Never Buy the Same Puerh Production Two Years in A Row

I have never seen anyone state this wise puerh buying adage so explicitly.  Long time puerh drinkers, I’m sure, all know it to be 100% true.  Don’t ever buy the same puerh production two years in a row.  Why?  There are many reasons…

Even when puerh vendors are holding many things constant such as same garden, same blend, same producers, same family gardens, same everything… puerh is different than other tea because it will never be the same year after year.  It is one of the most sensitive tea to changes in weather and its profile is complex so there is lots of variability year after year.  Even the tightly controlled plantation factories like Menghai Dayi factory, which have been using the same puerh recipe for their blends forever, cannot guarantee the same quality of production every year in even their most stable reliable blends such as 7542, 8582, ect.  The variability is even more apparent with non-terrace or gushu puerh.

There might be a reason that a production is popular the year that you first try a production and decide to buy it.  If you have sampled widely and settle on buying or if word of mouth takes you to the purchase, it likely was a particularly good or optimal year for that particular puerh or production.  Or maybe the vendor was impressed by the maocha and purchased it because it was better than other year’s productions or other gardens in the same area.  If you or the puerh vendor you trust are good at weeding these things out, then there is a higher chance that the puerh you decide on buying is likely an example from a good growing year.  This is especially true if the production is so good it sells out fast or it is so good you are looking to buy more next year.  One of the biggest puerh fallacies is to think- if a production is excellent one year that it will be excellent the next.  One year will always be noticeably better and one year noticeably worst, they will have different attributes, or, at the very least, the same attributes will be of different quality.

Sure you may simply be buying the next year’s production to compare to the production you already have, to validate your idea that the year’s production that you purchased is, in fact, the best year.  If you don’t sample, then how would you know?  This is different than buying the same production the next year assuming that it will be the same as the year before, in fact it’s the exact opposite assumption- the next year will be different than last year- but how so?  How different?  Which qualities will be accentuated which qualities will completely drop off?  Which qualities will appear that were not in the previous years?  This is just sampling.

The wise puerh buyer will always aim to buy the best production year of their preferred production if possible (potentially in volume) and not collect every inferior year of the same production.  Even for a seasoned puerh drinker, it is sometimes difficult to avoid falling into this trap especially when you drink through a puerh you really loved and can’t re-order.  In the end, this is just wishful thinking, an exercise that rarely ends well.

Peace