Short-term: hold the freshness
Short-term storage is the whole story for one half of this category. Scented teas, above all jasmine, are bought for an aroma that is volatile by nature, and it starts leaving the day the tea is packed.
The environment is cool and dry, below 50 percent humidity, in a sealed opaque tin with as little headroom as possible. Air in the tin is air the aroma escapes into.
The timeline is six to twelve months. Within that window a well-stored jasmine tea keeps most of what you paid for. After about eighteen months, even sealed, most of the scent is gone and what remains is the base green tea.
This is not a defect or a storage failure. It is how the product is made. Scented tea is a short-term purchase, and buying it in bulk is the same mistake as buying green tea in bulk.
Long-term: change the goal
Long-term storage applies to the other half. Compressed teas, including pu-erh bricks, tuocha, and fu brick, are made with years in mind, and for those the goal is transformation rather than preservation.
That means room temperature, humidity around 60 to 70 percent, and some air exchange. Paper wrapper, cardboard box, closed cabinet. Not a sealed tin, and definitely not a sealed plastic bag.
The timeline is three years before the change is clear and ten before it is large. A brick kept sealed in a dry flat for five years will taste very much as it did on the day you bought it.
The two halves also want different humidity, which is why they should not share a cupboard. Scented tea wants dry and sealed. Compressed tea wants moderate humidity and some air. There is no setting that suits both.
If you have only one storage space, prioritise the compressed tea, because it is the one that can actually gain something. Scented tea will lose its scent, but it was going to do that anyway.
Which is your case
Which case you are in is decided by the form, and the form is obvious. Loose leaf with dried petals in it is scented tea, and it is a short-term purchase.
A solid cake, brick, or bowl shape is compressed tea, and it is a long-term candidate. Nothing in this category is both.
If you own a lot of both, store them separately and label them. The most common failure with reprocessed tea is not a bad environment, it is a cake that has been sitting next to a tin of jasmine for two years.
And if you are not sure whether you like aged compressed tea, do not commit to a decade. Buy one brick you already enjoy drinking and check it in three years. That is a cheap experiment and a decade is not.
The reverse trap is worth naming too. People buy a mixed box of reprocessed teas and then store the whole thing as one lot, which guarantees that half of it is being stored wrongly.
Sort the box on the day it arrives. Petals in the leaf means sealed and dry. A solid shape means wrapper and box. Two piles, and two cupboards if you have them.
That takes five minutes, and it is the difference between a collection that improves and one where half improves while the other half quietly goes stale.
A quick decision rule
The rule: scented tea gets a sealed tin and a twelve month deadline. Compressed tea gets its wrapper, a box, and years of being left alone.
Never buy scented tea in bulk, however good the price looks. You will be drinking the base leaf by the time you reach the bottom.
Never seal a brick in plastic hoping to protect it. You will stop the process and, in a warm room, trap moisture against the leaf.
Label everything twice, once with the type and once with the date. With two halves needing opposite treatment, a label is the difference between a plan and a guess.
And if you only remember one thing about this category, make it the split. Petals means sealed, solid means wrapped, and storing them the same way is the mistake that costs the most tea.