My first wildtree shu

I'm glad you like this tea - really I am - but do you really think someone would take leaves from the oldest tea tree in the world and make *cooked* Pu'er from it? Allowing for a bit of exaggeration, this would be like making CTC black tea from the leaves of the six Da Hong Pao shrubs.

/Lew

Lewis snipped-for-privacy@panix1.panix.com9/21/05 18: snipped-for-privacy@panix.com

Lew,

You wouldn't I hope be referring to those ugly old scraggly tea shrubs we just dug up and burned, would you? (We're planting begonias in their stead.)

BTW, Jim, the oldest tea tree known in China is 3750 years old. I should know. I was there when it sprouted out. Also, I haven't been following all the comments on this tree, but are you quite sure it's a cooked tea? Did it go opaque or transparent red-orange in the cup?

Michael

Why not? I didn't say it in the original post but I can say this taste just as good as my wild tree green log. The green is on the wild side and the cooked on the mature side. The main point if you haven't found a cooked puerh you like try this one without waiting an eternity to find out you didn't age it right. This one automatically gets a ten year head start on any green. There is a green version but from a different village in the same locale with the same logo, tree canopy flanked by two buildings. That's the one I'd like to get my hands on.

Jim

Lewis Per>

Prove it. I personally counted 2700 tree rings on a core bore that comes with the beeng with an abacus. The tree age was from another link and mentioned that many were in the four hundred year old range. The Shou Ming Shu didn't mention any age except 'wild age-old tea plant botanical colony'. It's cooked. The spent leaves are molasses black.

Jim

Michael Plant wrote:

Because, assuming these folks are telling the truth about their uniquely rare product, it just wouldn't make business sense. Cooked pu'er just isn't as valuable as uncooked.

There are cooked pu'ers I like a lot, and one of them, which is aged

/Lew

Space snipped-for-privacy@g44g2000cwa.googlegroups.com9/22/05

I can't. I have only the word of those who counted the core bore.

Besides, I don't disbelieve in your 2700 year old tree. A bore was taken from mine as well. How did you get to count the rings of the bore? Do you mean you saw a picture? (You did it on an abacus? Is that what they call, "boring." (Sorry.)

The spent leaves of an old raw Pu'erh can certainly be molasses black, although more often than not they would have some lighter bits as well -- the buds. Of course, if there were no buds....

Michael

Lots of wild cooked puerh on TaoBao. Yeah I know it's not wild. Let's see everyone wants wild green so I'll sell them wild cooked which isn't all that much cheaper. There is no innate value to tea just supply and demand. I think it perfectly possible that small factories can't influence the market like Menghai and Xiaguan and don't get caught up in the hoopla. Think about it, my small factory wild green can't compete with the big boys wild green. I'll stay with my nice little cooked wild which is every bit as good as the big boys. As I said this order was small factories and the very first one kicks ass big time. My wild tree green log wasn't that expensive. I'd call it cheap.

Jim

Lewis Per>

I'll have to take your word on old raw Puerh. If that means expensive then this stuff is cheap. I understand there are blends but this is pure molasses black with leaf uniformity ie no other shades of color or sizes. This is better than some of my uncooked cakes. How come at least that front landing gear didn't collapse? I don't care you were in a pylon course between Long Beach and LAX for 3 hours waving out the window to see which long range camera was the best.

Jim

Michael Plant wrote:

Space snipped-for-privacy@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com9/22/05

Jim, I'm not at all convinced that the smaller guys don't produce as good a green Pu'erh as the big guys. The big guys have name and marketing and money, but not necessarily better minds and hands to produce these teas. (I'm not sure that was what you were getting at.)

Michael

That's what I saying. I'll even add that it seems to me Menghai and Xiaguan are the producers for the masses with some lowest economic common denominator formula while the small factories stay with formulas independent of market forces. Since tea is an agricultural crop it might be agri business versus the independent farm even in China. My Chinatown is stocked with cooked tuo,feng,beeng Xiaguan around penny/gram. I came across one recent Xiaguan cooked cake that I thought was pretty close to drinkable without a meal. It still is a far second to the recent QianJia Zhai which comes in around an additional penny per gram minus s/h/i from China. If I know there is one pleasurable cooked pu to drink there might be others without waiting for a ten year metamorphosis insinuated by the big boys. If it don't taste good now it won't down the line.

Jim

Michael Plant wrote:

You might try this one, which is mellow and sweet:

/Lew

Any difference between golden melon gourd and golden bud beeng besides the shape? I haven't tried either but I would expect the source leaves to be Yunnan Black Gold. If so it doesn't get any better than that. It better taste good.

Jim

Lewis Per>

I think so. In my limited experience, I prefer the golden melon tuochas, which to me have a richer taste. Of course, there's no guarantee that all golden melons taste the same, or that all gold bud bings taste the same.

/Lew