I've been haunting this group for a little while now. So I've decided to ask a question and introduce myself. I've recently gotten into tea a couple of months ago and as of now I have two yixing tea pots. One little 6oz pot that I use for wulong and a 10oz pot I use for Chinese red teas, lapsang souchong, European blends and other dark teas. It's kinda my catch-all pot. I recently got a sample of puerh and I think they should have their own pot. Does anyone have any suggestions as to what size pot I should use and where I could find a good one?
Hello Gill, I have been watching this and other newsletters for some time, but have been too busy to be active, so this is a bit of an introduction for me as well. I am an American businessman who lives in China, my wife and family here are Cantonese, and I make my living selling tea, teaware, art, and other things of Chinese origin. I have recently begun putting together a web site to expand my company into the states. Nuff said on that end.
In response to your query I have a few things to say and can probably help you out. First of all, there is a substantial amount of good information on tea, teapots, etcetera in the states but... the amount of misinformation, myth, and fallacy circulating is also epidemic. I can tell by your post that you are a beginner so bear with me a moment while I comment on your dilema. It is not uncommon. There are many things about tea and teapots that are almost impossible to learn outside of China. In all likelihood you are using poor teapots and tea. Don't feel bad. Most people cannot tell a good tea from a bad one and the same goes for teapots. Most people don't even realize that GongFuCha is the only way to actually all the health benefits of tea they so highly value (most brewing destroys these things or never makes them available even when you start with a good tea). There are far too many things to say about this for a post like this. More later if you wish.
One of the things I will be offering on the website is a series of e-books that explain good tea, teapots, and GonFuCha in detail and how an American (or anyone else) can get the highest quality and not get ripped off. I will also have a selection of 100 teapots I give away for only a five dollar handling charge and shipping. These teapots currently sell for 50-100 dollars US on line (cheaper teapots are an almost guaranteed rip off). I do this to make a point. Most people are getting ripped off. I will also be giving away cakes of good investment Puer on the same basis. Same point. The books will come out over the next several months as I complete the surveys, finish the site, and make sure the business is ready for the market.
Now to how I may be able to help you out. I have a small collection of teapots (not my personal collection) I have used to create the visual portion of the e-book for how to know the "perfect teapot". I collect and sell teapots, so I often have a good seasoned teapot for sale. More to the point, one of the teapots I used for the e-book is an exceptional teapot I currently use for my own Puer (my personal favorite tea). This teapot is one of four matching teapots I used for comparison purposes. As a matter of fact XiaoLing (my wife) is using it to pao Puer for me while I write this. It is a traditional eight jewel yixing four cup done by the ChaoZhou artist Chang Tai Yuan. It is almost perfect (98%). The other three are copies of his work that are exceptional, but seriously fail at least one test for a perfect pot. There is a twelve animal, dragon/phoenix, and four season in the less than perfect pot group. The less than perfect group are also four cup pots and their flaws will have little effect on brewing tea. The flaws are in such things as the handwork of the art, though they do have very minor brewing flaws (they are still far superior to what most Americans pao tea in). Most people couldn't tell any quality difference between them and the perfect pot. As I said, the eight jewel is Puer seasoned, but the only other one that is seasoned is the dragon/phoenix (Tie Guan Yin). My wifes' favorite tea:).
I intend to value pots significantly different to what most are used to seeing in the states. I will give you the benefit of that, but don't be surprised that these are not "cheap" teapots. Teapots like the almost perfect eight jewel sell in the states for 500-1k US. Mine is priced at $250 US plus shipping and insurance (I strongly suggest that you insure it). The not perfect (but very high quality copies) would normally be presented as being the same as the eight jewel in the states, but priced as bargains for between 300-1k US (sucks but true). I value mine at 50-100 dollars US plus shipping and insurance depending on the quality of the pot. I only sell high quality pots. I give the other stuff away(you only get really good tea from them by accident anyway). If you buy one of my pots I send you a cake of good quality "green" Menghai Puer that is suitable for investment. That means that if properly stored it will be worth
200-400 dollars (at current American market prices) in 2-4 years. If you can keep from drinking it that long. It will be pretty good tea in a year or two.
I know some people may scream when they see these prices, but it is true that truly high quality teapots rarely leave China and when they do its often an accident. Even the worst potters and factories (most yixing teapots sold in the states are factory regardless of what anyone says) accidentally produce a good teapot from time to time. Some factories manage to produce teapots that are reasonably consistant in their brewing capacities. It is impossible to completely test a teapot for full quality, however, in a factory and I know of none who test at all. Only hand made teapots by competent artists are consistantly high quality. You will pay for that anywhere in the world.
By the way. Factory teapots are all industrial grade clay (thats right, there is more than one grade of yixing clay and many varieties of both grades) which means the brewing quality of the pots made from it are substandard before it even becomes a pot.
I hope I have not discouraged you too much. Drinking good tea is a great pleasure in life that can bring you a great deal of contentment. If you become educated you can even make a good living anywhere people drink tea (the only thing in the world people drink more than tea is water). The reason I am getting into the American market is to help people do just that. Be educated and content in a profitable (in many ways) pursuit of good tea. Let me know if you are interested in the pots or just have some questions. I intend to be consistantly active here. And good luck with your search. I hope you learn to enjoy and appreciate "good" tea as much as I have.
My understanding is that smaller tea pots are considered superior. Why this is I don't know. Perhaps because the greater ratio of surface area to volume assures greater absorbtion of flavours in the clay. Who knows.
My recomendation is to try to find your tea pot in an asian market. My experience is that they are substantially cheaper there than in the upscale or online vendors where they are usually to be found. It's usually hit and miss in these places. You are also unlikely to find more elaborately designed ones. I recently picked up a whole yixing set for $25. Pretty standard, but it work. Just make sure to season it good (see other postings for seasing tips!).
Just got in from work and saw your post Nico. You are right about smaller teapots being preferable, but I have to disagree on the pot purchase idea. Espeacially if Robert wants to brew good quality puer.
Small teapots are preferable for brewing properly. Any yixing clay will absorb flavor and a seperate teapot for each type you drink is a good idea. The reason small teapots are preferable is all brewing related. Yixing clay has specific heat retention qualities and the pots were designed to maximize this benefit in GonFuCha. Good ones are not glazed because it ruins these qualities. The best ones are two to six cup pots that are thin walled. They need to be thin walled so there is not enough clay to cause thermal lag to also ruin the heat retention (and therefore brewing) quality of the pot. Good quality clay in a good pot will have a good high "ring" when you tap the lid on the handle. It needs to be small because if you pao your tea correctly you can only serve so many people before your time consumption in serving affects the tea adversely.
Someone who can pao tea well and has a good pot will get consistant brewing results with better tea and use less tea to get more quality paos. A cheap pot is not a bargain as it uses more tea for fewer paos and gives inconsistant brewing which makes it impossible to consistantly brew tea to its average (let alone fullest) potential. It is also hard to learn how to pao tea well (or appreciate the brew) without a good pot. You will miss some very good teas as well if they are incorrectly brewed and you can do nothing about it because of your pot.
There is a lot more to it, though it is not complicated. Its just not commonly known in the states. Basically, what i'm saying is that for a serious tea drinker investing in a good pot and learning to pao with it is almost essential and nothing compared to what they will spend in the years ahead on guessing about tea.
I hope my comments are helpful. I'm not trying to sell upscale teapots for a fast buck. The set you are talking about is probably like many sets you can buy in any supermarket in Zhuhai where I live. Mostly new couples or young people buy them when they can't afford anything else. They are factory made, industrial quality yixing, cost about 25 RMB ($3 US), and are discarded as soon as they can afford better. I'm not trying to be insulting. Just the opposite. Most Americans simply don't know. I'm just trying to help. I have many Chinese relatives (some of whom have asian markets in the states) and those folks are not trying to rip you off either. They simply sell what people ask for and no one knows how to ask for a good pot:).
Renny, now it is you who is spreading misinformation. There is now way that a 2-4 year old green cake of authentic Menghai, yes I know there are many fakes, would sell for $200-$400 here. There *may* be a few vendors dishonest enough to try to do that but they are clearly ripping people off. I do not know where you are getting your "American Market Prices" from but you are being misled if this is what you believe.
Your information on teapots is much more believable and in line with what I have learned from other sources. What is your website address please?
Sincerely, Mike Petro
formatting link
"This Web Site chronicles a Westerner's quest to discover, and publish, the truth about Puerh. I attempt to dispel the myths, and educate the English speaking public, about this wonderful and mysterious variety of tea."
I think the only failsafe method of getting all the health benefits from your pu-erh or any other tea is to pulverize it into a fine powder and snort it up your nose.
I can get a red clay gongfu set teapot,gaiwan,cups,boat with tray for $10. I've seen the cheap yixing sets with four cups, 100ml pot and bamboo style serving tray for $30. It's not the desired zisha. You can buy cheap yixing clay made from factory molds. My local art museum still carries certified yixing pots in the $30-$100 range. You pay more for the potter's mark than the clay.
TaoBao sells mid nineties Menghai for $30. In general you add a buck a year to the original price for each year of aging. The really expensive pu on TaoBao is from limited production and not aging. If you pay more than penny/gram for pu'rh then caveat emptor. Then is still plenty of Xiaguan Millennium 100g green tuocha in Chinatown for a buck.
Jim, I have to disagree with your generalization as well. By your logic a 1960s cake would sell for $50 or less. That is simply not accurate. I have seen 1960s Guang Yun Gong cakes sell for $800 and I have seen
1960s Red Label sell for $3,000 both of which were at legitimate auctions in China frequented by professional collectors, and these are NOT the extremes by any account. If someone offers you a 1960s cake for $50 you better look elsewhere!
In my limited experience the market value of puerh is based on several factors:
1) The factories reputation
2) The production recipe used
3) How well the cake was stored
4) The quality of production that year
5) The quantity of the crop in the given year
6) The reputation for that particular vintage/recipe.
7) Other factors such as limited edition batches etc
8) What the market will bear......
I would say that a high quality cake, that has proven to mature well, from a well known factory, in an average production year, will increase anywhere from 10% - 25% *per year* in the current market. Much of this value is due to the surging popularity of puerh in Hong Kong and Taiwan over the last 20 years, as well as the fact that well aged pu-erh has become a status symbol for the rapidly emerging Chinese middle Class.
TaoBao is a market place where you can check prices in the current Chinese economy. I've been doing that since I found it. All I'm saying you can find plenty of 10 year pu for $30. Most 2004 300g beeng I've seen is just $10. You can find prices more expensive than you quote but nothing more than limited availability. If I'm in China and show the appreciation you mention then I'm done sitting in front of the penny stock exhange investing in my retirement because the government won't take care of me anymore. I think to pretend that there is any real market for aged pu is misinformation. The high pricing is based on limited collectors and not demand. I haven't seen any of the big ticket items on TaoBao sell. You know pu produced before the modern production process in the early seventies is the demand and not the age. I've come across Chinese webpages translated by Google and it seems the accounts of prices at auction are inflated ie it's like Christie's the minimum bid isn't met. I do my own collecting of several genre and the real collector doesn't pay the asking price and doesn't resell. In other words there is little profit in collecting. I expect to get my money back with a small profit but the possession is more important than the profit. From what I've seen Pu investment is the Chinese version of the Beanie Baby. I think the new wealth of China is investing in nostalgia with something different tomorrow.
TaoBao appears quite similar to our Ebay, as in buyer beware because the sellers may or may not be reputable and the goods may or may not be authentic. I would not trust their goods any more than I would trust somebody on Ebay, and Ebay is rife with scam artists especially when dealing in antique goods (such as aged puerh). Yes there are good dealers there but one would need to know the culture really well before venturing into those waters.
Nobody is "pretending" Jim, it is a fact that I have personally confirmed many times over. To say that it is misinformation would be like saying that a "wine collector's market" in the USA is also misinformation. The two genres are extremely similar in their respective cultures, both in popularity and in fanaticism. Many people in China boast about their puerh collections, and it is quite true that few of them will ever really sell, only the speculators and those in need of cash actually sell. It is common for a guest to be shown this collection, although most Western guests fail to realize the pride that their host is really exhibiting. The high demand is further demonstrated by that fact that wholesale prices for young Puerh have tripled this year compared to the same time last year. This has been attributed to a bad growing season AND higher than ever demand. The existance of so many forgeries also substantiates the demand, if there were no demand there would be no market for forgeries. Finally let us not forget the laws of supply and demand, the reality is that the demand exceeds the supply hence the high prices.
The main reason is that very few Chinese collectors will buy a cake without first seeing, smelling, and tasting it. To try a tea before you buy is definitely the custom in China, collectors will often bring their own teas to brew and compare to the prospective purchase as a means of authenticating it. So why would they buy an aged cake site unseen? It is like asking to get ripped off.
My suggestion : "Most people don't even realize that GongFuCha is the only way to actually" reliably seduce women for less than $5.00 with unparalleled success statistics.
Mike is absolutely right. Don't expect to see good prices for authentic puer going into the future. The rest of China has discovered puer, and there are high prices being asked in Bejing and Shanghai now, where as in the past, demand had been limited in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Guangzhou. There are numberous buyers trying to buy up all of the available puer stores. The Chinese universally agree that puer is a good investment. There is plenty enough fraud involved in this market and there has been since the end of the cultural revolution when having destroyed most old cakes, a thriving market in old puer emerged. Since the government was the major puer producer, and still is by the way, the corruption was supported by the law in Yunnan, where it was illegal to publish a date on any puer on the market. Buyer beware indeed. People who are collectors do thier homework, and there are recognized dealers that offer verification of date. This verification is only valid within a couple of years one way or the other, and involves examination of the cake, color, smell, and taste. Color, taste, and smell can not be faked. What the market will bare is the rule. There are plenty of people that will spend high prices and never blink an eye about it. The good news is that standards have been established for puer now, and you don't have to be an expert to sort through these, and that newly produced puer is very good. It takes about 5 or 6 years for raw puer to darken and mellow, but there are plenty of people that enjoy it young, green, and a little bit bitter. Puer is certainly an obsession, and one that I must admit to having too. If you see some cheap puer laying around in some store somewhere, and it is still cheap, I'd recommend buying it up and hang on to it. I wanted to say also that the assertion that it is healther to brew tea in one way or another is bizzarre. There is an enormous amount of research being carried out in the US alone with extremely positive results. The tea is donated and is not really worth drinking and those folks doing the testing have never even heard of Yixing.
Here is a search string for Guang Yun Gong on TaoBao:
http://216.239.39.104/translate_c?hl=en&u=
formatting link
You have to enter Simplified characters and not Unicode for search strings so it isn't as easy as it looks. Plus TaoBao only searches the title and not description.
As of this post you will see 70's Guang Yun Gong for $20. You will see a tong like bundle from 1980 for $110. What was your 60's price again, something like $800. You pay alot for those blemishes. I'll stick with fair market value and you buy from the collectors. If every potential serious buyer wants a sample then eventually there is nothing to sell. I think the wine analogy is essentially false because it is ultimately consumed. The bottle and cork might be worth something. One on my collection genres extends to the 1900s. Thank goodness you can't eat or drink it. I can tell you haven't done any serious collecting except paying too much for your tea. You're on the outside looking in. High prices are simply for the gullible. No serious collector will tell you what he paid for anything. You'll never get your money back if you buy at auction. For insurance purposes I'm much further ahead if my house burns down.
[Renny] Most people don't even realize that GongFuCha is the only way to actually all the health benefits of tea they so highly value (most brewing destroys these things or never makes them available even when you start with a good tea).
[Seb] Could you tell please where you had the information that gong fu tea is the only way to benefit the health value of tea. I only brew gong fu tea so i am very interested in this information.
[Renny] If you buy one of my pots I send you a cake of good quality "green" Menghai Puer that is suitable for investment. That means that if properly stored it will be worth 200-400 dollars (at current American market prices) in 2-4 years. If you can keep from drinking it that long. It will be pretty good tea in a year or two.
[Seb] By meng Hai pu erh do you mean a pu erh from one of the meng hai area factories or a "meng hai tea factory pu erh"? There is absolutely no way that a green pu erh, 5 years old would be between 200 and 400 usd. Even a Meng Hai tea Factory pu erh.
[Renny] By the way. Factory teapots are all industrial grade clay (thats right, there is more than one grade of yixing clay and many varieties of both grades)
[Seb] This is interesting to me because our friend from Yixing who is a accredited master potter said he would find a hard time to explain us the different grade of clay. If you know how to set the grade per types of clay, could you let us know about them? I think everybody will like to read about that here. The only thing that i understood about clay grading so far, is that, you do need to bite it LOL
DrinksForum website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here.
All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.