Tea arrives in good condition and then quietly gets worse in your stockroom. Almost always for one of four reasons: warmth, light, moisture, or a neighbour with a strong smell.
The awkward part is that the categories do not want the same treatment. A storage routine that keeps green tea fresh will slowly ruin pu-erh, and the routine that suits pu-erh will flatten a first-flush green within a season.
The storage answer in our FAQ gives the general target: cool (below 25 °C / 77 °F), dry (below 60% relative humidity), dark, and free of odours, with green tea benefiting from refrigeration at 0–5 °C and pu-erh needing ventilation instead. This page is the long version of that answer — why the categories pull in different directions, and what to do about it in a real stockroom.
The exact condition for the lot you bought is on its product page, in the specification table. That is the authoritative value, because it is set per lot rather than per category. Use this page for the reasoning; use the product page for that lot's condition.
The four things that damage tea
- Heat accelerates every change, wanted or unwanted.
- Light degrades colour and aroma compounds, and does it through clear packaging faster than most people expect.
- Moisture is the one that turns a recoverable problem into a total loss. Tea is hygroscopic — it takes up ambient humidity readily.
- Odour is absorbed and does not come out. Spices, coffee, cleaning products and cardboard that smells of the warehouse will all transfer.
Everything below is a different balance of these four.
Green and yellow tea
The most perishable categories, and the ones where careless storage costs the most, because they are usually the most expensive per kilo.
- Keep sealed, cold, and dark.
- Refrigeration extends freshness. If you refrigerate, let the sealed pack return to room temperature before opening it — opening a cold pack in a warm room condenses moisture straight onto the leaf.
- Do not decant into a display jar and leave it on a counter. That is a display decision, not a storage one; keep the working stock sealed and pull small amounts.
Pre-Qingming and other early-picked lots are the most sensitive of all. If you have bought a spring lot to sell over a year, plan for the last month to taste different from the first.
Browse the category on the green tea page or the yellow tea page.
White tea
Sealed, dry, and dark, at room temperature. White tea does not need refrigeration — this is where it parts company with green tea, and it is the point most often got wrong.
Some white tea is deliberately aged, and aged white is a different product with its own market. That is a decision about how long you hold the lot and how you sell it, not a licence to store it loosely — the conditions above still apply. Decide which one you are selling before you put it away.
See the white tea page.
Jasmine and other scented teas
Sealed and cool, like the green tea base underneath — with one extra rule.
Scented tea is both the most vulnerable to picking up neighbouring odours and the most likely to impose its own on everything nearby. Give it its own shelf, or at least its own sealed container with room around it. A jasmine lot stored next to an unsealed black tea will produce two teas that both taste faintly of jasmine, and only one of them was supposed to.
See the jasmine tea page.
Oolong
The widest range in this list, because oolong spans very different processing.
- Lightly oxidised, unroasted styles behave much like green tea. Seal them, keep them cool.
- Roasted styles are more forgiving of room temperature and some are traditionally rested after roasting.
If you are not sure which end of the range a lot sits at, treat it as the more delicate one. Cold storage will not harm a roasted oolong; room temperature will harm an unroasted one.
See the oolong tea page.
Black tea
The most robust of the leaf categories and the least demanding to hold.
- Sealed, cool, dark, away from odours. Room temperature is normally fine.
- Refrigeration is not necessary and adds condensation risk on every opening for very little gain.
This is the category that tolerates an imperfect stockroom. It is not a category that tolerates a damp one.
See the black tea page.
Pu-erh and dark tea
The exception to nearly everything above.
These teas are expected to continue changing, and that change needs a small amount of air exchange. Sealing them airtight, or refrigerating them, stops the process you are paying for.
- Store dry — below 60% relative humidity — cool, dark, and ventilated.
- Do not seal airtight. Do not vacuum seal. Do not refrigerate.
- Keep them well away from anything strongly aromatic — an aging tea has a long time in which to absorb its neighbours.
Raw and ripe pu-erh both need breathable storage, though they change at different rates. See the pu-erh tea page.
The mistake that spoils two categories at once
The most common storage error we see is a single sealed fridge holding everything.
Green tea in that fridge is fine. Pu-erh in the same fridge is being stopped from developing and is slowly taking on whatever else is in there. Meanwhile, every time the door opens, warm room air meets cold packs.
Two zones solve it. One cold and sealed for green, yellow, jasmine, and unroasted oolong. One cool, dry, dark and ventilated for pu-erh and dark tea. White, black and roasted oolong keep sealed at room temperature and will sit in either.
If you only have room for one zone, make it the cold sealed one, and keep pu-erh somewhere ordinary, dry and dark instead — a cupboard away from the kitchen is better for it than a refrigerator.
A short receiving routine
- Check the cartons for damage and damp before they go into stock.
- Let cartons that arrived cold reach room temperature before opening.
- Note the harvest and the arrival date on the carton. Rotate on that, not on when you happen to reach for it.
- Keep the working stock sealed; decant only what is on display.
- Read the storage line on the product page for that lot and store to it, not to a general rule.
Point five is the one worth building a habit around. Categories generalise; lots do not.
Evaluation samples are free of charge; the buyer covers the courier cost. Most teas can be ordered from 5 kg. If you are choosing what to stock, start from the tea catalogue.