An Update on Our Tea Storage Room, Eight Years In
Our pu-erh tea storage room is approaching the decade mark, so it's time for an update.
Unlike most teas—which are best kept in cool, dry conditions—pu-erh and heicha benefit from heat and humidity as they age. These teas owe their transformative potential to beneficial bacteria and fungi that slowly ferment and oxidize the leaves, creating rich textures and complex flavors. Like cheese or sauerkraut, these special teas are alive, and they require specific microclimates for that fermentation to thrive.
Eight years ago, we built a climate-controlled storage room for all our heicha. This insulated cellar maintains conditions of 75°F and 60% relative humidity, which would classify it as "dry storage" in subtropical Asia (where pu-erh has historically been aged). The space benefits from a significant biomass of tea—around 1,000 pounds. That's tiny by warehouse standards in Hong Kong or Taiwan, but it's enough to gradually develop a resilient microbial community that aids in aging tea. In the world of cheese, this controlled aging is called affinage, and a cheese cave's particular makeup is essential to an affineur's success.
How's it faring? We find that the teas are gaining depth while retaining their vitality, with no off flavors or harmful mold growth. (If you need help finding the pu-erh that's right for you, check out this guide.) Tea aging is measured in decades, so there's a long way to go, but the signs so far are quietly promising.
To taste that aging in action, we recently conducted a blind tasting of a sheng pu-erh tea that's been stored in the aging room since 2019. We bought this bingcha on a trip to Yunnan Province, from a plantation on Bada Mountain. It's a solid everyday tea with good strength and sweetness. Another bingcha from the same batch has been aging for the same amount of time in a home pu-erh storage setup: an insulated cooler with humidity control packets (of mineral salts) to raise the ambient humidity. (Cigar enthusiasts and herbal medicine practitioners also use these packets to keep their specimens in good condition.)
Can you tell which tea is which? The bingchas look quite similar, aside from one of them missing some pieces taken out for drinking over the years. Look closely, though, and you'll notice subtle brown colors in the small buds on the left. The tea on the right has a slightly greener hue, which is often a sign of slower fermentation.
We steeped four grams of each tea in identical pots with boiling water for three minutes. The brews looked more similar to each other than the dry leaves; the aroma, however, told a different story. Tasters described the tea on the left's aroma as mellow and rounded, while the one on the right smelled sharper and brighter.
The tea on the left tasted mellower too, with a noticeably rich texture akin to homemade chicken stock. It had a full, mouth-coating character. The tea on the right tasted more punchy and aggressive with a sugarcane grassiness and thinner texture. Most of us preferred the tea on the left. At the end of the tasting, we were pleased to learn that this one had come from the IPOT storage room.
The differences were subtle: Both teas tasted recognizably from the same lot. In a previous storage room update we described this as akin to hearing the same word in distinct accents. To stretch the metaphor further, the tea from our storage room reminded us of a charming country drawl, while the control tea spoke with a sharper, hurried tone of an urban commuter late for work.
Every tea matures differently; there's no linear score of 82% versus 94% aged. A tea's aging trajectory is determined by the quality of the base material, the way it was processed, and the microclimate of its aging conditions. What's more, everyone has their own tastes for aged tea. One person's sharp and dry pu-erh is another drinker's potent and aromatic. Discovering your preferences is one of the joys of drinking aged and fermented teas.
If you plan to enjoy your pu-erh within a year or two, don't worry about any elaborate storage setup. Just keep the tea lightly wrapped or in a container, away from light and strong odors. For longer aging aimed at preserving the tea's character and enhancing its depth of flavor, an insulated container like the cooler with salt packets is helpful to keep the tea from drying out, which would slow fermentation.
Our goal for aging these teas is to preserve their essential quality while improving on their potential. The work is slow, diligent and rewarding. Taste the progress by exploring our full collection of pu-erh teas, including some exciting recent additions. It's time in the cellar well spent.