People Prefer Their Own Puerh Storage Best

I am a believer that, as a general rule, people often prefer their own puerh storage over the storage of others.  You can position yourself on either side of the argument as to what the most optimal puerh storage is but in the end it comes down to past experiences and personal tastes.  There is an adage in puerh circles that “if the puerh is to your taste, then it is good puerh”.  This is just as true for the effect storage has on puerh as it is for the qualities we select in fresh puerh.

Recently, a wise puerh drinker suggested that you should probably get at least a few cakes of a puerh that you like because once you age it in your own unique storage, you will never be able to get that exact puerh experience from even the same batch of puerh ever again.  You may be able to get similar, if you are lucky, but never exactly the same.  Wise advice, I can personally relate to.

I can speak to my own personal experience here when restocking my puerh.  A lot of puerh I drank away is gone forever even if I had owned a tong of it, or a few cakes of it- it is gone now.  I noticed this effect when restocking the 2007 Boyu Manludashan and 2008 Mengku Wild Arbour King.  Of course there was nothing bad about the storage, some could even argue that it represents “better” storage, I suppose.  The problem was that it was not my storage- that’s it.

I feel that because puerh tea is so closely linked in our minds to our past experiences and memories of it, we automatically select this puerh storage over others.  Really, I think we are partly selecting our past memories and associations not necessarily the storage itself.   Of course, there are going to be examples of going for other storage conditions especially storage that are harder to replicate at home like Maylasian or Taiwanese for myself.

For the people who have amassed tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of pureh, who will admit to their storage actually not being good?  This is essentially devaluing their investment if they wish to sell or liquidate their puerh.

In the future, I think famous puerh personalities’ storage will create value.  “Cwyn’s famous crock storage”, “James’ famous Pumidor Storage”, “Shah8’s famous natural storage”.  Every time I read Marshal’N post about what do with bad puerh I can picture hundreds of people with their hand up saying, “Me please.”  To drink someone’s puerh is to know something deep about them, I think.  It’s to consume a part of them.  Even if to drink puerh that a famous puerh person once thought was worthy of buying but now thinks it is rubbish says something about that person.

“MattCha’s famous wrapped storage”…. Hahaha

 

I like that.

Peace