When is a puerh tea dead?

 Tasting through these cakes most every day is proving to be lots of fun. I try not to read my previous tasting notes, wanting to come to the teas as fresh and unbiased as possible. I’m also curious to see if I’m finding continuity from one year to the next. For the most part I seem to be, though there are some exceptions. Not sure how much is due to the tea developing with age, and how much to the development of my own skills of discernment. 

I’d neglected my collection the past couple of years, leaving some cakes unsealed for that time. For the most part, I seem to find the aromas concentrated from sealing. Almost invariably, the unsealed cakes are much weaker aromatically, overall. But again, there are occasional exceptions. It appears the last time I unsealed a bunch of cakes I was focusing on the ban zhangs. That’s what most of them are. One of these, a 2006 Ban Zhang Limited Edition from Best Tea House in Richmond, BC, is still exhibiting a terrifically strong aroma even though it’s been unsealed a few years, along with great flavor, a very active energy in the body and a mellow, easy qi making it very fun to drink. Definitely one of the stand-outs of the teas I’ve sampled the past several days. I see it's still available for purchase, although at a MUCH steeper price than I originally paid (no surprise given how good this one is).

2006 Ban Zhang Ltd. Edition

There have been some duds too, as expected. Many years ago I picked up a handful of various Xi Zhi Hao teas. I have to say, for the most part I’ve found them uninteresting, although I was never able to grab any of the highly-touted ones, except for the 2006 Meng Hai Nu Er Zhuan brick, which I’ve enjoyed a lot in the past (I need to find this one again to see how it’s doing). It’s one of these XZH teas I sampled recently that was about as dead a tea I’ve ever tasted, the 2007 XZH Spring Ku Zhu Shan Ji Pin Gu Shu, and it was even sealed! Virtually no aroma at all, very watery in taste and nothing going on energetically. My first thought was, did I kill it? Did I fail to store it well? I don’t think so. With the exception of the last two years I’ve been very careful with maintaining humidity levels around 60% and temps around 70F. Even though I’ve been sealing since around 2013, I still keep the sealed cakes in my humidified cabinet as I know there’s still some degree of permeability through the polyolefin shrink wrap. Granted, the last few years I haven’t been keeping my humidifier working all the time, but the natural humidity of the Pacific Northwest means it never gets super dry here. Also, while I’ve been tasting a few uninteresting “binners” here and there none have been so clearly dead as this XZH cake. A couple years of not-so-careful storage conditions haven’t spelled the end for any other teas, even the ones that have always been lackluster in the past, so I’m inclined to think this one just didn’t have the bones for a long life.