A gold question in the tea community

There is a gold question in the tea community – does the price of a product reflect its quality?

It is generally expected there is a relatively linear correlation between a product quality and its price. 

I have however come across two separate incidences recently, one relating to Pu-erh tea and the other to Yixing Zisha teapot, that this correlation is put into serious test. Before event referring to the product quality, the consumers in both cases believed the prices were too cheap for the products to be genuine or of premium quality or authentic – in these cases a fair judgement. On the flip side however, it implies if the vendors were to simply put an additional ‘0’ at the end of the price tag, the products would attract immediate attention without any value added. 

It then comes down to the crucial element which is the consumer’s capacity to discern the quality of a product. It is not only subjective, but also influenced by multiple factors such as personal experiences, preference, cultural background and marketing strategies by the vendors etc. 

Premium loose teas (including all six categores: green tea, white tea, Yellow tea, Oolong tea, black tea and Pu-erh/Hei Cha) and certain tea accessories (eg Yixing Zisha teapots) are largely hand processed or handmade and quality graded, but not standardised. They are then traded under the ‘free market’ conditions which means the selling price is negotiated between the vendors and buyers, and highly sensitive to demand and availability.

Various efforts have been attempted to standardise the qualities of the products in order to better regulate the industry. It has however been difficult as the products are not as clear cut as for example the machine-made industrial products with a clear set of criteria to be measured against.

Summary:

Tea consumption is lifetime personal journey. It takes time and experiences for the individuals to appreciate the internal quality of certain products, and subsequently the right prices for the products.
For the beginners however, it is important to be aware that what you pay is not always what you get.

Some terms

Tai-Di-Cha (台地茶): Pu-erh teas produced from tea trees of cultivated tea fields/gardens

Gu-Shu-Cha (古树茶): Pu-erh teas produced from the forest ancient tea trees that are of at least 100 years old.

The admiration of Gu-Shu-Cha Pu-erh tea and thus the sky rocketed prices

There has been a recent economics report by CCTV (China) on the current Pu-erh tea prices in comparison to that of last Year as such:

1. Tai-Di-Cha increased by 20%;
2. mid-age tea tree teas increased 20-40% (presumed from tea trees of less than 100 years old, but not Dai-Di-Cha) 
3. Gu-Shu-Cha increased 100% (price doubled)

Gu-Shu-Cha Pu-erh tea myth

A different report also by CCTV last year reported the following findings.

How much of the Gu-Shu-Cha Pu-erh on the market is real Gu-Shu-Cha

It is estimated that the volume of actual Gu-Shu-Cha Pu-erh tea produced each year in the Yunnan province is about 4% of the total Pu-erh tea production:

• Total Pu-erh production volume about 139,000 tone, harvested from 6,200,000 MU (or 413,333 hectares) of the Pu-erh tea fields.
• Gu-Shu-Cha production is about 5000 tone, from only about 650,000 Mu (43,333 hectares) of tea fields according the estimate of the local authorities. (The yields of the Gu-Shu trees are relatively lower than that of the Tai-Di-Cha.)

A survey of the local market (to supply mainly to the tourists or retailers outside of the region) in Yunnan however reported 95% of the products sold on the market are claimed or labelled as Gu-Shu-Cha.

False claims

It is clear that many false claims are being made.

The unreasonable profit margin is the drive

There are various benefits of consuming Gu-Shu-Cha Pu-erh teas. Driven by the obsession of consuming Gu-Shu Pu-erh by certain consumers, the price gap between the Gu-Shu-Cha and none Gu-Shu-Cha has been increasing to the point that it is not longer reflecting the quality/value difference. (More information at the question section of this article.)

The Pu-erh tea production in the Yunnan Province of China has been and still is largely family based. The families own the tea fields/ trees, especially the Gu-Shu-Cha tea trees in the forests as the result of the long history of family-based tea farming and production. Driven by the ludicrous profit, the tea farmers are naturally drawn to maximise the yields of their Gu-Shu-Cha Pu-erh.

Difficulties to regulate

Many tea merchants label their products as Gu-Shu-Cha Pu-erh tea when the claims are not backed by facts through various practices, from straight false labelling Tai-Di-Cha as Gu-Shu-Cha, to mixing Tai-Di-Cha with Gu-Shu-Cha and label it as Gu-Shu-Cha. As intangible as it is, here are the gaps to allow the fall through:

• There are no feasible and practical evaluation methods available to systematically verify if a Pu-erh tea is Gu-Shu-Cha or not at the sales point.
• The Gu-Shu-Cha Pu-erh tea trees in Yunnan are not systematically certified and recorded. The local authorities sample and identify the areas (buy not individual tea trees) of the Gu-Shu clusters and report on estimates. The actual Gu-Shu-Cha Pu-erh tea status is finally decided and labelled by the tea farmers, often based on a good guess or suggested by older family members. This allows a major opportunity for false identification, exaggeration and even deliberate false claiming.
• Packaging. As suggested, 95% of the Pu-erh tea sold on the local market are marked as Gu-Shu-Cha, largely done by the packaging paper they are wrapped in. There is however no local regulation to associate a packaging with a product. It is effectively as such, any local tea farmers can approach a printing business to request to put on anything information on the wrapping paper without any backing of the claim. The is the cause of the peculiar phenomenon in Yunnan: the base price of a real Lao-Ban-Zhang ( 老班章, the most pricy Pu-erh of the current market) Pu-erh is $2000/kg, while there are numerous full cakes (357g) labelled as ‘Lao-Ban-Zhang’ sold on the market, some as low as $6. The merchant explained the only association of the tea with ‘老班章’ is the words printed on the wrapping paper. Her words are, people see the words ‘‘老班章’’ and buy.

Confusion from the consumers end

The consumers’ love affair with the Gu-Shu-Cha Pu-erh teas has been fuelling the price hike. At the same time, the endless variations of Pu-erh teas have made it almost impossible for even experienced Pu-erh consumers or experts to distinguish between a real Gu-Shu-Cha Pu-erh and a none Gu-Shu-Cha at the purchase point, let alone a beginner.

For example, there has been a blind test conducted recently. Two Pu-erh teas, one from an over 100 years old tea tree and the other less than 50 years were sample by 4 participants. The Pu-erh experience of the participants range from a consumer of just 12 months to a Pu-erh shop owner of over 12 years in Yunnan. The participants universally picked the younger tea tree tea as Gu-Shu-Cha based on it taste. Opinion of experts: the quality of a tea is more determined by how the tea trees are managed and the environmental conditions of the tea trees than the actual tea tree age. In other words, the age of a tea tree is not indicative of its quality automatically.

Questions to be asked

There are therefore a few questions to be asked:

1. It is believed by the Pu-erh tea experts the main difference between a Gu-Shu-Cha Pu-erh and a non-Gu-Shu-Cha Pu-erh is in their tastes. There are no other significant differences in other aspects such as health benefits and functionality if everything else remains the same. The questions is therefore if a consumer is not experienced to detect the subtle difference in their tastes, it is cost effective to pay the much higher price for something that is not noticeable?
2. How does one know if a purchase is an actual Gu-Shu-Cha Pu-erh?
3. It is believed with the continuous improvement in the knowledge and techniques of Tai-Di-Cha cultivation, the quality of Tai-Di-Cha actually improves all the time. It seems to me that Tai-Di-Cha is a good alternative to Gu-Shu-Cha, value wise, without taking the consideration that the relief of the stress on the ancient Pu-erh tea trees due to the high demand.

The Chinese traditional wisdom has always told me that ‘you cannot judge a person by his/her appearance’ (人不可貌相).

How is the look of a tea associated with its quality

I was reading a tea book (one of my earliest tea books) quite some time ago on how to assess the quality of different green teas. Each and every one started from the ‘look’ of a tea – a good tea has to have the right shape. I puzzled for a long time trying to understand how the look of a tea can make it taste better.

A few years later, I visited a family at Dong-Shan (Eastern Hill) of the Tai Lake where the best Bi-Luo-Chun has been historically produced. It all made sense after a day’s visit.

The production of DongTing Bi-Luo-Chun at Dong-Shan is still family based. Of the crops produced each year, they are graded/priced by the strict timing of the harvest – the earlier (of the spring season) a tea is harvested , the better the quality and therefore the higher price. All family members are involved in the tea harvesting, but the priciest tea leaves are only processed by the most experienced family members (the mother and father of the family in this case). The less experienced members only get to practice on the less valuable tea leaves until they become as experienced.

The link between the quality of a tea and its appearance

The link between the quality and the appearance is therefore:

The better the quality of the raw materials -> more likely to have a more experienced/skillful person to process it -> more likely for the end product to have all the right qualities including the appearance.

This is the very reason that the shape of the tea is mentioned frequently in the quality assessment, for example: a Dragon Well green tea has to be yellowish green and tight flat; A Taiwan High mountain rolled Oolong has to be dark green and in tight rolled pearls; A Pu-erh tea cake need to be firm with regular edge etc. 

Other products with the same principle

With time I understand this also applies to other products with high level manual/skill work, such as Yixing Zisha teapots. The experienced Zisha artists will not spend time and effort working on the low quality clay, and the inexperienced ‘starters’ do not often get to work on the premium Zisha clay.

A recent case

We have had a recent complaint from a customer who was genuinely upset because she found a couples of small sticks in the premium grade Dragon Well tea she purchased from us (shown in the image). She was upset because she understood the premium grade Dragon Well tea should only contain tip leaves, but not twigs – which is in the tea description. It took me quite some effort, inspections and sampling to convince her that the twigs are not part of the composition of the tea, but mixed in by accident which is not uncommon for a manually handled agricultural product like tea.

The cause

We are all aware that different categories of teas, green tea, white tea, Oolong tea, black tea, Pu-erh tea/Hei Cha and jasmine tea are processed differently. What is in common is that the premium loose teas are mostly handmade, in multiple stages and often carried out in the villages of the tea farmers with basic equipment. With manual work as such, very step and stage has the potential for some unwanted objects ‘to join in’.
The following link gives a glimpse of how manual it is to make a Pu-erh tea. The entire process of making a loose tea can take up days (some years if taking into account the after production storage period for the purpose of aging) with continuous manual involvement.

For those who have never witnessed an actual tea processing, finding a piece of human hair in the tea can certainly cause a panic which is understandable. For someone like me however who grew up with a tea culture like shown in the video clip, it is actually not so scary as I understand even with the best attempt by the tea farmers to avoid this, the chance of a piece hair fallen into the tea is rather high. For example, it is not really practical to expect the tea farms to ware factory caps when plucking the tea leaves in the tea fields or in the wild for teas like Pu-erh. If any human hair fell and mixed with tea leaves, unless it is spotted during the following stages and removed, it will show up when the tea is consumed. This is not to justify the existence of these foreign objects, but to explain how they happened.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QE-aXKxPagY

Some examples of the foreign objects

Benign ones: 

• Leaves of different grades, for example odd large old leaves
• Tea twigs
• Bamboo/straw pieces
• Corn kernels
• Tea flower seeds

More severe ones:

• Small screws
• Small insects
• Small feathers
• Human hair
• Tarpaulin fabric

How to minimise the potential harm

To start, the potential harm imposed by these objects are rather low mainly because we only consume the tea brew but not digesting the tea leave. We also always advise the following when preparing a tea brew:

• Inspect the dry tea leaves before adding to the tea vessel
• Rinse the tea leaves with hot water before brewing, especially those that are aged such as Pu-erh tea and Hei Cha

Final note: 

1. Some teas are more likely than the others to have these objects discovered. For example, there are regular reports of foreign objects found in Pu-erh cakes or bricks, largely due to the traditional processing methods and practices. 
2. The objects are not indicative of the quality grade of the teas. There might have been more attention paid to the exclusive grade tea products, but the potential of discovery of foreign objects still exists. 
3. The Chinese have consumed their teas exactly the same way for a long history. There is more concern caused the synthetic materials used in the agriculture - hazard caused by the foreign objects is almost unheard of. 

Teas that are more expensive than gold

There are some exclusive ‘breeds’ of Chinese teas that are currently fetching prices more than gold, a phenomenon that struck many.

Some examples are:

• The Wu Yi Oolong Da Hong Pao from the original Da Hong Pao tea tree of Jiu-Long-Ke (九龙窠), is priced for 5,200,000 Yuan/500g, that is 10,400 Yuan/g - equivalent to the value of 10 residential apartments in the Wu Yi area, or 34 times of the gold price.
• The Mao Cha harvested from the Pu-erh king tree of Lao-Ban-Zhang was sold for 240,000 Yuan/500g in 2108.
• The most famous Rou Gui (a premium Wu Yi rock tea) from the Niu-Lan-Keng (牛栏坑) is being sold for 30,000 Yuan/500g on the current market.
• 1,280,000 Yuan/500g Longjing (Dragon Well green tea) in 2018.
• 745,000 Yuan/500g Xin-Yang Mao Jian green tea in 2019.

Note: 1USD=6.7 Chinese Yuan

The above products are not only selling, but hard to get in some cases. The list of sky prices Chinse teas is also growing.

To understand this phenomenon, we need to take a few steps back and start from some fundamentals.

Tea is more than a beverage in China

In China, tea is a beverage, a culture, an obsession and inspiration to many historical and modern artists. Many Chinese ancient poems feature teas and tea consumption as spiritual elements, romantised if not centred in their works.

At the same time, the art of producing the finest teas has been an obsession by the tea farmers, right down to the finest details. High quality teas = demands = profits. The highly developed skills are guarded as intellectual properties and passed down only to the male descendants of the families and kept secret.

The determinants of the quality of a tea

There are tow crucial determinants of the quality of a tea: the quality of the tea leaves and the skills to process them.

There are numerous factors that influence the quality of the tea leaves. The area of production, the species (or particular plant/plants) of the tea bushes/trees and the harvesting time are among the most important ones.

Contributing factors of the sky prices

The affordability that came with the fast expansion of wealth in China is an obviously one.

The one to pay attention here is also a unique obsession about the ‘exclusiveness’ of products that is almost unique to the Chinese. If a product is exclusive (paired with the quality), sky is the limit for its price.

For the sky price teas: they are often marketed as:

• Tea leaves from xxx tea trees, such as Pu-erh; or xxx area such as Rou Gui; or both such as Da Hong Pao
• Hand made by xxx tea master

The real statement behind is: there is not another one like it on the current market.

Then it comes the practice of ‘faking’ the exclusive

Tea industry is a market that is relatively difficult to regulate, as it is difficult to standardise the tea quality especially at the top end. Tea consumers are the judge, and many are often not experienced enough to differentiate the subtle differences.

With the astonishing profit margins, a ‘faking’ practice is unfortunately in the brew. Examples are:

• Tea vendors use ‘blended’ teas to mimic various aspects of certain top end teas. Close but surely not the same and asking for the same or slightly lower prices.
• False adverting. For example, some vendors would pay to erect the company signages at the exclusive tea fields (eg Niu-Lan-Keng 牛栏坑 for Rou Gui) for purely advertising purpose, such as showing to visitors or in the company advertising materials. Many never use a leaf from these fields in their products.
• The claims made ‘hand made by xxx’, the truth is that he/she barely looked at the process.

There is an insider information from the Wu-Yi Oolong indsutary that 98% of the Niu-Lan-Keng (牛栏坑) Rou Gui is not from  Niu-Lan-Keng.

The obvious victims of these practices: tea farmers and consumers.