst would be, even if for 20 years you had drunk some kind of good tea, to still be unable to find a tea producer who could reproduce that tea’s mouthfeel. In Da Dian’s system, trying to be tolerant, blended taidicha has its place, but it can only be one aspect of pu’ercha, and not the main one. Blended taidicha has its reason to exist, which is to cross the threshold without it being a high threshold; but if you’re a novice at the Shaolin Temple and just know a bit of rudimentary kungfu, and you think you’re an expert, you can expect to be beaten bloody.
*Chinese source: 大滇说茶1001 夜之189 谁在颠覆普洱茶 上篇
Note that the author’s opinions are highly controversial. It’s possible that his use of the word “subvert” in the title is a response to charges that he himself, in his capacity as a pu’ercha company chief, is trying to subvert the industry.