Yesterday I went for a run at the Berkeley Marina when I was welcomed by tall mounds of pristine black gold. Several times a year, city of Berkeley dumps municipal compost at the Berkeley Marina free for anyone to lug away. After trying to run a mile and half, I got excited and returned with my truck and a shovel.
The word "compost" shows up in many a bad shu review. But after breathing in and tasting compost dust for an hour, I'll never be so casual to overuse such hyperbole again.
Ira has unexpectedly sent me a welcome box crammed with timely tea. After a trying day, it warms my heart to see her handwriting. I know I've turned into a samples hoarder but winter is coming and I want to be ready. I've thus far kept up my two month no-buy pact. Tonight I brewed up perhaps one of the most expensive shu bricks to cross my path. Although I am itching to use the C word on the latent wodui, I've decided not to post anything further and let this sleep. The shock is too much even for me.
To keep the tone of this blog congenial and focused on what I do love about tea, I thought I would start posting what I find egregious(and lacking a sufficient humorous angle) on teachat. When I noticed something newly suspicious on Verdant Tea about a 2006 Tiandiren Bulang being too prohibitively expensive to import and will be offered only through their special Pu-er Reserve project, I couldn't help but alert the public:
I was a bit surprised to see that my public service efforts against vendors who upcharge 900% have a backlash this month.
on teachat - David Duckler has responded indicating that he will improve his transparency and include a $40 Fuhai. Mentions he chose Star of Bulang because it had the closest flavor profile to a Yiwu. MarshalN responds with fact and reason. Verdant Tea's business manager Geoffery Reiff shows that the 2006 Tiandiren Bulang they carry is not the cheap $11 Bulang but a more expensive version $33-$50. If you consider a sub $50 beeng too prohibitively expensive to import, there's something wrong with the margins of your puerh business IMHO.
on steepster - I wouldn't expect any less in Verdant Tea's strong hold where they miraculously dominate the top 7 spots for best puerh of all time. Insult to injury, a supporter has reported me as being malicious for stating the plain fact that Yongming and Tiandiren are low-end factories producing budget cakes not worth $156. However she removes her insult laden post.
on reddit - Spoonvonstup- reviewer of 41 Verdant Teas on Steepster- has wagered - "I'd eat both of my shoes if David ever tried to "pull a fast one" on anyone." Never addresses the core issue of Verdant Tea's massively overpriced cheap factory puerh.
on MarshalN- Bonnie, an ardent Verdant Tea supporter has shown up to take a stand against tea snobbery of those who find fault with Steepster or Verdant Tea's exorbitant pricing.
If people want to drink way over-priced low-end pu-erh and never really experience better teas for the same amount of money or much less- who am I to tell them otherwise. The two defenders are coming from a subjective emotional defensive angle and I don't want to touch that.
In my previous post, I essentially claimed Verdant Tea was massively overcharging customers for a low end product- an eye-popping $156 for the Yong Ming 2006 "Star of Bulang". To be clear, I support Western pu-erh vendors that provide interesting selections or even charge more for premiums products. I'm mostly against Western vendors that charge arm and a leg for low-end stuff glorified with a story.
I had confirmed with MarshalN my suspicions on Verdant Tea but I wanted to also provide my readers with concrete proof and also a simple way you can do a sanity check on prices. David Duckler wrote me and claimed "Our markup is extremely low." You can now make up your own mind against the 900% markup compared to the Chinese price as shown below.
I don't know Chinese. Sometimes babelcarp has the desired terms in their glossary such as factory names, but I had to hunt for desired chinese characters provided by puerhshop.com and the puerh wiki entry and used a translator to double check some things. I then went on TaoBao.com (ebay of China) and typed in 永明茶厂 布朗之星 :
布朗之星 = "Star of Bulang" 永明茶厂 = "Yong Ming Tea Factory"
We see that the supposed "ultra premium" Yong Ming Star of Bulang sheng is going for a mere 108 yuan which is about $17 taobao.
Update: 10-03-2012 Verdant Tea claimed that the "Star of Bulang" that they are selling is not the Star of Bulang but the Bulang Qing Bing. However a taobao search for their Bulang (永明茶厂布朗山乔木青饼), we can see 2007 versions for less than $10 with the cheapest at $6.30:
As mentioned, selling a "Star of Bulang" which is not a Star of Bulang is misleading but this is still moot when the price of a 2007 version is going for as cheap as 40 yuan($6.30). Beengs from low-end factories like Yong Ming do not have a 2600%+ increase for the same cake released only a year apart ($6 to $156). Even cakes from high end factories don't have a 100% increase between years. Given the 2007 version goes for as low as $6.30, the 2006 Bulang Qing Bing should not be over $17 regardless.
Whether or not Verdant Tea was selling the Star of Bulang and switched to the Qing Bing, their markup is eyepopping. I would not consider this an "extremely low markup".
If Verdant Tea is in fact being scammed and mistakenly paying a really high price for this low-end tea and passing the blunder onto the customer, then I guess it's definitely one more argument against buying pu-erh from clueless Western vendors. You will be essentially paying at least $100 more for his opinion and marketing stories around the tea than rather than actual value. It's 3:30 am Sunday morning so you can see I really wanted to take great care in not putting negative feedback about a vendor unless I had reasonable cause.
One of the things I am trying to
achieve in this blog is to make sure novice pu-erh drinkers benefit from whatever little I did learn the hard way. I personally
wasted not an insignificant sum of money on Western vendors who knew little about
pu-erh but charged me outrageous prices for what ended up being less
than mediocre sheng I could have gotten for tenth of the cost. So by the
time I figured out what was good, I had already blown my tea budget and was stuck with overpriced duds. If you do spend $150 on a 2006 beeng, you should make sure you found a premium beeng worthy of your hard earned money that really does hold aging potential. Verdant Tea probably is not alone in the ridiculous up-charge but I am giving them specifically a hard time because their prices are above board outrageous and due to David Duckler's insistence on his supposed "expertise" in pu-erh and superior curation. Here are some other aspects of their business I find misleading to the consumer
David renames Yong Ming Factory to "Yong Ming Workshop" since Verdant Teas makes a big do about not dealing with big factories. He states of his source"Wang Yanxin has amassed the most unique and outstanding collection of pu’er we know of through dedicated work with small growers in stead of the large workshops. " onWhy Verdant Tea is Different. But YongMing is a nothing special factory selling low end stuff. Menghai Tiandiren Tea Factory is also a pretty big low-end factory that used to make cakes for CNNP.
Verdant Tea also makes it hard to see what pu-erh you are really buying- i.e. the description seems be deliberately hiding the real factory names so you cannot do comparison shopping. "2004 Willow Grove Workshop?" MarshalN has kindly translated the factory 勐海楊記天緣茶廠 which literally means "Menghai Yang's Sky Serendipity Tea Factory" which he found for less than $10 for the 2005 version. Where does "Willow Grove Workshop" come from? Or where does "Peacock Village" from their Tiandiren shu come from?
David also wrote me how he carefully "curates" his selections and that he has been "training under a pu'er master, tasting 5-10 pu'ers a day for months". So when I read his recommended "Intro to Pu'er, An Investor Guide to Sheng", I am surprised he states:
"A brand-new sheng should exhibit three main characteristics if it is to become a great tea. It should be sweet, smooth, and have a flavor or interest that you could see developing into something amazing."
I need not stress that that is the kind of sheng he is selling. I highly recommend MarshalN's post on the futility of chasing taste. There has been a trend in the last few years for factories to produce sweeter fragrant cakes with more buds and young leaves manipulated to be consumed now. There is enough empirical evidence that sweet smooth cakes have shown NOT to age well. Just flip through the half-dipper. No one really knows definitively what ages well but strength (cha qi) and presence of huigan and kuwei is often mentioned, as well as complexity from wild tree. For a Western vendor trying to sell sheng to new pu-erh drinkers, they have to carry sheng that can be drunk now to beginners which is not necessarily the tea that will age best.
I want to spend time writing posts about the appreciation of tea and not being ripped off or being scammed. It's unfortunate that the pu-erh market is filled with so many gaps in knowledge that the consumer can be taken for quite a ride. Good night!
My eyes were glazed over various vendor websites in an effort to find a decent aged sheng for purchase when I found this gem on ebay:
Semen Cassiae Seeds Mini Tuo cha Ripe Pu-erh Tea ...Relaxing Bowel
Is semen and relaxing bowel a cracking way to sell tea? I put it on my ebay watch list to find out. I definitely know many people who would benefit from relaxation of the bowel. Back to my original task at hand, I ended up in steepster.com which I am not familiar with. I noticed that verdanttea.com is one of the most commented vendors for pu-erh. Then I ran across this bit of crazy price inflation from their website for a YongMing 2006 Star of Bulang Cake:
(actually they mean cake here)
$156 for a 2006 cake from the low-end Yong Ming Factory of the double elephant trunk logo? My eyes popped because $156 for a 2006 cake means it is one of the most premium cakes in the world on the ranks of Yan Qing Hao and Xi Zhi Hao! However they do not show the front wrapper for the Star of Bulang. The fact that a Yong Ming Bulang Yinhao cake which sold for $9.50 by yuncha on Ebay recently makes me wonder how this supposed premium "Star of Bulang" blend from Yong Ming factory compares to the $9.50 version. Normally when a factory tries to introduce premium versions, they can charge only so much above their current offerings. (Update: I found the said premium tea for taobao for $17.)
The reason I even wrote this post to begin with is the fact that at a glance I found Verdant Teas to have some of the most expensive prices I have ever encountered on the internet. I have posted the explanation given by
vendor David Duckler of Verdant Tea for the hyper-inflated price of his Star of Bulang in the comments section of this post so you can decide for yourself. He says his cake is premium and "Our markup is extremely low." However MarshalN confirms for me that YongMing is a low-end vendor and their 2006 cakes don't go for more than 100RMB(~$15) in China. Regardless, $156 for a 2006 sheng would make it probably one of the most expensive in the world, esp. for a Bulang which does not have the market hype of Lao Banzhang or Yiwu coming from a factory which lacks any premium brand recognition. Is this $150 Yong Ming Star of Bulang really 10x times better than the $10 version? Just as a comparison, Essence of Tea is selling 1998 Heng Li Chang Bulang for ~$180.
Down memory lane, I almost bought a YongMing Bulang cake from tuochatea and I am embarrassed to say I went for the Wild Elephant Valley beeng instead because it had a way cooler looking elephant wrapper than Yong Ming. (Actually I had been looking for a Chun Ming cake because who doesn't love two x'es on an elephant butt but I had to settle in the end.)
So I am back to the conundrum of looking for aged sheng on the internet. I would buy from Guang of Hou De but his "Aged Puerh" section is a little thin with four entries right now so Essence of Tea is my next best bet. I do have a friend visiting San Francisco from Hong Kong so this would be a last resort.
Yesterday I went for a run at the Berkeley Marina when I was welcomed by tall mounds of pristine black gold. Several times a year, city of Berkeley dumps municipal compost at the Berkeley Marina free for anyone to lug away. After trying to run a mile and half, I got excited and returned with my truck and a shovel.
