The origin of 7542, 8582, 7663, Y562…
When tea lovers first contact Pu’er tea, they may be curious about the number printed on their packaging, such as: 7542, 8582, 7663, Y562…
In fact, these numbers represent a specific tea, known as the tea number (also called the mark number).
The meaning of “mark” is according to the interpretation of “Ci Hai”: transliteration of English mark, and it is recorded in “Shuowen Jiezi” that “唛” is “mà” in Chinese pinyin. “Mark number” is the original meaning of “trademark” and “brand” in Cantonese Cantonese. It can also be used as “mark”, which refers to the use of words, graphics and marks on the packaging of goods to identify the marking of one batch of goods different from another batch of goods, which is expressed in the form of: batch number, piece number and so on.
The mark number is used in export trade to mark the quality characteristics of a certain tea. Mainly used for import and export business. There are two points to note here. First, the tea number cannot be used to judge the length of tea storage time; Second, it cannot be used as a mark to identify business and production enterprises.
Since 1973, Kunming Tea Factory began trial production of Pu’er tea (artificial Wudui fermentation), which was officially mass-produced and exported in 1975, and has a history of nearly 30 years.
In 1973, Yunnan Tea Company won the right to export Pu’er tea, and in that year, they exported 10.2 tons of self-developed Pu’er tea cooked tea to Hong Kong.
In 1975, Menghai Tea Factory’s Pu’er tea ripe tea also began to be exported in large quantities, at this time, in order to distinguish products, the business personnel of Yunnan Tea Company formulated a specific mark for each product, which not only reflects the product and the other, but also contains information such as origin and production time.
The weaving of Pu’er tea also wanted to learn black tea at the beginning, and then everyone found a problem, that is, Pu’er tea can be aged and blended, and its factory age and tea production age may be separated, not as simple as black tea. At the same time, blending and origin are more important for Pu-erh tea.
In 1976, due to export needs, Yunnan Tea Company standardized the Pu’er tea mark number and issued a Pu’er tea number document, the full name of the document is: “Yunwai Tea Industry No. 84/45 – Interim Regulations on the Sample Price and Related Issues of Processing and Production of Pu’er Tea”. The document states:
Cake tea is represented by 4 digits
The first two places are the years when the formula of the tea is successfully developed, the third place is the grade of the main Mao tea raw materials in the blending raw materials, and the fourth place is the tea factory number (such as Kunming 1, Menghai 2, Xiaguan 3, Pu’er 4), such as 7542, 7581, 8613, etc. For example, the objective interpretation of 7542 is: the formula successfully developed in 1975, the Pu’er tea pressed by Yunnan large-leaf variety sun-dried Qingmao tea produced by Menghai Tea Factory with grade 4 tea as the main blended raw material.
Loose tea is represented by 5 digits
The first two digits are the successful years of the formula of the tea, the third and fourth digits are the grades of the main Mao tea raw materials in the blending raw materials, and the last one is the number of the production tea factory (such as Kunming 1, Menghai 2, Xiaguan 3), such as: 78071, 79562, 46563, etc.
In order to facilitate your understanding of this document, I will make some rough explanations below.
First of all, each tea number here corresponds to a standardized product, for example, 7663 corresponds to Tuo tea made of 100 grams of Pu’er tea ripe tea made from a certain raw material (grade 6 tea may be the material used for its noodle tea) that Xiaguan Tea Factory began to produce in 1976. 7581 corresponds to the 250 grams of ripe brick tea of Pu’er tea produced by Kunming Tea Factory in 1975 using tea leaves below grade 8 (grade 8, grade 9, grade 10) as raw materials.
7572 is a 357-gram Pu’er tea cooked cake tea produced by Menghai Tea Factory with grade 7 tea as the median production in 1975. The old 7612 we mentioned earlier was replaced by 7572.
As for the year of production of each tea, it is indicated with numbers on the large ticket on the outer packaging, for example, the third batch of a certain product produced in 77 is marked “7-3” (changed to 703 in subsequent executions, so that more than ten batches of the product can be marked).
As for the “old number” that appears in the document, because it is formulated with reference to the black tea in the past, he has a grade number, that is, the raw materials are divided into three grades, high, medium and low, which is not appropriate in Pu’er tea.
Subsequently, due to the increase of products, many new tea numbers appeared, for example, in 1979, Menghai and Xiaguan replaced a large number of loose tea tea numbers, in 1985, 8582 raw tea seven seed cake, 8592 cooked tea seven seed cake, in 1986 Xiaguan Tea Factory replaced a new batch of pressed tea tea number.
At the same time, small packages of loose tea (100 grams) appeared, they numbered Y562/Y671/P901/P902/NY562 (NEWY562), etc., the tea number of loose tea has no creation age. Although there were many tea numbers, the production at that time was quite standardized, and each tea number corresponded to a specific product, and the gap between each year or batch would not be too large.
In the late 90s of last century, the tea market changed from unified purchase and sales to complete liberalization, and many tea merchants began to order orders from tea factories themselves, and the tea number also had new changes.
There are three new trends here that are very important, one is the emergence of irregular tea numbers, such as: 7262, 7222, 7042, 7062 and other tea numbers, which have nothing to do with the level or the age of creation;
The second is to use traditional tea numbers to produce different products, such as 7572 appeared raw tea! These teas are thoroughly customized tea by tea merchants, and are a helpless choice for tea factories in the event of economic downturn and the buyer’s final say.
Third, many private tea factories have also begun to produce their own numbered tea, and most of them prefer to end the tea number with 8 or 6 as the tea factory code.
Of course, there are still many uncommon tea numbers in the original tea system, such as 7312, 7502, 7512, 7692, 7752, 7762, 7902, 9252, etc., which are really dazzling. But these non-traditional tea numbers are either not large, or have been accepted by the majority of tea lovers like 7262 high-end cooked cakes and 421 high-end loose tea, naturally, this problem is not so confusing.
The well-known Pu’er tea mark
Tea numbers of Shimonoseki Tea Factory: 7663, 7653, 7633 (bags), 7643 (bags), 8653, 8663, 76563, 76073, 76083, 76093, 76103, 76113, 76153 (crushed tea).
Menghai Tea Factory’s tea number: 7572, 7452, 8582, 8592, 7542, 79562, 79072, 79082, 79092, 79102, 79122 (crushed tea).
Tea numbers of Kunming Tea Factory: 7581, 421, 75671, 75071, 78081, 78091, 78101.
Tea numbers of Pu’er Tea Factory: 77074, 77084, 77094, 77104.
In 1988, Yunnan Tea Import and Export Company issued a document and indicated the quality and grade of tea numbers: 7452 (high-grade seven-seed cake), 7572 (mid-range seven-seed cake), 8582 (Pu’er green cake), 8592 (Pu’er cooked cake), 7542 (Pu’er cake) (green cake).
In 1991, Yunnan Tea Import and Export Company issued a document and indicated the quality and grade of tea numbers: 7542 (green cake), 76113 (Pu’er loose tea grade), 79122 (Menghai Pu’er crushed tea), 76153 (Xiaguan Pu’er crushed tea).