How to get the most money if you have to sell your puerh tea collection

Different green tea, puerh tea is fermented tea whose flavor will be increasingly mellow since time goes by. Some tea lovers not only love the flavor, liquor color, dry and spent tea shape, but also enjoy appreciating the tea culture. The price of puerh tea will reach its peak when it is aged ten or more years.

1. Never Sell All at Once: Except for rare cases, collections are generally worth more if sold as individual pieces. Buyers of large quantities of collectible items will often be resellers as opposed to individual collectors and will thus be looking for "bulk" pricing. Individual collectors usually have smaller budgets in total but will be willing to pay more for single pieces. The exception would be a complete set of something collectible, like a complete set of bamboo packing Qizi Bing, for example.

2. Sell Directly to Other Collectors: Resellers and retailers need to make money and will therefore have to offer a collector higher price. The more resellers in the deal, the higher the price is. To ensure you get high quality tea and reasonable price at the same time, we had better find the headstream seller.

3. Don't Neglect the International Market: Consider using a selling platform that allows you to reach the international market. International buyers will often be willing to pay a higher price for collectibles than domestic buyers, especially if access to that particular item is limited in their home country. Yunnan based shops, like me, sell many rare puerh teas which is made of arbor tea to western countries, for example.

4. Know the Value and Insist Upon It: If you do not know what your collection is worth, do the research! Great resource are local libraries, tea market and websites which display the useful tea knowledge.There is almost no whole buds ripe puerh tea, but when you find someone sell it, you must need learn it from the dry tea shape and color, liquor color and flavor, and spent tea. After knowing when where and how it is made and how long it has been stored,you have a price in your mind.

5. Have Patience: If your items are collectible and you know the correct price, it will only be a matter of time before the right collector comes along and is delighted to pay what you ask. If you have the storage space and the luxury of time, the longer you wait the more likely you will be to maximize your returns on the collection.

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How to brew young orange peel puerh tea

After several years of hot selling orange peel puerh tea, Yunnan tea makers produce new orange peel puerh tea in this late summer. They choose young oranges, skin then dry them. Be filled in different quality of ripe or raw puerh tea, the whole orange weight is about 10g. This new masterpiece become new hot puerh tea and is selling hot in Kunming and is spreading in the whole China.

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Compared with big size orange peel puerh tea, honey babies have at least three ways to brew.

First: brewed by the whole, namely put the whole orange peel puerh tea in the teapot or gaiwan, then add hot water.

Second: the same as big size orange peel puerh tea, they could be broken and add 3g to 5g in the tea pot or gaiwan, then add the hot water.

Third: nine holes ways. Digging nine tiny holes in the orange, then the hot water could be filled in the whole orange peel puerh tea.

Generally speaking, nine holes way is the best way to drink young orange peel puerh tea for nine holes allow the puerh tea flavor come out with the water, but the loose puerh tea still kept in the peel, so it is easy to handle gaiwan

Ok, please enhoy your honey babies in your gaiwan! Yunnan, China welcome you guys!

Four periods for tea

When the homeland of tea in the world is mentioned, we will think about China and India naturally. But when we mention the origination of the tea culture, China should be the mother land of that obviously.

China is a country with a time-honored civilization and a land of ceremony and decorum. Whenever guests visit, it is necessary to make and serve tea to them and drinking tea is considered as a kind of philosophy. This specialty on drinking tea in China has existed for 4,000 years. Through the 4,000 years, Chinese tea culture was developed by the progress of productivity, changes of dynasties and the evolution of human civilization. In China, tea culture is related to the knowledge of medical herbs, philosophy, religions, arts, even if chemistry, biology and so on. There are four periods of Chinese tea development, which are Herbal Tea Times, Soup Tea Times, Pure Tea Times and Loose Tea Times.

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1. Herbal Tea Times (from the Shen Nong era to the Three Kingdoms Period)
   Long time ago, tea played an important role in people’s social life. As an old saying “when we get up in the morning, there are 7 things should be gotten ready for: firewood, rice, edible oil, salt, soy, vinegar and tea”, that demonstrates the tea is a necessary thing in Chinese daily life.
   During the legend times, when people found tea leaves, they just put the fresh tea leaves under the sunshine to dry because of the backward of productivity, and considered them as herb, which could cure illness.
   According to The Shen Nong’s Herbal Classic written in thousands of years ago, it’s recorded that, Shen Nong, a legendary ruler, to save the common people from pain, he selected various wild plants as medicine. Fearless of the sacrifice, he tasted the wild plants himself to learn their effect on the human body and was responsible for finding medical herbs for tribe. One day, he was poisoned by one kind of deadly herb. When he drank the tea liquor occasionally, he was detoxified. From that time on, tea was considered as a kind of medicine which could detoxify. This situation lasted to the end of Han Dynasty (Three Kingdoms Period). In a word, tea at that time existed as medicine for keeping minds calm and detoxification.
   Up to now, Chinese people drink different teas in different seasons for health. In China four seasons are divided according to give elements principle (wood, fire, earth, metal and water). Drinking tea in suitable season will keep give elements in balance which is good for health. According to give elements principle, spring belongs to wood representing growing, early summer belongs to fire representing hot, mid-summer belongs to earth representing humidity, autumn belongs to metal representing dry, and winter belongs to water belongs to water representing cold. That’s why people drinking green tea in spring, black tea in early summer, white tea in mid-summer, oolong tea in autumn and puerh tea in winter.
2. Soup Tea Time (from the Three Kingdoms Time to the Mid-Tang Dynasty)
   During this period in Chinese history, there are three kingdoms occupied Sichuan, Henan and Jiangsu Provinces separately. After discovering tea, the Chinese people used it as the medicinal herb, vegetable and a kind of drink over 4,000 years. There was a great revolution in tea-drinking history. People began to drink tea not only as a medicinal herb for health but also a kind of food to eat.
   at that time, people would like to put in fruits, ginger, sugar and other vegetables during brewing tea which looks like porridge. It was Zhu Geliang, a prime minister of the state of Shu Han, Sichuan Province, cultivated people to drink tea with ginger. Then the custom of drinking tea with other food was popular in noble family.
3. Pure Tea Time (from the Mid-Tang Dynasty to the end of Yuan Dynasty)
   Because the steamed green tea was invented in earl Tang Dynasty, the drinking way of green tea was changed at that time. In order to enlarge the fresh taste of steamed green tea, people began to add salt when brewing tea. With the Buddhism populated in the world, Chinese tea drinking way was spread out widely. At the same time, Chinese tea culture was formed primitively.
   As far as we know, Chinese cuisine is a perfect combination of color, aroma, taste and appearance. So is the tea. To some extent, drinking tea is a kind of art improving the degree of people’s civilization.
   From the Mid-Tang Dynasty to Song Dynasty, Chinese tea culture was developed and broadcasted widely and quickly. The custom of tea drinking was spread by the royal family luxuriously who regular the way of tea drinking. In the Tang Dynasty, the habit of drinking tea spread from the imperial court to the town and countryside; and it was the literati, hermits and Buddhists who played a leading role in the advocacy of tea culture. With the situation changed in the Song Dynasty (960-1279), the influential intellectuals considered drinking tea as a symbol of elegant life.
4. Loose Tea Times (from Ming Dynasty up to now)
   The cakes of tea were too luxury to ordinary people. Since Ming Dynasty, the rulers called on drinking loose tea instead of cakes of tea. From that time, the way of tea brewing was changed greatly. People began to brew tea by tea pot instead of dropping tea. This simplified the process of tea brewing. From that time, to make a good cup of tea, only needed four steps: warm up tea wares, wet dry leaves perfectly, pour suitable temperature water into tea wares and filter tea liquor in suitable time. In the end of Ming Dynasty, the fermentation skill was invented. There are six basic teas appeared according to different fermentation degrees, which are non-fermented green tea, fully fermented black tea, lightly fermented yellow tea and white tea, semi-fermented oolong tea and post-fermented tea. In this way, the way of tea drinking was changed greatly. There are lots of tea wares, such as tea pot, covered bowl and cup. The material of tea wares is also variety, for example, red porcelain, glass, clay, ceramic and so on.
   
   
   
   

   

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Black Tea

In Chinese languages, black tea is known as “red tea” a description of the color of the liquid. Western term “black tea” refers to the color of the oxidized leaves.

It is nearly 300 years ago, tea farmers lived in Wuyi Mountain, and north part of Fujian Province discovered the skill of ferment. They find after ferment tea leaves color becomes black and the tea liquor is changed from bright green to reddish ruby. The liquor tastes dense and sweet which is totally different from traditional green tea. During the Qing Dynasty, about 200 years ago, westerners visited Wuyi Mountain and found this black tea. Because they found that after mixing up milk with the black tea liquor, the beverage had a flavor of chocolate. Since then, the black tea has been welcomed in western countries.

Black tea is a type of tea that is more oxidized than oolong, green and white tea, so the black tea liquor tastes stronger than above three. Two principal varieties of the species are used: the small leaf variety (C.sinensis subsp.sinensis), used for most other types of teas, and the large leaf variety (C.sinensis subsp.assamica), which was traditionally mainly used for black tea. According to this classification, generally speaking, black tea bushes are divided into two kinds, Chinese plant and Assamese plant. Most of the black tea bushed in India, Sri Lanka even south Africa are Assamese plant. For the large leaves of the Assamese plant, they are hard to become tidy and small by being fried, so most black tea in these countries are C.T.C., which is the abbreviation for crush, tear and curl.

Chinese small leaves plant is planted in southern part of China including Sichuan, Yunnan, Guizhou, Hubei, Hunan, Anhui, Jiangxi, Zhejiang, Jiangsu, Guangxi, Guangdong, Fujian, Taiwan and Hainan.

Zhengshan Souchong Black Tea

Zhengshan Souchong black tea is considered as the first black tea in China which is located in Yuyishan, northern part of Fujian Province. It is said that tea farmers in this place discovered the skill of fermentation, and then the Souchong black tea appeared. And this kind of black tea was exported to western countries where it became very popular. How come westerners like this kind of tea? It is because its strong flavor and high fragrance. In the end of Qing Dynasty, the Zhengshan Souchong black tea became main exports goods. The character of Souchong black tea is the flavor of tea soup which tastes like Longan, a fruit in tropic regions.

Qimen Kongfu Black Tea

Qimen Kongfu black tea is the first Kongfu tea in China which is produced in Anhui Province. As we all know, the production process of the Kongfu black tea is more complex of Souchong black tea. Kongfu in Chinese could be explained as a consumption of labor and time. Qimen Kongfu black tea is discovered on the basis of Souchong Black tea which has a special step on procession of fried. It’s one of the top three black teas with heavy fragrance in the world, and the other two are Darjeeling in India, Uva in Sri Lanka. The flavor of superior Qimen Kongfu black tea tastes like a combination of honey and orchid.

Dianhong Black Tea

Dianhong black tea was discovered in 1939 with nearly 70 years history which tastes like a combination of honey and sweet potato. Different from other black tea, Dianhong black tea is picked from large leaf variety arbor tea tree, and the tea liquor tastes strong and could be brewed for many times. Because of the strong sweet taste, Dianhong black tea is suitable for drinking without sugar and milk. However, some people still like to add milk in Dianhong black tea to enjoy the extremely strong nice chocolate flavor. Nowadays, Dianhong black tea has become one of the most popular black teas in the world. 

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Jinjunmei Black Tea

Jinjunmei is a kind of Kongfu black tea produced in Wuyishan Fujian Province. Different from other black teas, the tea bush of Jinjunmei should be planted in a place with 1800 meters high and tea leaves should be picked in early April. This is the reason why Jinjunmei sold in a higher price. Jinhunmei has a special flavor tasting like the preserved strawberry.

Appreciation of dry leaves

Qimen Kongfu black tea is famous for its tidy and elegant appearance. The dry leaves of upper class Qimen black tea has natural luster to appreciate. Qimen fragrance is named after especially for its fragrance, and it’s one of the three black teas with strong fragrance in the world. Chinese black tea is well-known for their beautiful dry leaves, reddish tea liquor and sweet aftertaste, so before making Chinese tea, enjoying the dry leaves is a must.

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Water brewing

According to Chinese tea custom, making fully fermented tea should use hot water at 65 ℃.  And water quality is a very important element for making tea. Ancient Chinese tea drinkers considered snow and rain in high-mountain is a best water to make tea, so using fresh water to make tea is an indispensable way to make tea.

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Warming up tea top and cups

Chinese tea art show is a kind of Taiji or yoga which means people adjusting their breath, action and mind at the same time during making tea, and it is also known as a sort of Chinese philosophy. Chinese tea drinkers love tea for their fondness of nature. When making tea, they would like to fancy staying in a natural environment. For instance, when they warming up tea wares and pouring boiling water into the tea pot, they would like to consider that the hot water is a spring and the tea pot is a valley. For the Chinese, we think that warming up tea wares meaning arranging our minds.

Displaying dry leaves

Fetching 5 to 7 grams dry leaves and displaying them into the warm tea pot. It is very important on the control of dry leaves volume to put in, because less tea is tasteless while more tea is bitter. If the volume of dry leaves is not enough, the original flavor of tea would not be fully performed.

Wetting dry leaves

Dropping some hot water into the pot, shake the pot, and then dry leaves will absorb water perfectly and send out its aroma gradually. The Chinese tea drinker thinks that the tea is growing among mountains, picked and made by human in their hands but rebirth in tea pots. So the step of wetting dry leaves is a procession to let tea regeneration and also is a very important stage in tea art show.

Pouring in hot water

Lifting water pot highly to put hot water into the glass tea pot makes the tea leaves floating freely so that the fragrance and taste can be set out.

Tea liquor sharing

Pouring tea liquor into fair cup, making the tea liquor into each tea cup evenly, and then sharing tea liquor with others. It comes to taste the tea with the beginning of appreciation the beauty of bright and reddish tea liquor, then sipping the tea liquor in three times because of the structure of Chinese character “品”, which means tasting, is consisted by three mouths.

Tea Producing Process

Picking

The first step of producing tea is to pick off the buds or leaves from tea trees.

Generally speaking, the tea can be divided into two types: bud and leaf tea. Bud tea use bud as the main raw material, and leaf tea use leaves as the main raw material.

Because buds are new, the bud tea is tender. However, except the best whole bud tea, some common bud tea contains some of old or new tea leaves, so the bud and leaf tea is different in the degree of freshness. In general, the higher the proportion of buds and tender the leaves, the higher the quality of tea. Yet there is some tea whose content is particularly made of old tea leaves, such as Huangpian, Tie Kwan-yin, ect.

Airing and withering

The steps following picking to produce tea depends on the tea of different kinds.

For non-fermented tea, the next step is fixation. Fixation is divided into steaming and stir fixation. Sun drying precedes, that is, to lay the fresh tea leaves for some time to evaporate some water.

For fermented and partially fermented tea, the fresh tea leaves should be withered first. Withering is done outdoor or indoor. Outdoor withering is to place tea in the sun to dry it, (when the sunlight is too strong, tea leaves should be on the shadowy areas), until it is softened, then it will be moved to the room for indoor withering.

During withering, the leaves should be stirred from time to time. At first, the purpose to stir the tea is to make the moisture in the tea evaporate evenly; later stir it more frequently and move dynamically. Apart from the evaporation of water, it is necessary to make friction between the leaves to promote oxidation.

Fixation

Fixation comes next to picking and drying, and it divides into steaming and stir fixation. Steaming is used to be the main way, but now stir fixation has become the mainstream. Stir fixation makes tea more fragrant, and steaming makes tea greener.

Fixation aims to continue to evaporate the moisture of tea, to damage the enzyme activity in the leaves, and to produce fragrance. The pot temperature is a key factor to fixation. When it is low, the enzyme will be more active than in room temperature, so the colorless polyphenols in tea will rapidly oxidize, which makes the tea red; when it is too high, the tea will be burnt.

Rolling

The next step to fixation or withering is rolling. In this process, the integrity of the leaves is damaged, resulting in their active ingredients easier to leach when brewing. Meanwhile, the shape of tea becomes tight from loose in rolling, good for preservation. In addition, different flavors are created by various rolling forms.

There are cold rolling and hot rolling, the former is done after cooling the leaves through fixation while hot rolling is done after fixation. The former is appropriate for tender leaves, because there are more water-soluble pectin contents in it and it is easy to form strip; hot rolling is appropriate to old leaves, because the coarse old leaves form strips easily when they are soft and hot, meanwhile with less broken foam. Rolling is an important step to make the shape of tea leaves. By strength rolling is divided into soft rolling, medium rolling, and hard rolling. Soft rolling makes the strip, needle-like tea. When rolling is too soft, the tea will easily maintain the original shape. Medium rolling and hard rolling make the hemispherical and spherical shape of tea.

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Fermentation

For the fermented tea and partially fermented tea, the next step after rolling is fermentation. Fermentation is to put the rolling tea leaves in a specially-made plate in a certain thickness so that the chemical composition in the tea leaves will undergo a series of oxidation reactions in aerobic conditions, and change the quality of tea. In the fermentation process, colorless polyphenols will eventually transform into tea flavins and tea red pigment and color, smell, taste of tea will be changed. With the deepening of fermentation, tea will turn from green to yellow green, then green yellow, yellow red, and even black red. Grass fragrance is transferred into flower fragrance, and ten fruit fragrance, and finally ripe fruit fragrance. The fresh natural flavor gradually shifts to the mellow artificial flavor.

Pile-fermentation and long term storage

Pile-fermentation is a unique dark tea production process. It is to pile up the rolling tea to make the leaves undergo chemical changes, forming the unique quality of dark tea.

The key point of pile-fermentation is to keep enough water content, general not less than 60%; when it is low, water should be sprayed, because in the pile-fermentation process water plays a major role.

While maintaining adequate moisture, pay attention to the reactor temperature should be kept between 30℃- 40℃， thus the tea basement cover should be put. In the pile-fermentation, the tea billet temperature gradually increases. If the temperature exceeds 45 ℃, need to reduce the temperature of tea billet.

In the pile-fermentation process, the chlorophyll in tea is destroyed, so the color turns from green to brown, and the fragrance and taste change too.

Some dark tea is usually stored for several years after pile-fermentation and ferrying. Storage is essentially the slow oxidation of dark tea in the air.

Drying

Most tea needs drying. There are fried drying, heated drying, and sun drying, etc., each with different characteristics. for example, fixation, rolling and drying all completed in the pot, but White Pekoe Sliver Needle is directly dried or dried after being spread in thin.

Fried drying is characterized by the contact of tea and the heated solid surface (such as the pot shell), making tea with strong fragrance; heated drying is characterized by the contact of tea and hot air, making the tea has intact tea buds; sun drying is characterized by the contact of tea leaves and sunlight, making tea with a special flavor.

Pressing

Pressing is a necessary step for the condensed tea. Take puerh tea as example, this tea was compressed in a tea factory where stone presses were used.  Low temperature “baking” was used to dry these cakes after the compression process thus preserving their integrity! Normally we have delayed sales of this cake for 2 weeks or longer to allow the water vapor from pressing to dissipate. Further aging will only improve this wonderful tea!

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Tea Mountains in Yunnan

Bingdao Mountain is located in Shuangjiang County, Lincang City, stemmed from ancient Dai village, namely Bingdao. This Dai village is on the north of snow mountainside where is mist-shrouded, and primordial forests gather together. Hundreds and thousands years of old trees spread among mountain, all tea trees are typical Mengku large leaf variety.

Yiwu Mountain is located in Mengla County, Xishuangbanna Prefecture, and is one of the 6 Old Main Tea Mountains, the famous fountainhead of the Tea Horse Road. There is ample sunshine, plentiful rainfall, heavy fog twining round the high mountain, fairly fertile soil, warm and rainy, all these make Yiwu be the ideal tea-growing land. Relying on the long tea-consuming history and the laurel of “Auspicious Tribute for the Imperial Court”, Yiwu is really a Pu-erh tea holy place.

 

Nannuo Mountain is located in Menghai County, Xishuangbanna Prefecture. The average altitude of Nannuo Mountain is 1400m with high peaks and deep valleys and luxuriant growth. Be provided with the best ecological environment for large leaf variety, heavy fog twining round here, the tea from Nannuo Mountain has extremely high quality. From time immemorial, Nannuo Mountain is the most well-known ancient tea mountain and origin area of high quality of raw Pu-erh material in the western downstream of Lancang River. Here are mixed ancient tea gardens which were built from one thousand year ago by Bulan minority, and then abandoned.

Bangwei is located in the Lincang County, Pu-er City, and in the south of Tropic of cancer. Specific elevation, rainfall, and humiture constitute unique habitat, which breeds numerous Theaceae plants, and ultimately evolve to wild old tea community, transformed and cultivated old tea community. Bangwei is prior tea- culturing fecund land on Lancang riverside.

Hekai is located in Menghai County, Xishuangbanna Prefecture, and elevation ranges from 1400 to 1700m. There are rolling hills, interlacing valleys, warm and sunny, abundant rainfall, fertile land. Besides tea, alder, schima superba, and eupatorium odoratum could be found here as well. Hekai possesses good ecological environment, and is one of the biggest well-preserved ancient main tea mountains.

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Have fun in tea mountain