Puer Me

Lately I detect a downer note in the puer chatter, well more than one. Everybody western is whining about something, the tea they have, the tea they don't have. What they paid too much for, whatever their collection consists of is all wrong and needs to be something else. Some whines are worthy, like needing to buy tea aged in a restaurant basement and help translating the menu. Others, like "my climate is bad" is just negativity debby and needs to stop. You need to stop it. The good news is, the Tong People won the green tea phenom with our peculiar tea world still mostly intact. Who would have thunk it? We got through everything green tea healthy without flooding our market and raising prices, and adding obscene competition. 

There are two big reasons behind our victory, one real and another, delusional. But neither will go away anytime soon. The "Real" is the mass adoption of GLP-1 medications for weight loss, a scientific breakthrough, resulting in very real weight-loss that killed off the need to drink copious amounts of green tea. 

In truth, we sorta saw this coming. GLP drugs or some other medical solution to counteract mass market food, or whatever genetic inheritance we have to gain weight by eating nothing. Once a serious solution to weight loss emerged from medicine, then snake oils fall from the market like empty wasp nests. The direction for weight loss is back with medical professionals and I don't see that changing anytime soon unless the shots kill people. I can take the injection for diabeetus because any untoward death on my part cannot rule out pesticides going back to last mid-century. And I will swear by that on my tomb no matter what happens.

This is great news. Nobody is going to look to puer tea or any green tea to lower their A1-C. Already the tea section has shrunk big time at the grocery stores. 

Puer tea inherently makes itself difficult to love for the jet set with its bitter, fungal, rinse-the-dirt-first profile. I mean wtf. Watch out for too much mold. Make sure you pick out the corn kernels and pubic hair from your sample, and notice any stinging pesticides on the way down and out. Who is going to drink this stuff anymore? Nobody, thank the Maker. Zzzzt-click right in the backside, and run along, you, back to coffee where you belong. Another plus, that coffee rinses booze better. 

Okay, GLP-1 drugs are science, what about the other enduring reason We Win , the delusional one? The Delusion is that every person who "likes" tea thinks they are a friggin' expert on it. They will expound on their glorious teabag collection and not only feel no lack of information on good tea, they feel SATED. I have this delusion. Maybe anyone with tea will defend their choices. In fact, I know folks do. It amazes me how far people will go to prop up one another's tea mistakes. It's a double-down, triple-down. The fawning is incredible on cheap dirt, but who am I to say. Everyone an expert? In the subjective realm of taste, yes, everyone is. 

One small point of possible contention is that I think anyone with a puer tea collection is a tea expert. We can quibble over purchases, but really what you own gets down to this: you bought the best you could at the time, with what you had to spend. More importantly, you drank your way there. Nobody is born drinking a shou bottle, you probably went through diarrhea or ulcers to get where you are. If you are still drinking puer, then you learned a lot that nobody else in their right mind will try and repeat. 

I know everyone is sick of the diarrhea prose, but I want to slam the door and make sure the windows look bad so the hidden house of filthy, rinsable delights remains our itty bitty secret. The mass public is happy with its tea, feels no desire to change teas, and will attack you if you say anything to the contrary. Puer is still smexy, isn't it? Sort out your puer-me storage and toast one to all those the gods kicked off the tea bus. And cheer the eff up.