Mei Leaf / Chinalife - 1600 Year old Pu-erh

So you don’t like the teas he offers?

I prefer not to give my money to people who make misleading claims. I’m perfectly happy with vendors I know to be reliable and honest.

I just go by the taste of the tea, and he’s one of many that I’ve gotten great tea from, but I get what you’re saying. Cheers. :)

I intentionally give my money to honest businessmen and women, they sell tea that’s just as good, I don’t need to divert those funds to people who are far from scrupulous.

JH is an obvious fake, don’t mind him.

Read down to the posts below Felipe. You can apologize after. :P

I keep trying to joke about this, but it is getting a little tiring being called fake. I thought this was a site about tea, and discussions about tea, but it seems to be more a site that you’re allowed to discuss tea, but only if you agree with the topic. If not, you’re fake and dismissed. I’m going on vacation for ten days tomorrow, so don’t take my lack of posts to be a sign that Jillian, Felipe, and the others that only alluded to my, and others, being fake were right. They’re not. I’d hate to have you think you were right even for a second. Hopefully when I get back this will be over, and you’ll let me be a part of this site without being called out for not being real because I didnt totally agree with what others are saying. Thanks Felipe. You made a good night pretty crappy. I thought this was done already, and it’s getting old.

Hey JH – Sorry you feel that way but people do get a bit suspicious of accounts with no profile pic, no tasting notes, and very little activity. I suggest when you return making some tealogs from multiple vendors (seems you got a bit in your cupboard) and adding more to your bio.

Unfortunately the internet is rife with these fake accounts so you can’t blame us for being suspicious. Hope you will continue to contribute to the site though as I find it is a friendly and knowledgable group.

Hi Im New to tea maybe you can start a video channel too to teach us newbies. Or any other learning material would be good

Weasser is a real person. We have even done a swap between us.

mrmopar is a real person too, or a very advanced self aware computer program that has lots of tea, and knows how to send some of it in the mail. One of those two.

Wow how rude. Have you read all of my posts?

Rob, I don’t think you’re a sock puppet. More of a Sweep :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CuCT2bpYLMc

tea123 at least is a legitimate person.

tea123 is a real user.

I agree Rob, that was pretty rude. Just because I don’t agree with your opinion, Jilian, that he’s a scammer does not make my account illegitimate. I had it long before this thread started, and post on many things that have nothing to do with this topic. You’re the one that’s dreaming if you think making an accusation like that would go without a response.

All three of these guys are real users. I don’t think we have any shills in here at all, however. Don is just choosing not to respond directly on here. He is aware of the thread, though, and is responding in an indirect manner through his videos. He asserts that age doesn’t matter that much in one of his recent videos about the new potential replacement for his premium sheng offering and it appears he’s responding to the assertions made here.

Why WOULD Don respond? It wasn’t too long ago Lily tried to defend herself and Scott tore her argument apart with some pretty convincing sources. And Lily never came back.

Although after all that drama I’m pretty sure that’s the last time we will see Scott do that again to that level.

I missed all of that and don’t know who Lily is, but yeah, I guess it wouldn’t make sense for him to post here. It’s all been said already. Now I’m just curious to hear if the tea is any good from someone who knows how to get the most from it and has experience with gushu cha.

I’ve had them both tealife, and liked them, but I’m honestly not a good judge. I’m still fairly new to puehr, and the main way I describe tea at this point is it either tastes good, or it doesnt. I’m on a crash course though. I’ve watched every TeaDB video, most of Scott’s videos. Even all of the Meileaf videos. I’m tasting as much as I can, and reading a lot of the taster notes on this site to get a better idea of what I’m looking for. Once I’m better at it, I’ll do an official taste on both the teas that this thread refers to since I have both, but until then, all I can say is they tasted good to me.

Hey JH. It seems we are on a similar journey! I’ve also watched most of Scots videos all of Mei Leafs videos and am currently working my way through TeaDB. I’m also watching some of global tea hut videos and there is a YouTube account called Tea Drunk. She is more out in the field with the farmers and processors and I’ve found a lot of the content fascinating. I’ve bought way too much pu erh recently and am keen to learn more. I found this place by trying to research the Tiger Spirit tea and this post came up. I’ve tried to expose and show as much as possible about this particular tea mainly for my own curiosity. Quite hurtful really to be labelled a puppet of the vendor. I was hoping to join in a new community and meet like minded people.

Thanks, I remember the Verdant drama, but remember David and not Lily. I’ve never seen Scott lose his cool like that on a thread!

@Rob and JH we would welcome your notes and a hope for you to join us and stay a while. I will taste my samples soon so we could compare our notes. A good time for us all to learn.

I saw a note in the database for the Flying Monk but no other notes have been logged.

Rob, Jillian thinks you are in illegitimate account because you are new and have chosen to follow no one here. She thinks your account was created to defend Mei Leaf. And there is no doubt that Mei Leif is not selling tea from 1600 year old trees for such a bargain price. They are selling much younger tea tree teas, probably not even gushu puerh for that price. That’s right you can’t buy regular old gushu from 200 year old trees for the price they sell it for, not from Bing Dao, second only to Lao Ban Zhang in price. Scott at Yunnan Sourcing pressed a Bing Dao cake this year and it was about the same price as Mei Leaf’s supposed gushu but not gushu for that price. Scott has said that gushu from Bing Dao would have made the cake way to expensive for a Yunnan Sourcing pressing. The one they pressed goes for about $175.

I did see somewhere that he was affiliated with Chinese medicine in some respect. Chinese Medicine is a subject I know little about except I know it involves prescribing herbal remedies. While some of Chinese medicine may have a point to it I doubt they have something to replace my asthma medication.

On his page about the health benefits of tea he pretty much claims it cures all disease. Tea sellers that tell me their tea will cure an illness I may have tend to worry me as someone might believe them. Tea is very healthy but it does not cure anything. It does have antioxidants and all that. Puerh tea is considered good for the digestion but I cannot think of any other health claim by tea that is basically reasonable.

This continues because it works, health thing. Green tea is all the rage now. No matter how many books Paula Begoun wrote to show scientifically that a $200 face cream has the same ingredients and the same effects as a $10 one from the drugstore, people want and continue to buy the illusion sold by the $200 cream. It’s all about status.

This tea is an outrageously expensive border tea, heicha really. Like someone said above, the slick marketing gives the illusion people want. The Dr. Lily of the Chinese Medicine clinic associated with Mei Leaf writes in her About Me that she treated Princess Diana. Doesn’t get any more status than this. And just as we can’t dispute the treatment of a dead princess, we can’t prove anything about the ages of the trees. The extent to which class status is intertwined with tea is so obvious.

There may be real health benefit to some herbs used in Chinese medicine. However they will never be studied in Western medicine because pharmaceutical companies only invest money on medicines they can patent. You can’t patent an herb that people have known about for a thousand years or only ten years. So few western doctors today will ever prescribe an herbal remedy for a patient.

Someone posted earlier and said they felt the clinic was very pushy and tried the hard sell on extra products and treatments. Not sure what happened to their comment

Don Mei is the chairman of the CMIR.

Don Mei’s father started the CMIR. With that info, I found out Don went to NYU and his father grew up in Hong Kong!

Don’s youtube channel is the reason I now brew tea gong fu style, and will never do it any other way. I’ve been drinking “fine” teas for years, but until I saw them I had no idea what I was really missing.

You’re right that his videos are a starting point to wanting more info. Because of his videos, I started looking into puehr. In my search I found Yunnan Sourcing. While looking for a puehr to buy there I found a link to a TeaDB video. As I watched every one I found out, and have bought from Crimson Lotus, Verdant Tea, and White 2 Tea. I also found out about Steepster from James and Denny, and now follow many tea blogs not on here that I had no idea existed. Also in my search I have found, and purchased from, many other sellers. It all goes back to Don’s videos. So say what you will about him, one thing he says at the end of all his videos is to spread the word about real tea, and I do.

Still think I’m a fake account Jillian? :D

Sorry you had that experience, JH. A lot of people lurk here and should never be assumed an account is fake when someone decides to speak up.

Interesting to hear about the actual clinic and business from people who have been there. Upselling is part and parcel of retail and boutique health care. Really the tea part isn’t as disturbing as the misleading claims about western medicine oversight and promoting the idea that the staff work as western MDs when they don’t, and aren’t licensed to do so in the UK. The wording is very misleading trying to convince people who don’t know better that they are actual western doctors too. Chinese medicine has its place but it is not the same as western medicine.

@AllanK: It actually is possible for valid folk remedies to be brought into the mainstream. A US Senator (Tom Harkin) is a true believer, and convinced his colleagues to fund the NCCIH, whose goal is to perform double-blind research on such remedies. One success story (though now in some dispute) was evidence that glucosamine chondroitin is effective against arthritis. Sadly the success stories are vastly outnumbered by the studies that show no effectiveness.

And they still sell the stuff anyway.

Heard about that on the news. Have to wonder if it wouldn’t have survived if someone hadn’t cut a huge hole in it.

Judging on the splinters it looks like it had termites?

I wonder who the idiot was who cut the hole in it in the first place. I think they said it was done over 100 years ago. Must have been an incredible task to cut the hole. To think the tree lived a long time despite this. You could be right about the termites.

Even if you assume it was one 1600 year old tree and a number of 1000 year old trees it is incredibly unlikely as there just aren’t that many of them around. And the ones that are around would cost him a lot more than he was charging to buy the maocha.

@Phillip Perhaps you could share it with the thread for others to read?

“We assume that you are referring to Tiger Spirit or Sacred Owl. The way that we assess age (like all other suppliers as far as we are aware) is a combination of different information in varying levels of value. Firstly we ask the producers, this is of course subject to fakery but having worked with these producers for years we have very strong relationships (and we have tasted all sorts of teas from plantation to young to middle to ancient) and we have a certain level of trust in them despite what you might read about lying producers. Secondly we research any published documentation about the ages of trees in that area to cross reference the possibility. Thirdly we measure the circumference of the trees. While this is not perfectly accurate it does give us a good ballpark estimate of age.

From all of this information we determine our stated age of the trees. There is very little official ageing of tea trees and to be honest I would not necessarily trust this either having worked in China sourcing for over 45 years we are pretty sceptical about these ‘official’ avenues too.

If you know of any other practical methods of ageing (without core sampling) then please do share.

So the choice is to either publish our researched estimate of the age of trees or do what some other companies are doing which is not discuss origin or age. We think that this is less helpful to consumers but that is a matter of opinion.

If people think that we are hyping the age or being gullible then of course that is their opinion but everyone is welcome to purchase an inexpensive taster and hopefully judge the tea for its taste and effects.

We will continue to try to provide the most accurate information that we can for everyone.

These teas are sold out but we are searching for others!"

Reading between the lines

They used estimates that are just a ballpark, them self do not trust this source, yet sold it bragging on age.

Fantastic.

I guess they will be able to source more of that sort of tea soon. I’m quite confident they will, there’s a market for that, as we’ve seen on Steepster.

It’s not 1600 year old material. Why is this even still a discussion?

Because they (mei leaf) keep insisting it is, and that’s incredibly toxic for the tea community.
Also, well, some people are saying ‘’if the tea is good, that should be enough’’ but then, well, why would you even bother lying?

and the Meileaf buyers insist it is real. They don’t want it to sink in that got swindled despite all the facts and statement that MeiLeaf even doubt what they have.

Tuition tea and move on, stop irrationally defending them people.

i’ve been following this topic, drank tiger spirit at chinalife in london and wrote with don.
one thing i noticed: in the beginning he said he saw paper work from the government stating there definately are trees that old in the are. but he wasnt able to show them and said we would have to wait for him to get copies of the official statement. then there were none and when i remember right there was a statement that the copies couldn’t be received at all but he saw them.
fact: there is no official paperwork for us to see right now.
now that there isn’t official papers to see he writes in his response to philips facebook post that official statements are nothing to believe in.
well, nice move.. as he can’t show the papers they are unimportant anyway now.
just noticing. of course he can be right and all is true, but this change in believing in the official papers and now saying they are unimportant is at best a good marketing behaviour.