Where the Idea of "Better with Age" Came From

Ask what makes pu'er special, and about eight out of ten people will say "yue chen yue xiang," the older, the more fragrant. Those four characters persuaded many people to start storing tea, and during the 2007 bubble they were used as an advertising slogan. So who actually said it? Is it ancient wisdom or modern marketing? The answer lies somewhere in between.

Who Said It?

"The older, the more fragrant" has no definite author, and there's no record of a particular book or person first writing it down. The more accurate account is that it's a saying that gradually spread through the tea world in the second half of the 20th century, pushed along by several forces at once.

In Yunnan, where the tea is grown, pu'er was traditionally a trade tea that was made, shipped, and drunk in the same year, without any particular emphasis on aging. What turned "age" into a source of value was mainly markets outside the producing region: Hong Kong's teahouses and warehouses, and later Taiwan's tea people and collectors.

Did Hong Kong's Aged Tea Show People the Value of Aging?

You could say so. Hong Kong played the role of an "accidental warehouse" in this story:

• Teahouses preferred aged tea: Hong Kong-style teahouses liked aged pu'er for its mellow richness and staying power over long steeping, a better match for dim sum than new tea.
• Time in the warehouse: Tea merchants and teahouses bought in bulk, and in hot, humid Hong Kong the tea sat for more than 10 years, sometimes much longer, becoming "Hong Kong storage" aged tea.
• Aged tea resurfaces: In the 1990s, many old Hong Kong teahouses and warehouses were torn down and rebuilt, and Hao-grade and Yin-grade teas that had sat at the bottom of warehouses were brought out. When people drank these long-stored teas, they found them completely different from new tea: a bright reddish liquor, a deep, settled aroma, and a smooth texture.

These aged teas turned "time makes pu'er better" from a teahouse habit into evidence you could see and taste. Hong Kong's part of the story is in Hong Kong Teahouses and Pu'er.

The Role of Taiwanese Tea People

Much of the work of organizing "age" into a body of knowledge was done by Taiwanese tea people:

• Seeking and tasting: From 1987 on, Taiwanese tea people went to Hong Kong in search of aged pu'er and brought Hao-grade and Yin-grade teas back to Taiwan to study and drink.
• Periodization and naming: The vocabulary of "Hao-grade, Yin-grade, and Qizi cakes," which divides teas by era, was put together by Taiwanese and Hong Kong tea people in the 1990s; see Hao-Grade, Yin-Grade, and Qizi Cakes.
• Books: Deng Shihai, a professor at National Taiwan Normal University, published Pu'er Tea in 1995, systematically covering pu'er's history, periods, and tasting, and emphasizing the value of aging and aged tea. The book circulated widely across the Taiwan Strait and in Hong Kong and is considered a major driver of the pu'er collecting craze; it also earned Deng the nickname "King of Pu'er."
• Back to the source: From the mid-1990s, Taiwanese tea people went to Yiwu to seek out the sites of old tea houses and commission handmade cakes; see Taiwanese Tea People Return to Yiwu.

Taiwanese tea people valued aged tea and turned "storing tea" into a way of life. In 2004, a fire at Deng Shihai's home in Taipei destroyed more than 700 cakes from his collection, and it even made the news, which shows how much aged tea meant to Taiwanese tea people. This history is in Taiwan's 1990s Pu'er Collecting Boom.

From Taste to Slogan

By the 2000s, "the older, the more fragrant" had gone from a tea connoisseur's taste to a market slogan. Pu'er was packaged as "drinkable antiques," and in Xishuangbanna people said "storing pu'er beats saving money." The phrase originally described how good tea changes in a good environment, but during the bubble it was simplified to "all pu'er gets more valuable the longer you keep it," which was one of the causes of the 2007 crash; see The 2007 Pu'er Bubble.

How the Saying Is Qualified Today

The more accurate way to put it today is: not every tea gets better with age; it depends on the raw material and the storage.

Raw Material and Processing

Only raw pu'er with rich inner substance, full flavor, and clean processing has room to transform over a long time; thin material mostly just gets weaker with age. Ripe tea has already undergone most of its transformation during pile fermentation; with storage it becomes smoother and loses its pile flavor, but it changes less than raw tea. See Should You Age Ripe Pu'er?.

Storage

Even the best tea, kept somewhere damp, stuffy, or smelly, can absorb moisture, go moldy, or pick up off odors. GB/T 22111 describes pu'er as "suitable for long-term storage under proper storage conditions," and the premise is the storage conditions. Storage concepts are covered in Dry Storage and Wet Storage.

What Research Shows About Transformation

Researchers have tracked the same raw tea over many years: tea polyphenols and catechins decrease year by year, pigment compounds increase, aroma compounds are richest around year 3, and around year 8 characteristic woody and aged aromas appear. In other words, what age brings is change, and that change has its own rhythm; it's not a straight line climbing forever. The aging process is covered in How Raw Pu'er Ages.

The Best Time to Drink Varies by Person

Some people love the floral notes and vigor of young raw tea; others love the aged character of tea over 10 years old. Rather than believing "older is always better," find the stage you enjoy; see The Drinking Window.

FAQ

Is "the older, the more fragrant" just marketing? Not entirely. Raw pu'er made from good material with good processing really does develop aged aromas over time in the right environment. But in the 2000s it was simplified into "all pu'er gets more valuable with age," and became a slogan for speculation.

Who said "the older, the more fragrant"? There's no definite author. It's a saying that spread through the tea world in the second half of the 20th century, and Hong Kong's aged tea along with the research and publications of Taiwanese tea people made it widely known.

What role did Taiwanese tea people play? They went to Hong Kong in search of aged tea and organized the Hao-grade, Yin-grade, and Qizi cake periods; Deng Shihai's 1995 book Pu'er Tea led tea drinkers across the Strait and in Hong Kong to value aging and aged tea.

How is the saying qualified today? Not every tea gets better with age; it depends on material and storage. Only raw tea with good material, clean processing, and proper storage is worth keeping for a long time; ripe tea changes less, and tea kept in the wrong place can absorb moisture and spoil.