The vendor states that this is identical to 1998 Menghai 8582. While I have never had the real thing, I cannot imagine anyone paying $800+ for this tea. I did find it to be in line with other teas in its price range for fake teas with this amount of age. I’ve had better teas that were less and lesser teas that were more expensive. Now about this tea. My only gripe is that I only got 8 steeps. At almost 21 years of age I expect at least a dozen. The flavor is nice and indicative of clean dry storage. I get notes of cedar and the classic New England root soda Moxie, without the sugar. People either love or hate Moxie as it is bitter and earthy. If you are a fan of Moxie (especially the old recipe before it got too sweet) try this tea. This tea also has nice muscle relaxing qi, sorta similar to 2005 Naka by W2T but not as intense…

Natethesnake

Ok so I recently sampled a real 8582 from late 90s and remembered I had a small chunk of this left….the verdict? No comparison. The real thing had much more depth of flavor and huigan not to mention deeper qi. For this price one can get early 2000s teas from various areas that smoke this tea…after drinking the last pot of this I came to the conclusion that I musta been tea drunk on something else when I wrote my original review…

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Natethesnake

Ok so I recently sampled a real 8582 from late 90s and remembered I had a small chunk of this left….the verdict? No comparison. The real thing had much more depth of flavor and huigan not to mention deeper qi. For this price one can get early 2000s teas from various areas that smoke this tea…after drinking the last pot of this I came to the conclusion that I musta been tea drunk on something else when I wrote my original review…

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I’ve been a huge fan of all manner of black tea since the early 90s particularly second flush Darjeeling, Fujian, Yunnan and Assam teas but last winter fell headfirst into the sheng world and the rest is history…

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