I was away a week on a course and could not taste tea properly, so in my spare moments I set down some notes of experience to share with fellow tea lovers for reference — not rigorous, but sometimes very useful.
Different storage and aging environments give a tea different flavors in its later aging — but how large that difference is, I fear few have tasted deeply.
The orange born south of the Huai River is an orange; born north of it, a trifoliate bitter orange!
This degree of difference is, basically, a completely different expression of flavor!
And each will form traits and character all its own.
This feeling comes from years of tasting teas aged in different regional storages; in the last few years in particular, certain traits have grown clearer to me.
Let me start with an incident — you may take it as a story.
Over the National Day and Mid-Autumn holiday, my old friend Lao Meng organized a blind tasting. I took part. I don’t know whether Lao Meng has revealed the final answers, so I will say little about the tea’s true identity. The only public information given was that the tea had been aged in Yuyao, in the Jiangsu-Zhejiang region; everything else — description and inference — had to come from tasting and brewing. And while I was brewing and tasting, Lao Meng switched on “hell mode” for me: a TV drama playing in the background while he gamed, all the while chatting with me and our friend Brother Li about this and that (ha). There was interference for sure, but the description of my taste impressions stayed unaffected — true and complete. Yet on judging the vintage and the tea’s precise mountain origin I was left full of doubt. On the vintage I was, I admit, thrown by factors beyond the tea itself and did not hold to my instinctive reading of the cup — my own slip, no more to be said. The mountain-flavor impressions left me wavering: the taste was rich and deep, outgoing, direct, weighty — like Mansai (Manzhuan); yet the soup’s texture and water path were fine and silky, smooth — like Wangong. I could hardly decide. And when I learned the final answer I was astonished — beyond imagination: a village I had not considered at all!
First, this tea’s storage was impeccably clean — no sense of damp stuffiness at all. Judging from the Jiangsu-Zhejiang climate, it must have been a “tech warehouse” (a storage space held at controlled temperature and humidity with dehumidifiers and other equipment) — the genuinely “dry-storage” tea of common market talk.
Second, I had drunk this tea before — in its new-tea stage, and in its second and third years; I simply hadn’t drunk it in recent years, and I keep some in my own collection.
But this time, I truly did not recognize it!
Yes — I simply did not recognize a tea I have myself collected!
A flavor and charm of a completely different expression!
Years of dry aging in Yuyao had changed it beyond recognition!
Utterly different from the later-aging expression of Central Plains storage in Zhengzhou!
This is a very real case of one and the same tea presenting entirely different flavors after different storage and aging.
Drawing on years of tasting regionally-stored teas, I will try to summarize some common traits — not rigorous, but perhaps of some reference (the teas described below must be normal teas made to proper pu-erh craft).
Yuyao’s year-round weather can be looked up; similar cities can be grouped together. For teas aged through sustained high-heat, high-humidity natural conditions (three to five months or more each year), the common traits are:
1. Aroma sits lower and heavier, opulent; mountain clarity is not high; sugar-sweet and woody notes appear easily;
2. Taste leans rich and strong, often with a bitter base running through (the degree varies with the material);
3. The flavor expression is outgoing, direct;
4. The “smoothness” of the soup is prominent, but thickness and spread are insufficient (like concentrated soup cut with water); the soup feels loose;
5. Qi and rhythm lean deep, slow, steady, transparent; on aged teas the warmth is more evident.
For Zhengzhou (Central Plains) storage — cities with similar year-round weather (four distinct seasons, a rainy stretch around high summer and autumn of about three months, overall on the dry side) may be grouped likewise. Teas aged through this climate share these common traits:
1. Aroma is rich, complex and relatively high and lifted; within a limited time it retains the mountain’s original fragrance to a great degree (floral, fruity, honey, woody-fragrant, fresh green-plant notes) — high clarity, high recognizability;
2. Taste is relatively harmonious (partly a matter of material); no single sensation turns abrupt — straight bitterness, dryness, or pure sweetness always arrive together, interwoven;
3. The flavor expression is more reserved (the degree partly follows the mountain’s character), comparatively contained;
4. The soup is tight-knit; in shorter storage there is a certain sharpness, while longer storage brings out thickness; the soup’s body and spread are evident, never watery;
5. Qi and rhythm lean direct, transparent, clear, composed; aged teas again show warmth.
Kunming storage is a special case: half the year is rainy season, half dry season, but at high altitude its storage humidity is actually lower than Zhengzhou’s. With spring-like seasons all year, the swing of aging is smaller; overall transformation and efficiency run slightly below Zhengzhou’s. In shorter storage it forms a state of high sharpness with high clarity and a relatively direct charm, but richness falls a little short, as does the soup’s body; it needs longer aging.
Northwest and Northeast storages are alike: both dry, drier than Kunming. Too much damp is bad, but excessive dryness also harms transformation, producing a state where oxidation outpaces transformation — prone to a bitter base and dryness, a thin soup, insufficient silkiness and body (the degree relates to the tea’s own mountain quality). Still, with four distinct seasons, these teas do show richness of their own degrees.
Xinjiang’s desert storage is an extreme case; I have never met one that drinks comfortably, so I will say no more for now…
The above sketches teas aged in a relatively closed natural space. Vacuum sealing will not do — it starves transformation so badly that even after a decade the tea remains visibly raw and green, with little drinking pleasure. Sealed storage better preserves a mountain’s original charm and lowers the demands on the environment (especially humidity), suiting every region — mind only the changes of temperature. Constant-temperature storage can seem a little dull, the soup lacking liveliness; regions of four distinct seasons do better, and the transformed tea’s aroma and taste grow richer for it.
Relatively speaking, the big environment of a region and city influences the tea more than the small environment of the storage room — perhaps because the local environment acts on the tea’s microorganisms (a guess; think it over yourselves).
All the above is what, with high probability, later aging will show after such storage — matters of felt experience, not rigorous; there will certainly be particular counter-examples. So above all, treat each case on its merits and choose the storage that suits the natural conditions of your own city. And beyond this there is the matter of taste preference formed by “each region rears its own people,” and of personal aesthetic leaning — some like it spicy, some like it salty… my delicacy is your arsenic; such things differ from person to person. Hold to one principle: drink what you like, drink what feels comfortable, drink with pleasure — with one precondition only: health (never mistake moldy, spoiled tea for something right and good)!
Let us stop here for today; when there is a chance, or when my understanding updates, we will carry on.
Lao Jin has spent these days on a course in the Pearl River Delta — endless drizzle, 16 to 28 degrees, not hot but clammy. Walking the streets, the body seems wrapped in a thin film of water; smell and taste are somewhat dulled by it too. It gave me a truer sense of how tea friends living in similar climates actually experience tea — some things are simply not their fault; they genuinely cannot taste them! So in future exchanges, Lao Jin will judge certain teas’ flavors more cautiously, and will better understand some tea friends’ choices. But understanding is not the same as endorsing: Lao Jin will keep his own aesthetic leanings and his own scale of judgment, only leaning, in exchange, toward seeking common ground while shelving differences. And Lao Jin believes the Central Plains’ aesthetic of tasting will one day have a place of its own — and its own devoted following!
Author: Tea Lover Lao Jin,
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Author: Lam Sam (LamSam), the Old Tea Head
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