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Pu'er man's drink
(China Daily)
Updated: 2009-07-03 14:22 Barbara Dufrene, a French tea consultant, was aghast at what she saw in the tea department of London' famed Harrod's. A cake of 50-year-old Red Seal pu'er tea from China's Yunnan province was priced at 15,000 pounds ($24,900). She forwarded the picture to friends, who were equally taken aback. "Is the price a mistake?" she asked. "It must have been 1,500 pounds. But even that is expensive." Her friends also questioned the high price, and even doubted that the tea was drinkable, considering it was 50 years old!
Matured pu'er tea is believed to help people lose weight and lower blood fat and sugar levels. Fu Xinghua After a market correction in 2007, the price of new pu'er has come down, but that of old pu'er continues upward, according to Chen Ke, a regular tea drinker and owner of Peace Teahouse in Beijing. He revealed that the tea cake seen in Harrod's is valued at 110,000-120,000 yuan ($16,000-17,500) in the Chinese market. "It is commonly agreed that Red Seal was produced in the 1950s," Chen says. "The price is appropriate, if the cake is made with good quality leaves, and if it has been well preserved." As to the high price, Chen says there isn't a lot of this kind of tea left in the market. "It is not a tea for everybody," he says. Pu'er is a big-leaf tea produced in Yunnan, especially in Lincang, Simao, and Xishuangbanna areas and it dates back to the Eastern Han Dynasty (AD 25-220). The tea is commonly packaged as a cake, brick or lump, to make storing and transportation convenient. Many people find that the taste, fragrance and health benefits of pu'er get better after maturing. It is believed to have a strong effect in helping people lose weight and lower blood fat and sugar levels. Sheng Jun, deputy mayor of Pu'er city, said at a recent press event in Beijing that a two-year government study on the health benefits of pu'er found that the tea reduces blood sugar levels by 42 percent, as compared to 36.5 percent by Rosiglitazone, a common medicine for diabetes. Pu'er tea became popular in the 1990s in Hong Kong and Taiwan, where people believed strongly in its health benefits. It was when writers began to laud the taste and fragrance of old pu'er that people began to collect the tea, sending its price skyrocketing. "The Hong Kong and Taiwan market was too small, so collectors began to turn to the mainland market," says Chen. He adds that these collectors hired dealers to buy up old teas from around the country, stocked up on new tea, and put up old tea for auction at high prices. Soon it appeared to outsiders that old tea was worth a lot of money, while there was not much new tea either. The price of pu'er rose steadily from 2001 to 2006. A good example is the "green cake" 7542 produced in 1988, whose price rose from HK$200 ($25) in 2001 to HK$1,000 in a year. By 2007, it was more than HK$10,000, Chen says. The price of this pu'er cake now stands at between HK$15,000 and 20,000. To make things worse, profiteers passed off artificially-matured new tea as old tea, and even sold green tea from regions other than Yunnan as pu'er. In 2007, the price of pu'er tea was double that of the previous year, Chen recalls. "It was too much for buyers. Besides, people had become aware of quality issues. So buyers decided to stop buying, saddling hoarders with huge stocks." As a result Yunnan tea farmers processed their tea leaves into black tea and green tea, instead of pu'er. The province produced 52,800 tons of pu'er tea in 2008, a reduction of 46.7 percent over the previous year.
Rong Yulan, manager of Mengku Rong Family Tea Company in Yunnan, says business has hit rock bottom, but consumers are now stepping into a "normal" pu'er market. "The price rise was abnormal. Tea must be consumed, not collected," says Rong. Owing to the 2007 price hype, a number of sellers and collectors dropped out of the market, says Rong. The good thing is that the market now has more serious producers, offering better quality tea. Chen Ke says while the pu'er market is still not in full form, it will definitely pick up. "Pu'er can be produced in large quantities and at a reasonable price," he says. "Tea produced from old trees - more than 30 years old - has a rich taste and strong fragrance. Besides, it really helps to ease the digestion when you eat too much." Customers should learn to recognize the value of high quality, old-tree pu'er, while tea farmers and factories should produce good quality tea for both high and low-end markets, he adds. "When low-priced, good quality pu'er becomes affordable, fake teas will disappear from the market, and pu'er will become popular again." |
