First, I'd like to introduce myself. I've been into Chinese puerh and oolong for about 10 years, thanks to my brother who introduced me to the unique world of puerh tea. I've come across many great teas and many counterfeit teas.
My brother, [same who introduced me to puerh] purchased me two cakes from "https://tinyurl.com/yd52zlsg" as a Christmas gift.
I can't seem to find ANY information on this tea and I'm afraid it may be counterfeit,
The teas claims to be a "vintage before 2005".
I will try to get some quality pictures of the unopened packages for you professionals to analyse.
Thank you for your time and I wish you all the very best and a merry Christmas
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Re: Wuyishan Chen Nian Lao Cha
Red characters say Dahongpao, so together with your title, that seems to be an oolong tea, not puerh. Lao cha, just means old tea(aged). Chen nian is to identify the year of making.
Re: Wuyishan Chen Nian Lao Cha
Chen lian is a term used in Chinese to mean 'very old' (without an age description) when referring to tea. It can be 10 years on up depending on the store! lol
Re: Wuyishan Chen Nian Lao Cha
The success of Chen Dehua's "cloning of Dahongpao" in the 1980s provided the possibility for the development of Dahongpao tea brick. In 1996, Chen Dehua created "Dahongpao Tea Brick" and got the active support from Professor Chen Ran, a famous tea expert in China. In 2005, the appearance of tea bricks was improved, filling up the blank that there was no "Dahongpao tea bricks" in history. In recent years, many manufacturers in Wuyishan also launched "Dahongpao tea bricks" in succession.
Re: Wuyishan Chen Nian Lao Cha
These aged oolong cakes are pretty common these days. It's just a gimmicky way of selling unsold crap tea or broken leaf/fannings. Neither sounds that great. Stuff like this is probably a tier below box/can yancha from Chinese grocery stores.
Re: Wuyishan Chen Nian Lao Cha
Never been fan of aged oolong. I like the strong aromatic aspect of oolong the most and that tends to disappear over time. Yes aging can smoothen out oolong somewhat, but that doesn't work well for oolong as for pu erh.
Re: Wuyishan Chen Nian Lao Cha
I still havent opened the cakes and am trying to get a refund through amazon but that's proving to be difficult since its from GOARTEA. Im not sure if i even want to try them as there is no makers mark or date or anything really....