Today is the eve of Chinese New Year. Many Chinese families will have a reunion dinner tonight. Like thanksgiving, family members get together and enjoy a meal together.
For the year ahead, I hope to travel to China and share my tea adventures with my readers.
To all my friends and readers, Happy Chinese New Year. Wishing you peace and happiness. Live long and prosper.
Time flies. Before you know its 2025. For me, it had been a mind boggling light speed adventure last year. I was in Norway and Denmark last September and was happy to see many smiling tourists doing their touristy duties in the cities.......but at the same time, a military war was being waged in their neighbouring countries. We are living in a strange new world.
Back to tea. To my readers, how is your aging and storing of your pu erh collection......how is your tea coming along? I would like to suggest a way to check on your tea storage.
You select a pu erh cake, break up into 6-7 pieces (about 30-50g), put the cake back in storage and take out a piece to drink every 2 years. Do remember to xin cha ( break up the tea and store in a tea caddy for 2-3 weeks) that piece before you try the tea. There would be no significant change in terms of taste and aroma of the tea in the first 5 years of storage. But sampling the tea would give you an inkling (too dry or wet) about the storage conditions of your tea. Yes, I believe that your pu erh tea will age with time. Without being too technical. your tea will age slowly if you are living in a temperate country than in a tropical region.
One of the difficult challenges of pu erh storage is time. Storing a tea for more than 10 years or more is challenging. It is a very long wait. I know many tea collectors giving up after a few years especially when they relocate or have a family. You must also have the space to store your tea. For a serious pu erh collector, you might own a few cartons worth of tea. This tea take up valuable real estate space in your home.......and once you start a family......priorities may change.
My advice if you want to store a pu erh tea. Max 2 cartons. Leave the boxes alone. Revisit the tea after 10-20 years. If the tea age well, you got nice tea to drink. I was lucky. Tea was much cheaper 20 years ago and I had ample space to store my tea.
I am thirsty. Time for tea.
