Thought you guys and gals would find this bit of info interesting:
I learned from a tea shop boss tonight, one that specializes in Yunnan pu'er (I've known him for over a year), that one of the original reasons why pu'er began to be compressed is because it was easier to transport. Knowing this, it can be said that it's easier to find older loose tea because they first only tried to transport the loose leaves. They could fit about 50 kilos of tea uncompressed without the carriage becoming overloaded and 75 compressed.
The tea was transported from Yunnan to other places like Tibet, Guangdong, etc by horse and carriage only and it would take a very long time. While the tea was in transport, it would become better in quality due to 'fermentation'/oxidation. The transport could take up to a year to complete, and it was open to the elements to aid in it's aging. As long as the weather held up, you could have some very good tea by the time it reached it's destination.
This was called Cha Ma Gu Dao (literally: tea, horse, old/ancient, way). At the end of the 'tea road' there was a small bridge called qing qiao (we forgot the exact name, it's still there) that you had to cross to get out of Yunnan at that time and it's an important part of the history of pu'er tea.
Also, the boss said that maybe the best time to drink the pu'er tea is from 25-35 years because it's virtually impossible to find real tea that is older than that. It is terribly easy to lie about the age of the tea because there are so few people remaining that can actually judge age vs. quality to tell how old the tea is really. Many of the experts are very old now. And, if the tea is much older than 35 years, the tea can become too old to drink. The tea leaves will acquire too much dust or foreign particles and also the tea can die. It is highly dependent on storage, the original tea leaves, the air, the weather, and the skill of the shifu (master) whether you have a good tea or not. Regardless, he still said 25-35 was the best.
Even the boss admitted that he has trouble finding good 15 year old tea, let alone 30-40 year old tea and he also said it's very hard to judge the fake from the authentic. He's been in the business for 20 or so years and is from Yunnan originally.
Interesting, no?