Looking on teaspring.com I see that for every tea they list the harvest date. At what age does the tea begin to seriously decline in quality? Is an oolong harvested in Spring 06 pushing it? I assume that these companies have very good storing methods, but what is the limit?
Like you mentioned, I would say it depends on storage methods. I've had greener Taiwanese oolongs from another vendor that were over a year old and still tasted fresh. For higher oxidized/roasted teas like Wuyis, a couple of years of storage seems to be beneficial. Perhaps you could order a sample from Teaspring to gauge if they have good storage or not.
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