It’s a big subject and so many variables come into play and ripe and raw, as you know, are also two different animals as is the decision to blend or do single leaves. Let’s see if I can just free-form this on the keyboard and make any sense.
For many folks who aren’t going to be able to dedicate good storage at home, I don’t really recommend buying large amounts of teas. There is so much that goes into good storage and while I do see people cramming boatloads of cakes into the mini-refrigerators converted into what is oft referred to as “pumidors”, it’s just not really optimal as there is little breathing room, airflow.
Having a hundred different cakes in one tight space also means that they will gather aroma from the surrounding tea, melding flavors and such. This is especially true when folks are trying to age both raw and ripe together.
Different styles/types of cakes need some space from one another in order for them to each do their thing with aging/breathing or they suffer from what I call “coteapendence” and after a few years, you can’t tell them apart.
Now, as far as selecting teas as good candidates for aging – with ripe tea, integrity of the ripened leaves is very important to me. Leaves that will not age well are ones that have been left lifeless by too long/too hot of wet-piling (fermentation). Many leaves are not as much ripened as they are nearly composted and this renders the leaves lifeless, with perhaps the veins of the leaf intact, but the meat of the leaves nearly translucent. These leaves will not age well and will further fall apart during steaming and pressing, with no capability to improve with time.
So for me, visual inspection of a batch of leaves (be it raw or ripe) is vital and will be the first thing I use to accept or reject a batch. The integrity of leaf for both and for raw, I don’t want leaves that appear burned, too yellowed or broken up.
Aroma, both of the dried leaf and of the rinsed leaf is what I work with next. One gets to know with experience the smell of ripe leaves that will never rid of their post-fermentation smell (the fishy, briny, heavy mushroom aroma). A little of that can really go a long way and is usually indicative of a batch that has been mismanaged. Rare are the people who want their ripe tea smelling and tasting like they are drinking the smell of a fish market.
With raw, I watch out for smoke smell, ashy aromas, indicating burned leaves, fired at too high of a temp.
If the leaves have passed the visual and aroma tests, then I put them through their paces gong fu style, 7 grams of leaf in a 100ml gaiwan – I want a young tea to kick, have a bit of a bite without making my tongue so dry that it feels like sandpaper. Some purple leaf raw takes several years longer than a green leaf raw to get toned down.
Basically, if I can use a loose leaf tea, raw or ripe and dig all the aspects of it when young, I know that if stored well, the tea will be as good (and often better) as it ages. If I can’t stand a leaf young, I don’t want to age it. I know that a nice bite will mellow with age, the leaf will sweeten up.
I really do believe in telling tea drinkers to experiment with the many variables (water temp, amount of leaf, steeping times, water type). The idea of hard and fast rules doesn’t lend itself well to people really finding for themselves what a certain tea can do for them. How often I’ve heard people say, “I know I’m *supposed* to use boiling water on pu’er but I really like it at 195º” or the opposite.
As a matter of fact, when I’m trying new leaves in order to come up with the next pressing, I’ll throw the kitchen sink at them, tweaking water temps, steeping times, etc. as I know that life doesn’t always guarantee people the luxury of being able to control every aspect of the brewing process. Does it taste great grandpa style? I sure do want it to.
Really, I think it’s about having fun with the leaves one has, knowing that by tweaking a few variables, it can be made into a good cup.
I would add that if you really don’t like a pu’er when it’s young, you don’t want to buy a whole bunch thinking that a few years is going to make it into something that you’ll enjoy. That’s an expensive gamble for vendor and consumer alike.
As a vendor, as much as I’d like to afford pressing cakes and then waiting a year before I introduce it to my customers, that’s just not an option. I say this because often, a brand new cake (one pressed in the previous 1 to 6 months) is not really representative of what it will be after a year of aging/settling in.
In the beginning of doing my own pressings, I was truly flabbergasted when I would see just how much the steaming/pressing/curing would change the leaves, wondering if my grower sent the wrong leaves to the workshop. As the tea would age, I’d once again recognize the flavors and aromas that were present in the pre-pressed leaf.
I see many people new to pu’er get excited about the idea of aging tea, the mystique of pu’er drawing them in as they load up cart after cart online, thinking that life will be better for that (and it might be). My advice for new folks, take your time, tweak variables, find out if you even like pu’er tea before you buy into it. Pu’er is not some tea you “graduate” to and for many just isn’t a desirable drink, aged or not.
Play in the world of tea, knowing that it, like life, is one big experiment – tweak variables, check outcomes and be prepared to have your tastes and desires change as you go. Life’s too short to sit around drinking something you don’t care for now and you might not be around to see what a pu’er is like in 20 years. Drink up!
With joy, Garret
Alchemy 2022 ripe tea