Last Friday we held an opening event for the 6 Mountains tea offices in Vancouver. 6 Mountains is a wholesaler of premium and vintage Pu Erh tea from China. Grown in Yunnan, South Western China, Pu Erh is a tea that must be aged. In the case of ripe Pu Erh a minimum of 3 years aging is required, while raw Pu Erh is traditionally aged in multiples of decades. Pu Erh improves with age, much like Bordeaux, some cheeses or ginseng root. The oldest examples known are over a hundred years old.
6 Mountains was pleased to exhibit two of the most highly prized teas in the world. The first 1950’s Red Mark, the second 1910’s Fu Yuan Chang. We are pleased to be able to show off part of the family collection of Kennedy Yeung, 6 Mountains tea founder and to demonstrate the range of products that our company has to offer — from relatively modern 2010 tea bricks, to leaves that were growing at the end of the Qing Dynasty in China.
The Fu Yuan Chang tea cake is estimated at 600,000 USD as of the writing of this blog.
Teas from the 1910’s, are among the best vintages in the world of Pu Erh tea, though most often they are collected for investment or conservation purposes, in much the same way as a priceless work of art. Pu Erh tea cakes such as Fu Yuan Chang and 1950’s Red Mark (Hong Yin) are part of the cultural heritage of the world.
Friday’s opening event was the first time the Fu Yuan Chang tea cake appeared publicly in the West.

http://www.theprovince.com/Video+cake/10861934/story.html