Why do I love semi-aged puerh?
Mainly because I have not drank that much aged sheng.
No, but seriously, I do think there are a lot of things to love in semi-aged puerh. By semi-aged I mean sheng that is about 10-15 years old. Wiser tea people say puerh usually develops in rounds of about 5-7 years. I kind of have to agree with this based on my experience.
New, young, sheng puerh is usually very bitter and almost overly aromatic. Personally I don't drink it, because it tends to make my stomach upset, and the taste is just too light, sharp, and thin. After the first cycle of aging, the fragrance tones down a bit and the flavour deepens. This sheng is still too young to drink for me.
After the second cycle the tea reaches the semi-aged stage. The flavour and the body of the tea have deepened considerably, the youthful aroma has toned down to reveal darker aged aromas, and the bitterness has faded a bit, but too much.
Semi-aged sheng is a pleasure to drink, especially when it is approaching the end of the next cycle and you can already notice some aged character emerging. Sampling semi-aged tea is perfect if you are looking for a cake to drink right now.
Personally I do not stash puerh, because I have no guarantee the tea will develop as well as it would in more humid enviroments (I live in Finland, and the winters are very dry). I don't want to get my hopes up and buy stacks of cakes, if they end up not even aging but drying and dying instead!
Lately I have been assured I can age at least oolong myself. I have a reasonably collection of different oolong from 2010-2015, and the oldest ones already show sings of maturing. I keep my tea in a ground cellar with a dirt floor, which keeps the space humid and cool. This could be the ideal environment to age puerh also, but then again what will I do if I have to move to a flat?
Thus I sample, and I sample a lot. I should buy whole cakes, but... I'll do that when I don't have anymore semi-aged or aged sheng to sample.
Note that I have very little experience of truly aged sheng, and even those are only from the early 1990's. Thus my perception of the stages of development of sheng puerh might be rigged.
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