bagua7 wrote:Call yourself lucky if you ever get the chance to try real Da Hong Pao especially if you live outside of China, otherwise the tea is most likely to be Xiao Hong Pao (clones of the original trees mixed with other teas).
I wish people would stop spewing this phrase, thinking it is unique to Da Hong Pao. The truth is most famous teas are so named because there is some story attached to a few specific bushes. As such no one ever really gets the chance, except for very well connected individuals, or people with insanely deep pockets ever get the chance to try teas from the "original bushes." So if you believe the "real ________" is the tea made from the original bushes, then you are quite unlikely to try "Real TLH", "Real Long Jing", " Real Bi lo Chun", "Real Tie Guan Yin" and so on.
But many people say as long as the bushes are believed to be within so many cloned generations of the original trees are quite often accepted as legitimately being able to be called by that name, TLH, TGY, DHP, etc.... It all depends on how you define real, and if you choose to define real for Da Hong Pao in that fashion, then you have likely never tasted a "real " tea.
Cloned descendants of DHP are quite abundant nowadays, so not being able to afford tea from the "original" trees doesn't bother me much. 
