BORN TO BE BREWED
Boutique tea company Teaspec leads the way in the appreciation, education and safeguarding of Pu’er.
Grown in the hills of southern Yunnan, China, for centuries and named for the city where it was traded, Pu’er tea was valued for its curative qualities and popular in Hong Kong, southern China and Tibet for cutting through heavy meals. All this changed 20 years ago when tea aficionados began to understand that Pu’er acquired an incredible complexity when aged. Prices then skyrocketed to astronomical figures, with the highest so far recorded in 2013, when a bundle of 2,083g of Pu’er tea from the 1900s fetched US$1.5 million at auction.
The ageing process is key to creating the elegant flavours and sensations Pu’er is prized for, and tea connoisseurs now recognise Malaysia as having the most ideal conditions in the world to store Pu- er. Carole Tan’s mother-inlaw discovered this first-hand, being a collector or Pu’er since the late 1970s. Her large tea collection became the catalyst of Teaspec, a boutique tea company that is geared towards introducing tea enthusiasts to Pu’er.
Established in 2015, Teaspec is a certified supplier and dedicated wholesaler of Yunnan Xiaguan Tuocha in Southeast Asia and the UK. Being collectors rather than commercial tea merchants afforded them access to the oldest and most reputable Pu’er producer in the world. For collectors who desire a more exotic or particular variety, Tan carries out wholesale transactions with teas selected from the family collection. The teas are accompanied by certificates of authenticity and provenance.
For aspiring collectors, Tan advises: “A Pu’er tea collection is a ‘soft’ investment, like wine or fine art. One should collect Pu’er because one enjoys the tea to appreciate how the flavour changes in complexity as it matures and seeing how different storage methods can produce different results.” www.teaspec.com ≠