There are many legends about the origin of Pu-erh tea’s aging phenomenon. Some say it was a chance discovery during the long, bumpy journeys along the Ancient Tea Horse Road; others say it was an unintended act on the road when Yunnan tea was sent as tribute to the imperial court.
These legends may not be entirely accurate, yet they reflect how the unique flavor of Pu-erh’s natural fermentation has fascinated people, drawing them to ask:
What conditions produce such wonderful tea aroma?
And what conditions can preserve that aroma for the long term?
With Pu-erh’s revival at the end of the 20th century and its vigorous development over the past thirty-plus years, no one now doubts the importance of storage for Pu-erh tea —
because it gave Pu-erh a second life.
1. Storage awakens Pu-erh’s inner and outer ecology
Storage gave Pu-erh a second life, and it keeps that life forever in progress. On one hand, storage awakens the inner vitality of Pu-erh’s microbial ecology during post-fermentation. Yunnan large-leaf Pu-erh is exceptionally rich in inner compounds, and the gentle care of the sun-drying process preserves these compounds to the greatest extent; the union of storage with these compounds brings about Pu-erh’s sublimation and transformation.
Under suitable temperature and humidity, microbial communities grow, change and merge like sprouting tea seeds, endowing Pu-erh with an extraordinarily diverse range of inner substances.
On the other hand, storage also triggered the development and prosperity of the entire Pu-erh industry. Today everyone agrees: “No storage, no Pu-erh.” In fact, the concept of Pu-erh storage and the storage trend formed only within the last thirty years — it became a true object of attention and research only with Pu-erh’s modern revival. Pu-erh and storage complement each other: because of Pu-erh’s revival, people began to build storage concepts and develop storage techniques; and because of storage’s development, Pu-erh was able to rise rapidly and become a nationally renowned tea brand.
Looking at Pu-erh storage today: from the earliest distinction between “dry storage” and “wet storage,” to the later four-way rivalry of Hong Kong storage, Guangdong storage, Malaysia storage and Northern storage, and then to new storage concepts such as “nourishing Pu,” “cellar storage” and “fermentation storage” — through continuous debate, practice and research, Pu-erh storage has gradually transformed from a spontaneous, loose practice into a conscious technical system.
This act of seeking tea’s fragrance through time has become the shared consciousness of tea companies, merchants, drinkers and even farmers. It is not merely the final process of Pu-erh production; it extends downward into the consumer realm, driving consumers to value the drinking experience more, and even reaches back up to the raw-material origins, becoming a means for tea farmers to respond to market changes.
With storage technology advancing rapidly, many tea companies even claim they can precisely control storage so that leaves achieve specific tastes and flavors. Such exploration is worth anticipating, but we should also recognize that, faced with Pu-erh’s extremely complex micro-ecology, technology is sometimes powerless. For most ordinary tea drinkers, storage is nothing more than the firsthand experience accumulated through day-after-day tea making, buying, collecting and tasting — like “a thousand Hamlets,” it has long since taken myriad forms and merged into their Pu-erh lives.
2. The ever-exploring consciousness of storage
Mention Pu-erh storage, and one can hardly avoid the old public case of “wet storage” versus “dry storage.” Although the market has developed to the point where “dry storage” Pu-erh has become mainstream, in hindsight the years-long “wet versus dry” debate also spurred many insiders to think deeply about and explore Pu-erh storage, strengthening our conviction about what truly good storage is. Today we can fully step out of that debate and reach this consensus: “The teas of this world differ only in clean and unclean — not in dry storage and wet storage.”
The essence of storage is the process by which beneficial microbes degrade water-insoluble substances in the leaves into water-soluble ones. So whether it is the original natural storage, today’s “four great storages of the sales regions,” or origin storages such as Yunnan storage and highland storage, these are in fact practitioners’ active explorations of Pu-erh’s inner ecology under different regions and conditions.
In other words, the regionalization of storage does not mean there is a hierarchy of quality among the storages of different regions; rather, it advances our inquiry into the possibilities of Pu-erh storage — and of Pu-erh itself. The world of Pu-erh is so rich: you may be fond of the high-mountain-valley winds of one place, but you cannot flatly deny the rivers, lakes and seas of another.
Moreover, the word “cang” originally meant a place for storing grain, conjuring images of vast, empty warehouses. But for Pu-erh, people’s pursuit of the ultimate flavor experience has driven many tea companies to push Pu-erh storage toward refinement and professionalism.
As storage awareness keeps rising and storage technology keeps improving, more and more tea companies have begun to build storage systems. A storage system is not the natural piling of raw material or finished products; it is, with the aid of technology, the creation of a scientific storage environment that more fully awakens Pu-erh’s inner aged charm, forming the unique aroma and flavor of vintage Pu-erh as it changes with time.
The most intuitive examples are the five-, ten-, fifteen- and even twenty-year vintage products on the market today. Their appearance means people are no longer satisfied with the rich experiences brought by regional differences in storage; they want to use relatively scientific, systematic storage conditions to ask Pu-erh for the taste of flowing time.
We say Pu-erh is a “river-style enterprise,” and scientific storage is the pair of strong embankments along this Pu-erh river. Those Pu-erh brands that have cultivated the storage field for years — whether exploring on their own or cooperating with scientific and academic institutions — adopt the newest and most reasonable technological means to build their storage centers, as more and more of them now do. Many brands — Tiande Tea, Changxing Tea Storage, Suiyue Zhiwei and others — offer similar consumer-facing storage service centers. And there are even more direct storage experiences: since 2015, Gu Yun Liu Xiang has held an annual Warehouse Opening Festival every November, together with “The Taste of Time” tasting events, opening its cellars wide to consumers and bringing out 5-, 10- and 15-year freshly released Pu-erh teas, so that drinkers can feel the true charm of storage, infusion after infusion. Creating a Pu-erh consumption experience within the storage setting is undoubtedly one of the future trends for using storage to promote Pu-erh consumption.
At the same time, storage technology has begun to spread toward the consumer end. As Professor Chen Wenpin of South China Agricultural University mentioned in a public speech, a healthy ecosystem for the industrialization, scaling, scientification and marketization of tea storage in China has already taken shape. Professor Chen was addressing the entire Chinese tea industry, but his words hold true for the Pu-erh sector as well. At this spring’s Guangzhou Tea Expo, a technology company that started out making wine cabinets, refrigerators and cigar cabinets also entered the tea-storage industry, launching a dedicated tea-storage brand called “Yimingju,” featuring a so-called “7-dimensional intelligent tea-storage system” covering light, temperature, water and air, which drew considerable attention at the expo. Whether such consumer-facing storage products are practical remains for the market to decide, but the very phenomenon of their continual appearance reflects how storage awareness keeps extending toward consumers. The Pu-erh industry of the future may well see a brand-new storage industry track, drawing still more tea companies to join in.
From the consumer side itself, many teahouses have begun offering tea-storage services. This is a new phenomenon in teahouse marketing, and also the result of ever-extending storage awareness. For teahouses, storing tea for consumers demonstrates service awareness and seems to imply an intention to strengthen customer loyalty. For consumers, teahouse storage is convenient and seems to display a distinctive taste in tea. From teahouse storage, we can see how modern teahouses build their brands and reputations and stimulate consumers’ enthusiasm for tea; we can also see how modern people value the experiential and social aspects of tea drinking.
One more extension of storage awareness deserves attention: the tea farmers living in the tea’s place of origin — are they storing tea too? Year after year, farmers pick and make tea, always dealing with fresh leaves; when they too begin buying a little vintage tea from merchants for a change of taste, it seems to mean they are beginning to understand storage and to recognize the unique flavor that aged storage brings to fresh tea.
However, as follow-up reports to this special feature have learned, there are still considerable difficulties in getting tea farmers — who make their living selling raw tea material — deeply involved in storage. Apart from a small number of farmer-merchants who consciously build their own tea brands and set aside small quantities of tea for storage, most farmers, constrained by market fluctuations and technical limitations, still choose to sell their raw material as quickly as possible rather than risk spoilage through bulk storage.
June 2024 Issue
“Exploring Modern Storage, Facing a World of Flavors”
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Author: Lam Sam (LamSam), the Old Tea Head
ZENTEA MANOR
Alliance Supply Chain Services Limited
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