It turns out my last post on the famous 2001 Menghai TeaFactory 7542 “Simplified Yun” has generated quite a buzz. It has been drawn to my attention that it is
possible that it is a fake. I was sent
an email by someone who knows quite a bit about aged puerh but who wishes to
remain anonymous and is by no means an authority on the issue. He told me that there is a discussion doing
on somewhere on the internet (which I generally stay away from but which has
amassed an unusually large amounts of views) weather the cake is instead a CNNP
or private label and not in fact a true Menghai Tea Factory. He said that there are a few things that
would lead to his suspicion although he could not draw a definite conclusion:
1-
This is a commonly fakes cake because of its
market value
2-
It is missing a niefi
I pulled up Marco’s post on this batch and also noticed that
my bing hole is centered where his is not.
Also the inside of my binghole is really slanted and uneven and
jagged. You can also see in his phots
that his neifi is not tightly attached to the cake- its just hanging in by a
few errant dry leaves. Its possible that
mine fell out at some point before making its way to me. The loose or barely hanging in there neifi is
not that uncommon for a cake but it also can indicate a fake.
In the original post I draw on some of my experience with
some other famous 7542 recipes such as the 88’ Qingbing to link this 2001 7542
to others as I can see a commonality between them. Also I had admitted that it is by far the
best Hong Kong stored cake I have tried to date. These things I know for sure as they are
based on my own experiences. My notes
also sound somewhat similar to Marco’s assessment of his cake. Although I find these irregularities odd, I
myself have not jumped to the end conclusion that this is a fake although the likelihood
that it might be a fake is more likely.
Or if it is a fake, it has satisfied me sufficiently for the price I
have paid for it. I mean of course it
might have cost me a few hundred dollars less if it was a CNNP or well done
fake. Therefore, I have not contacted Teas We Like for a refund. Why?
I have been around long enough to know that the questioning
of the providence of aged puerh in the West is nothing new. It is much easier to spot a fake in a fresh
puerh. However, as puerh ages, it
changes so much that it begins to become harder to authenticate. The changes from different aging can also add
to the confusion and can make two of the same cakes almost unrecognizable from
each other. I trust the Teas We Like
brand which is confirmed by my own blind tastings of a handful of their
puerh. In the end you have to both trust
your own experience, trust the vendor, and be open to the opinions of others or
the possibility that it could be a fake.
This is just the reality of buying older expensive puerh.
In the end I am also thankful that Teas We Like offered this
cake in the first place. There are fewer
and fewer reputable Western vendors who offer such things to the public
anymore. Scott at Yunnan Sourcing breaks
down the many reasons why in this comment here on TeaDB. One of the reasons is that it is difficult
and time consuming to reassure anxious and paranoid customers and to provide
them with impeccable pedigree. I am not
one of these. I know it would have been
a difficult decision to offer an expensive cake like this 2001 Menghai Tea
Factory 7542 Simplified Yun on their site when their main brand and concept is
to bring the puerh community together with very good value options that most
people can access. However, I feel like
this 2001 Menghai Tea Factory is a special cake and I hope they have the
courage to offer more like this once in a blue moon.
Peace
16 comments:
I also thought it is a fake as well. It’s obvious from the price. But my understanding of the founding of Teas We Like is that they are sourcing quality "drinker" semi-aged teas and buying a quantity of them to offer the lowest possible price. They are no way in the collector or rare tea market, and have never claimed to be, from my knowledge. Instead they focus on teas that are comfortable to drink. I don’t feel their offering here is misleading because I know what they are doing and claiming. I appreciate the clarification on your post, and I hope people keep Teas We Like on the radar if you need reasonably priced teas for drinking now.
Just to give a bit of context— TWL is a group of four, not counting external curators and tasting panelists. Every time we find a really good tea, if it is a famous brand, we look for evidence that it is fake. This means inspecting the wrapper, the cake itself, the taste, and asking for opinions from different collectors with a lot of experience. For the 2001 simplified yun, we only had access to a handful of cakes, they were hk stored (highly relevant for taiwan pricing) and not in perfect condition. After many checks, we concluded it is most likely to be real. Why take the risk? Personally I voted for this one since it is literally the best HK stored tea Ive had. If we find more I will vote for it again! Note that we declined to carry the dry stored version of this tea—that is the one which was around 5$/g.
marco,
If you find more, would be willing to buy more! I kind of wish I had moved on the HK 2001 7432. Hands down the best HongKong Traditionally stored puerh I have tried as well. As a result it is easily worth the price of admission on this ride!
Peace
Cwyn,
Most interesting thing of all is that all of the people claiming that it might be fake have never actually tasted it! Hahaha....
The drinkability of this one is very high and I must have had a good four sessions with it so far.
I suppose it begs the age old question, “ Can a collector tea be had for a cheap price? And if it can, does it most certainly qualify it as a fake until proven otherwise?”
Or
“ Are collector or rare tea market puerh ever even priced to drink or are they even priced to actual value ? If they are, would someone even drink it?”
Just some interesting food for thought...
Peace
Matt, I would answer No to your first question. Unless we are possibly talking about a dead guy whose family gives away his tea for nothing because they don’t know anything about puerh. I’m not sure what the second question means exactly, as it’s written. Unless you mean, would someone just hoard a tea of value rather than drink it?
In this case, I know the Teas We Like group does not care for dry-stored tea, by and large, something Marco seems to confirm at least for this tea. When looking to avoid dry storage and buy via Taiwan, it’s inevitable eventually to run into the whole market of Hong Kong-stored quick aged Teas that are wrapped in whatever wrapper you’d like to find. Taking a wrapper as face value is just foolish.
I am not involved with the group of people on Reddit or wherever it is this tea is discussed. If I were, I’d post under my blog name as I’m doing here and not a further pseudonym. But I don’t need to drink the tea to doubt the wrapper utterly and say this type of faking is so ubiquitous that yes, I would need actual proof the tea is real, as in provenance, and I doubt anyone can provide that. So, by default I enter in as a doubter.
Having said that, I’m all for buying Teas one enjoys regardless of the wrapper and the price for this is always what someone is willing to pay.
Hi Cwyn, just wanted to make a couple of corrections. First, most of what TWL is providing is dry/natural storage. This tea was one of a few exceptions. My comment above was that the dry stored version of the simplified yun was too expensive to consider.
Second, unfortunately a provenance story is not enough, neither is wrapperology etc. you need to decide based on multiple factors and make a judgement call. We do investigations for all the teas, be they from Dayi or CYH or (what we are currently doing a lot) Xiaguan, etc. As I’m sure you know, all these teas can be faked.
Taiwan dry/natural is a wetter profile, and must always be qualified as "Taiwan dry." The idea of dry-stored tea has changed somewhat in the past five years, as the consumer preference has changed to what was once considered extremely dry. Taiwan storage has noticeable humidity and the selling price of Taiwan stored tea is adjusted accordingly. This is what I mean when I say you guys have a preference for humid storage and not for what is actually considered dry today. The vast difference in price between the two teas reflects the market now.
Hi Cwyn, that is an interesting observation. In the tea circles I am in, I don't see this change of preference you speak of. In fact, the people I know who store tea in the west do a fair amount of effort to set up pumidors and keep humidity conditions close to those in Taiwan and Malaysia. Are you thinking of a specific group of people who have a preference for really dry storage? Or is there some market analysis that suggests this shift of preference? I am really curious about it, because it is really not something I see around me.
Yes, I am referring to the Asian collector market where dry Puerh is currently more of an interest, which is one reason why Taiwan stored factory teas, such as at auctions, go for much lower than drier stored. The teas contain noticeable humidity which depresses the value, were they even only 15 years old. The other real problem collectors have with Hong Kong and Taiwan is the highly evolved market of faking through quick wet aging and production of fake wrappers. An example of such teas can be seen at Beautiful Taiwan Teas where you can buy "1990s" teas for $200.
By contrast, dry-stored teas are hard to fake. They are less aged, and what aging they do have retains a fuller profile of top notes. Kunming is more of an interest for collectors more recently than before because a tea in good condition can be revived somewhat. So Asian collectors prefer to buy dry, and they can add a bit more controlled heat and humidity without losing value. By contrast our west is drier, so the chance of wrecking our teas by not storing properly is a huge risk. We require artificial means to preserve the value.
I see. In my experience, there is variability in storage conditions within Taiwan. There are some Taiwanese teas for which there is noticeable dampness, but many teas with Taiwan dry storage are very different from Hong Kong traditional storage, and are instead more similar to Malaysian stored teas. Tasting and selecting the storage is important before buying in quantity. Faking through wet aging is a significant problem, in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Guandong as well... but teas with good Taiwan dry storage are much "dryer" than the wet aged fakes, and as you say for other "dry-stored" teas, they should be fairly easy to distinguish.
For sure, and the primary path to the west of such teas via Taiwan is for drinking. But the Asian collector is the reason behind this 7542 because they are people driving the market prices for aged dry stored 7542. These collectors have driven up the insane pricing of dry aged 7542 with their buy/hold behavior. In doing this they create the possibility of the market for a wet-stored version. Any smart cookie would think "gee, if this tea sells for $1000+ and up, we can create a wet-stored one and charge half that price." Enter the Hong Kong stored 7542 with a good wrapper at $650 and we can see why the Redditers raise questions, it’s about the insane collector behavior and high motivation to cheat, and not how the tea tastes.
Cwyn,
Maybe it’s just too much Christmas eggnog but...
Your comments about Teas We Like not caring for dry storage are outright false. You would know this if you had actually tried some puerh they sell. You have a bad habit of making definitive comments on teas you have never tried.
Shah8’s reply to your critique of Yang Qing Hao rings just as true today in regards to Teas We Like as it did 5 years ago in TeaDB’s drinking report:
https://teadb.org/the-cult-of-yang/
Shah8: Have you tried some yet, ma’am?
The 2001 Naked Yiwu and 2005 NanQiao Bulang King would for sure qualify as extremely dry storage. It would compare to what I’m sampling from Houde’s storage or Not far from my own dry Canadian storage. There are also others at TeasWeLike that are dry stored as well. Most are at least broadly dry stored teas.
You would know this if you actually tasted them or is this also something you can tell by looking at the wrapper or from the pictures on the internet?
To make false comments like these on teas you haven’t tried surely weakens your position to call out fakes in my book.
However, I always appreciate your comments to further dialogue and discussion about important puerh topics and I do get your general point and thank you for presenting that...
But I think we all know that you owe Marco and TeasWeLike an apology...
Can’t we just calk this up to too much Christmas Eggnog???
If Cwyn apologizes we will all chug our rum and Eggnogs, right?
Peace
Hm...I did try Yang Qing Hao and didn’t care for the storage. It’s on the blog if you want to read that. Shah also critiques Yang’s storage quite often if you seen his posts, his statements about Taiwan stored teas I’d say are similar to my own feelings.
My experience with some of the guys in Teas We Like comes from years on Slack Chat. I know them to be sincere. I think I’ve been fair saying it’s never been about the wrapper with them, but about the drinking experience. Their bio section on the site bears that out, and I’d say that’s the best acquittal for a tea you all paid too much for.
I am happy to apologize to you, Matt, for going on over-long to respond to posts made in response to me. I’m sorry about that. It’s your blog and I don’t blame you for disliking anything I write. Go ahead and delete all this if you prefer to clean it. I salute you for writing the blog post bringing up the concerns about the tea posted elsewhere when you could have ignored them.
No apology needed, and I hope none of this is erased! Cwyn believes the tea is fake, and we disagree. It is of course possible, as fakes abound and we have encountered many. But based on our research and info, this one is not a fake. My guess is that she is thinking of the thin paper dry storage version, which is much more expensive. In any case, this version of the cake is difficult to find in Taiwan, so I dont know what she is using as a price reference. The TWL price is consistent with a wholesale taiwan price from a few years ago when this tea was actually available in the thick paper hk stored version. And our source only had about ten left. Regarding this tea, I think there was some jumping to conclusions, which is understandable given the age and that it is dayi.
My bigger concern is about misinformation. Several statements above, about storage, fakes, taiwan vs kunming etc. are misleading and seem to be coming from people who tried storage they didnt like (like YQH or extremely humidly stored XZH) and then assumed incorrectly that this is representative of the market in taiwan.
My favourite storage is not taiwan or malaysia or kunming or guangzhou, but rather specific sources in taiwan, hong kong or malaysia, which have excellent storage. This is what matters, not some invariably misleading generalization about an entire country’s storage. There is always an agenda behind such generalizations.
Cool discussion and no talk of apologies needed. Matt thanks for bringing these discussions out of the shadows 🙏🖖
Cwyn,
Well maybe it was me who had too much Eggnog? Hahaha
I was just razzing you a bit.... hahaha
No need to apologize to me. I always enjoy, appreciate, and welcome your comments here on this blog and on other blogs/ forums. I would never sensor that and hope you continue. I love your authentic rant style. But mainly I like your comments because they are either of gratitude and/ or to expand on or introduce a new perspective on the topic. Your comments on this post accomplish both, and I love it!
Your first comment shows gratitude because you and me both know that tackling this topic is both difficult and rare. There are not enough posts about hard puerh topics out there these days.
I think we both tackle the reasons why it is a difficult topic to approach.
However it is also quite rare that someone would cast doubt publicly on their own rather risky and expensive purchase for reasons of both self preservation, resale, and risking their relationship with a vendor. I believe this post could be the first blog to do this. People almost always defend their purchases with ferocity especially expensive ones. I am simply lying out what I know about this one.
You, as much as me, understand that trial by blog post is not unbiased. But posts like this are never an acquittal either.
You also expand the conversation quite a bit with your comments here as well. I especially agree with your comment that extremely dry storage is becoming more appreciated and I think this is really driven by Westerns finding out that their older gushu cakes actually taste quite good very dry aged or at least they are developing a pallet for these tastes. Of course it also has a lot to do with the fact that Westerners are both (again) vigorously defending their cakes as well as simply favouring their own storage. I wrote a post about that years ago.
Was I the only one who chugged my eggnog anyways?
Peace
*I just wanted to add a note that this cake was sealed in plastic and missing the neifi so the only way the neifi could have went missing was before it was sealed in plastic. The sealed cake was then put in a clear plastic bag that comes with all puerh from TeasWeLike*
Peace
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