Raw or ripe puerh?
Puerh is sold as sheng and shou, raw and ripe, often side by side at similar prices and tasting nothing alike. Which is which, and does the raw one really need decades before it is worth drinking?
Short answer
They part at one step. Raw puerh is pressed and then left alone, changing slowly in storage for years. Ripe puerh goes through a wet pile first: weeks of damp heat in which microorganisms do much of that work up front, which is a genuine fermentation and the reason a ripe cake is drinkable the day it is made. So the aging question has two answers. Ripe puerh is ready now and gains only a little with keeping. Raw puerh is the one bought for what it will become, and young sheng is bitter and bright rather than faulty. The storage decisions on both follow from that one fork.