I asked in my first reader survey how much you were willing to shell out for the "world's best young sheng". The chart below shows a third of you are reasonably budget minded while the other third of you are the kind of high-rollers pu-erh vendors salivate over. The arithmetic average is $115 while the
average mean and mode were both on a clean Benjamin ($100). A few respondents refused to answer not wanting to give vendors such useful market data. What you are theoretically willing to pay on a survey is quite different than actually peeling forth those dollars in real life. (Drats I should have asked what maximum amount people have already paid...)
Where am I on that curve? My wallet being curiously unopinionated never bothers to thank me or curse me so I have to rely on comparative living costs to orient myself. Even $200 for a 357g beeng computes to only $1.68 per session for me. My mini-pots use 2-3g of tea for a session so 357g/3g = 119 sessions or $200/119=$1.68. Less than two bucks for me theoretically should not be too much for the "world's best" since I drink $1.75 canned coconut waters rather casually on a weekly basis after my runs. I'm a bit bummed that I've spent over $1000 on coconut water but it's way cheaper than a gym membership. However I still balk at even parting with $100 on a new sheng. But I have also yet to meet this mind-blowing "world's best" newborn despite my diligent attempts.
Fungibility of money is one of the most mind boggling achievements of human civilization. An hour of massage not covered by insurance is around $100 including tip in the bay area - legitimate therapeutic licensed massage that is. I thought nothing of buying two tickets to Aida yesterday for $190 for 3 hours of unparalleled operatic pageantry at the Met- actually I was happy to find such reasonable tickets. A $100 high end beeng can bring you over a hundred hours of drinking pleasure. Why do I and a fair amount of the respondents share this mental block of going over $100 on a young sheng? I'll leave that for discussion tonight. Good night!
Where am I on that curve? My wallet being curiously unopinionated never bothers to thank me or curse me so I have to rely on comparative living costs to orient myself. Even $200 for a 357g beeng computes to only $1.68 per session for me. My mini-pots use 2-3g of tea for a session so 357g/3g = 119 sessions or $200/119=$1.68. Less than two bucks for me theoretically should not be too much for the "world's best" since I drink $1.75 canned coconut waters rather casually on a weekly basis after my runs. I'm a bit bummed that I've spent over $1000 on coconut water but it's way cheaper than a gym membership. However I still balk at even parting with $100 on a new sheng. But I have also yet to meet this mind-blowing "world's best" newborn despite my diligent attempts.
Fungibility of money is one of the most mind boggling achievements of human civilization. An hour of massage not covered by insurance is around $100 including tip in the bay area - legitimate therapeutic licensed massage that is. I thought nothing of buying two tickets to Aida yesterday for $190 for 3 hours of unparalleled operatic pageantry at the Met- actually I was happy to find such reasonable tickets. A $100 high end beeng can bring you over a hundred hours of drinking pleasure. Why do I and a fair amount of the respondents share this mental block of going over $100 on a young sheng? I'll leave that for discussion tonight. Good night!
I think the question I would first pose to anyone in this discussion is: Do you even truly enjoy drinking new sheng? It is certainly going to be tough for anyone to justify 100 dollars on something they ultimately don't find enjoyable now, and can't predict with any confidence how it is going to age.
ReplyDeletePersonally, I tend to enjoy teas that are 2010 to 2012, and then 2001 to much older. I like, really like in some cases, teas of years inbetween, but I find that I am hardly as passionate about them. I then have a friend in Hong Kong who feels that anything younger than 10 years average is essentially undrinkable. And then, my tea buddy at work will greatly only drink teas from 2006 back, new sheng does nothing for him. (And with him, the wetter the storage the better for him. He looks for the white frosting, and his heart races when he sees it.)
I don't mind spending good money on these quality newborn tea's because I really, honestly, enjoy them. (And with all of the calculations I have done, even considering a 200+ dollar cake, it is still reasonable by comparison to many things in life.) I like to feel as if I am becoming part of the tea's full life. I like to know where it started, and I look forward to tracing where it is going --whether that be good or bad. I know I will be 70 before these teas hit 30 years of age, but I hope to be fit and ready still. If not, well my younger friends will find themselves bestowed with what I hope will be a nice collection of aged tea. If not, they can bury me in the damn broken cakes.
That said, I won't spend the $$ until I know and trust the vendor and/or curator, and ultimately their palate.
I also like to hope, emphasis on hope here, that these modern prices are a bit of even-ing out of the reality of their manufacture. When you read of cakes purchased for 15 - 40 dollars that are now going for hundreds or more; do you think the farmers saw any of that appreciated worth that is now being exchanged between collectors/vendors/etc.? I doubt it. Puerh feels a bit like the art world to me sometimes, artists are expected to create for pennies, and then collectors and re-sellers reap benefits they never see.
The biggest problem that needs resolving is the lack of transparency in puerh. More should be done about this particular issue, in my humble opinion, than any other.
Your tea buddy at work is lucky - he can get cheap, nice tea easily, with nobody fighting with him for the good stuff. Where does he buy them?
DeleteFunnily enough, I was going to email you about him.
DeleteHe is newer puerh, but his taste for the humid stored is notable. He has only had a few here and there via my samples and cakes. He loved that frosty Chen Guang He Tang discussed here recently. He also managed to turn my feelings around on that Grand Mark Yellow Cake from EofT, and is now deeply in love with it. I have been looking on his behalf, but outside of the odd cake or sample here or there I wasn't entirely sure where to direct him. Sunsing? Any suggestions? He apparently just found one on Norbu...
Dear Disciple,
DeleteNow that I've had a chance to mull over your reply this weekend, I've come to the most boring but rational conclusion that what one is willing to pay should be wisely mediated by comparative value and one's personal finances since betting on ageability for expensive young sheng is a gamble.
Even if I can afford several tongs of HLH Yiwu Chawang for $200, I won't buy a beeng. I'm happy to have tried a sample of it, may order another sample. $200 in the U.S. is a bearable price for people with reasonable discretionary income and buffer. But for $200, I do want the newborn to be hands-down amazing, not just pretty good and marginally better.
Hster
Hster,
DeleteI totally agree with you.
That said, for me, the teas that I have purchased have impressed me for this or that reason; and to me, are wonderful by comparison to others. (BTW, I don't average 200 a cake on purchases, but I also wouldn't let the price prevent me from buying it if I truly loved it.) And, I don't have a lot of disposable income. I choose the cakes that most impress me out of samples purchased. I buy certain cakes because I love them. I have positive feelings they will age nicely, and I deal with the price when I have to. I wouldn't expect anyone to not buy in this manner.
Eric
Send me an email, I can hook a brother up when it comes to traditionally stored stuff
DeleteVerdi, ugh, and at the Met too. Give me a new puerh bing any day.
ReplyDeleteI don't know why but every time I read your comments not just here but anywhere on the web, it's accompanied by the sound effect of two whip cracks. The whip cracks used to follow after I read your comment but now even when I see your tag, I get a "kapoosh, kapoosh" even before the message is read. There is only one incomparable MarshalN in the tea world.
DeleteNo whipcrack if it were Puccini.
DeletePing, Pong, Pang! I should have known from your Baozhongs alone you are a Puccini man. I'd rather drink muddy shu than sit through Turandot or Madama Butterfly, but even I cannot deny the beauty of Puccini arias. But I just love that old school Verdi sound.
DeleteYou mean the sound of lame, not quite there Italian opera? I'll pass. If I want epic I go watch Wagner
DeleteI actually had put in my previous comment, at least you didn't expose yourself as a Wagnerian. But I thought that was gratuitous. The torture of those prolonged diminished seventh chords can give you psychological problems later in life or at least a hernia.
DeleteHahahaha, well, I am, sometimes. Although, after watching the Ring (Mehta in Valencia) recently at a movie theatre here (which, by the way, is a good and cheap way to do it - considering we don't have real opera in Hong Kong) it seems like I've gotten Wagner out of my system for a while. I can't imagine sitting through that dressed up in un-airconditioned Bayreuth in the summer
DeleteIf I ever do a comic strip of this blog, I'm totally going to put Kiri's "Sole e Amore" CD playing during your tea sessions.
DeleteNow I see I have to take your tea recommendations with a grain of salt. You prefer the complete and refined where as I prefer rustic charm above all else. I find things that are too polished and too beautiful- lacking for my imagination.
Muddy shu over M. Butterfly... say it isn't so! I won't say any more as I would feel a walking cliche defending it. ;)
ReplyDeleteDear Eric,
DeleteI think you might be hard pressed to find any Asian women who don't cringe at the Madama Butterfly storyline. However David Henry Hwang's M. Butterfly was endlessly fascinating to me. Incidentally, the "female" spy Shi Pei Pu grew up in Kunming and probably drank a lot of pu-erh.
H