Have you tried King Tea Mall? UPD: Bad experience
Those teas are not that rare and expensive to be worth faking to begin with. Just my 5c.
The most faked Dayi’s are the expensive raw teas because they can get more money for them. If I remember there is a seller on EBay selling fake golden Dayi raw tea. It has to be fake because he is selling for something like one fifth of the price. But the good fakes are not that easy to spot. Also, sometimes the fakes can be good tea and make it harder to spot.
Fake Dayi ripe economics is beyond the scope of this thread, but it is an interesting topic indeed.
Here’s an example of fake Menghai 7572 901 ripe cakes purchased in 2010 – https://www.teachat.com/viewtopic.php?t=12141
I wonder if the tea was simply dry stored and needed a little humidity? That would explain a lot if it were the case. Do you have a pumidor?
Received an order last week and tried the 2010 V93 today. It was great, no issues. The seller even sent me a picture of my order as he packed it and a couple of free samples were included. I like this seller, the prices were the best I could find for the items I ordered.
I’ve placed 4 orders since this thread started. Extremely happy with 3 and the 4th is still on the way. And probably another 6-7 orders last year that I was also very happy with. Good tea and very fair prices.
OK, so I tried a different tea today, the 2014 Star of Menghai. I have to say, something was off about this one. It started off sour, then tasted weird in later steepings. Now I don’t think this was fake, it actually had some Dayi house flavor in the background. But it might have been either poorly stored or just a dud. I will try the two other cakes I have before making any judgment. I will post an update once I try them.
here’s my 20c worth
Got a bunch of dayi shengs that I knew, drank and liked from that King Tea mall dude. One cake had a really bad taste. Tried a few times, then threw it away
don’t care if it was fake or just poor storage… Who cares. Now buying from the vendors I trust… Crimson Lotus folks, DTH, Farmerleaf,YS..Fewer options? Perhaps. But I get the awesome stuff.
OK, I hate to pile on, but I’ve tasted two other Dayi shus and I have issues with both. The first was a gong ting and while it was ok, it had bitter overtones. Then I tried a cake I own, and compared them side by side. It was the 2008 0532. I compared the wrappers and such and I am pretty sure it is the same cake and not a fake. Both were batch 802. Both me and my wife did the tasting. No question, the one from King Tea was very different. It had some dayi flavor, but it was just bitter and not smooth. The one I purchased from YS was super smooth.
So of the 4 cakes that I bought, one was obviously spoiled, and two were just not quite right. Probably bad storage if I had to guess. I will check with the vendor (or if you are reading this you can send me a message). I don’t think this vendor is trying to pull a fast one. But for the sake of full disclosure I think it’s important to put things out into the open so problems can be addressed.
I don’t know why people are getting so argumentative about this from me and others who are noting problems. There are now three of us who are having this experience. I literally tasted this side by side with the exact same cake from YS. My wife tasted it with me. There was no comparison, it tasted off. Alan, if you tried one of your favorite cakes that you had drank a number of times and it tastes different from another vendor, would you second guess your conclusion? Plus, now we have three different customers describing very similar issues. Plus one cake I got was clearly very bad, sour and mildew tasting. Even you said that the vendor found that one of his own cakes was rotten, which he discovered before sending it to you.
I do not take it lightly to point these things out since I know it affects a seller many of us have bought from and have a relationship with. Please don’t disparage the messenger. I went into this with good intentions.
I didn’t suggest you didn’t have some sort of a problem. My comment was why do you find bitter shou surprising? Many shou is bitter at least to start even a lot of good ones.
YS is Kunming dry storage , King Tea is in Shanghai ( humid / wet storage ). Of course the same tea tastes completely different :-) In places like SH,GZ,SZ,HK where humidity is high, it’s completely normal that tea taste goes “off” as u mentioned. Be honest, I can drink “wet” sheng , but I would puke after wet shu…just can’t stand it :-(
If you prefer KM dry storage, than I suggest you to search for Kunming tea shops. Please mind : there is no such a thing as a HK , GZ dry storage or something! It’s just a commercial catch from vendors who try to make it sound better than wet storage , so the price could be higher. Dry stored teas are more expensive for the reason.
So if you want cheap teas, than focus on GZ market, plenty there.
In any case, please do order the sample prior to purchasing bigger amount in order to avoid any problems like that.
Speak of the claim, I would stand on the vendor’s site on this one. No body can guarantee you will like every tea , that’s what the samples are for.
What is overwhelming for you , might be yummie for other people. I know people who love drinking really undrinkable for me teas..and munching on it:-)
I would suggest to put those cakes away for couple of years,wetness might fade away a bit, not bitterness though.
Also for the future I would suggest to focus on vendors who spend more time with taste description and find one who matches closer to your taste buds. It’s worth the extra money I guess, it’s your health after all;-)
It is interesting you say King tea is based in Shanghai and has humid storage. I bought a number of shou cakes from him before he had his own website, when he was an Aliexpress seller. Of course back then he did not as I understand keep much if any teas in inventory but bought them from suppliers when you ordered. I do not ever remember getting a wet stored tea from him.
Oh, I’m sorry Alan, I misunderstood. Bitter is good, just not in this particular tea, the 2008 0532. It’s normally a super smooth one. Plus the kind of bitter I’m describing is metallic and overwhelming.
I sold two 2008 0532s on my EBay store originally sourced from Yunnan Sourcing. The customer had no complaints. If you want some good shou already in the US please take a look at my Ebay store. I recently took a risk and sourced some teas from Taobao. The ones I have so far tried have been outstanding. One, a 5kg cake of shou had a killer qi when I drank it. Samples are available of the ones I have tried.
https://www.ebay.com/sch/long-island-puerh-teas/m.html?item=263664941239&ssPageName=STRK%3AMESELX%3AIT&rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.l2562
Cool, thanks, Allan. I noticed you have some samples for sale now, great idea. There are some I would like to try.
I also have two specials I am running, if you buy three full sized cakes (200g or larger) I give a free mini cake or 100g of loose tea free. If you buy six full sized cakes I give away a full sized cake for free, my choice.
Rich, if there is something you want to try that I don’t sell a sample of I may be able to include it as a free sample with an order, that is provided I can find my open cake. Also, I am offering Steepster members a discount on select teas. I cannot offer it on all the teas but generally on teas $50 or more I can take a few bucks off.
Thanks. I will pm you at some point, I would love to work out a custom sample set!
All my teas are dry stored. While people have told me that New York is too dry I have not had a customer complaining of off tasting tea so I think you will find my teas taste the way they should. As to samples of teas where I don’t specifically list one I could work one out if I know where my “open” cake is. I cannot dip into my inventory for samples no matter how much I would like to.
It seems strange to me that there are suddenly problems with this vendor when so many of us had dealt with him as an Aliexpress seller and had no problems. He must be doing something differently now although I do not know what. Although no one will like every tea they buy too so I understand his perspective as well.
So John from King Tea Mall just responded to me via email saying he will not offer any refund whatsoever on any of the teas. So after making it a point to say over and over again that he guarantees the quality of his tea, he has reneged. As far as I’m concerned, he is not someone I would trust. There are now a number of us who have had very similar problems, I guess he just decided to stop standing behind his products. Very disappointing. It would be a big risk to order from him. If any of you have placed orders from him recently and haven’t sampled your teas yet, I’d suggest you do so. But don’t expect any recourse if your Tea is bad.
My original reply to the accusation and request of refunding money is below,(except the buyer name replaced as Rxxx Dxxx)
Hi Rich
I checked your order placed by Rxxx Dxxx.
I guarantee that on every tea from me.
1) Authenticity and legality.
2) Good quality including storage condition generally recognized as
not broken tea body,no heavy moisture, no mold. Also there are others like unopened wrapper or etc. needed to be written here.
3) Good service.
But I can’t guarantee that our customer must like every tea of us and they will have same mouth feeling on same batch from other vendors. Because of varieties on individual interest and various storage conditions from different vendors.
So refunding money is unacceptable just because customer dislikes or regrets that order after we shipped it out.
Kind regards
John
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