Rob said

Mei-Leaf Chat

A thread to keep up to date on all the activity of our favourite tea vendor. I enjoy watching videos from MeiLeaf and am interested in their new products. What tea have you purchased there? What have you learnt from their videos?

94 Replies
Weasser said

I bought Cone Bandit when it came out more than a year ago, but never tried it until yesterday. I have to say, it’s an excellent tea. It’s one of the best young shengs I’ve had. I’m not sure if it qualifies and young anymore though, since it’s two years old, but if you can get some, do it. It’s delicious.

Thanks for setting up this thread, Rob. As I’ve said before, and been called a troll for saying, Don Mei is the reason I know, and appreciate tea as I do now. I’ve drank tea for many years, and not bad tea either. Whole leaf teas of many types. I spent a lot of time reading about tea and had a pretty good foundation of knowledge, but when I found Don’s videos they showed me where to look to learn more. Say what you will about him, but he really is spreading the word of real tea, as he likes to say, and I’ll be forever grateful that he has. Most of the teas I buy now arent from Mei-Leaf, but I know that if I want a certain type of tea, and he carries it, it will be a high quality tea. It’s what he sells. Cone Bandit is a great example. Think I’ll have more right now.

Rob said

I also purchased Cone Bandit as well as Bloom Buster. It’s been a while since I re-visited those. I remember trying them side by side. This was among the very first raw pu-erh I ever purchased. I now have many kilos of the stuff from various vendors. I do appreciate Mei-Leaf for being a welcoming and inviting presence for people who are new to tea.

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LuckyMe said

Glad to see a Mei Leaf appreciation thread for a change. I’ve never ordered from them, but I’ve learned so much about the finer points of gongfu cha from watching Don’s videos. What I like most is how broad his coverage of tea is. Some blogs focus on a singular aspect of tea like puerh but Don spotlights every kind of tea there is and brings a unique perspective to the table.

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mahjongfan said

I also enjoy Mei Leaf videos. He is entertaining and passionate about spreading the word and educating all of us about tea, and I have learned so much! I have not, yet, ordered from him, mostly because of the shipping costs over seas, but I am sure I will someday.

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tea123 said

Mei Leaf have 28,748 YouTube subscribers. More than any other vendor.

This is true. And he creates fantastic videos. Very good energy and personality for youtube.

But I do have some issues with his teas and some of his marketing. A bit too much ‘fluff’ / hype / myth in order to help marketing his teas.

Also just some misinformation which can be confusing (e.g. his Dong Ding oolong he admits isn’t actually from Dong Ding… which means it isn’t really Dong Ding oolong). Also his Hou kui he advertises as “monkey picked”, but it isn’t. And again, he admits it way down in the bottom of his description, but then why advertise it that way at all? That is just false-marketing.

Leafy Green Tea it might be more appropriate, especially for a vendor, to post such comments in the previous topic?
https://steepster.com/discuss/14690-mei-leaf-slash-chinalife-1600-year-old-pu-erh

Why is that thread more appropriate? Aren’t both threads about Mei Leaf? If what I said has been stated before, that is fine. I didn’t take the time to read through a years worth of 500+ posts.

I think Mei Leaf (Don and crew) do a great job with many things. I’m just trying to caution against buying in too much as there is also a lot of marketing spin involved.

Wes B said

The only thing I bought into was their Royal Peach Orchid(Milan xiang) and Frozen Summit (dong ding) as my very first online tea purchase. I knew next to nothing of the quality of tea that is available if you look for it. I didn’t love the Milan Xiang because it was Milan xiang, it’s just delicious .As for the frozen summit dong ding, I was awestruck how delicious it is. A “genuine” dong ding or not it’s a very spectacular tea. It not being from traditional Dong Dong growing area really didn’t matter to me, Mei Leaf sources delicious teas. Like the “tea vender” Leafy Green Tea said if you read the description of the tea Don tells you this. Dons teas are really good. I just ordered the tipple twister yiwu Puerh. I’ll give you guys my thoughts when I gets here and I try it.

tea123 said

29,007 subscribers now

Wes B said

I got the tipple twister in the mail last week. I’ve just had it once so far. It is enjoyable.

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AllanK said

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tea123 said

Something I think a lot of people are familiar with – sampling tea. From Mei Leaf
https://youtu.be/6TcnHD1nV7k

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tea123 said

Tea in motion with some original music from Don
https://youtu.be/HNK-0cGjX5k

29,787 subscribers

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bef said

29,792 subscribers

tea123 said

29,833 subscribers

tea123 said

29,918 subscribers

Brian said

remind me again why this matters?

It doesn’t matter. It’s just useless information posted here to bump this post.

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Brian said

why are we posting the # of subscribers? is this thread that much of a mei-leaf jerk off party?

No one has taken into consideration the number of bots that follow Mei Leaf on all platforms.

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Weasser said

Not sure what you mean. In the other thread you’re referring to they said to anybody saying positive things start your own thread, so somebody did. Now what do you want them to do, start their own forum? The admins said to please stop posting positive things on the other thread because it was “simply adding more fuel to the fire”, and this thread was created. Hopefully the admins won’t have to one day ask for people to stop saying negative things on this one with the threat of closing down posting. I hope I’m wrong, but if it ever came to that I have a feeling the negative posters may not stop, hoping to have it shut down. People with opposing viewpoints IS a good idea, censorship isnt, so if people want to say positive things about a place they buy tea from, let them. They stopped saying positive things on that other thread, how about negative things stop getting said on this one.

I agree with what you’re saying, and I certainly dont have a problem with free speech by any means, but half of this thread is nothing but a circle-jerk that doesn’t contribute to any serious discussion. As someone who takes Steepster seriously, im against seeing spammy like behavior on the site.

Wes B said

There are about 8 people who have posted to this thread. How is that spammy. It’s one page.

I think what OolongDrunk is referring to as spammy is the posts which don’t really contain any sort of discussion – such as the subscriber counts. It’s sort of akin to, as an example, my starting my own thread and creating a post every few days that just simply stated the number of tasting notes I’d written on the site. Kind of repetitive, and doesn’t contribute anything at all. If someone wants to know that information they can easily click on my profile and see it. Or just visit Mei Leaf’s Youtube page. It was spammy in the other thread, and it’s spammy here.

For the record I consider myself neutral in regard to Mei Leaf as a company and the majority of the Mei Leaf discourse – I don’t care if there is a purely positive discussion thread about Mei Leaf or a overly critical one, or both. I just think that either should be that – a discussion. I’d agree that this kind of thing was spammy regardless of what company we were talking about or what the thread was/is about.

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