Pu'er Tea requires storage, hence the terms “warehousing,” “re-warehousing,” and “de-warehousing” have emerged. In recent years, concepts like “travel warehousing,” “Guangdong warehousing,” and “Kunming dry warehousing” have also become popular.

It is fair to say that it is precisely because of the warehousing of Pu'er tea that it achieves its characteristic of becoming more fragrant with age, creating such a rich variety of flavors.
De-warehousing is a very important step in the process of Pu'er tea. So, which teas require de-warehousing? And what changes occur in Pu'er tea after de-warehousing?
De-warehousing is easy to understand; it can be seen as a method of “awakening” the tea, making the tea purer after the process.

However, the concept of de-warehousing is typically applied to ripe teas. New ripe teas or old ripe teas stored in humid conditions need de-warehousing, as do some Pu'er teas that have not been stored well.
For the early high-temperature and high-humidity storage conditions in Hong Kong, which were not yet mature, there were undoubtedly more heterogenous bacteria and putrefactive bacteria. Therefore, de-warehousing was needed. Under conditions of good ventilation, reasonable temperature and humidity, the heterogenous bacteria and putrefactive bacteria gradually decrease, while beneficial bacteria increase. Even so, Pu'er tea after de-warehousing may still have a slight moldy smell.

As warehousing technology has matured over time, it has been found that when humidity is reduced to below 75%, neither high-temperature low-humidity nor low-temperature low-humidity conditions will cause Pu'er tea to develop an unpleasant wet-warehouse flavor. However, there are still cases where tea has been stored in humid conditions, which then requires de-warehousing treatment.