2002 Zhong Cha 7542 Blend

I bought this cake in 2022, following sipdown of a much earlier sample, and it may have been BBTC’s last cake, because it vanished from their website soon after. I withheld my review though, not trusting my sense of taste due to CoVid recurrences. Now, today in late April 2025, I’m steeping it again, and find it to be a really swell tea that I look forward to enjoying! Strong tea flavor with hints of assamic content, lovely camphor aroma and a wintergreen taste that endured through early resteepings. Slightly astringent with just a scant bit of humidity (mustiness) in the second steep. No fishiness or sourness and lacking in petrichor or geosmin. There are some notes of leather and tobacco. A clear, sweet, amber liquor. I’ll rate it as a 90.

Sadly, the provenance of this tea is muddled, as BTTC seems to have made multiple revisions to the descriptions, both in vintage (“1990’s” vs. “2002” vs. merely “aged”) and in manufacture (“Kunming Tea Factory Green Stamp 7542 blend” vs. “probably made by a smaller factory in the Menghai area as a copy of the famous 7542 recipe”). Does this have to do with the privatization of state-owned tea factories? Or the imitations that were common during the Puerh “boom”? I don’t know, but I doubt BTTC is attempting deception. Probably just honestly revising the info as best they can, to reflect things as they’ve come to light. Even the aging is vague (“dry-stored in Taiwan” vs. “Natural dry storage”). Other variations appear in the internet archive of the Wayback Machine, though always with the same images of the cake, its wrapper, and the inner insert, which match what I received. I have not examined the embedded neifi.

Regardless of the various descriptions by BTTC, I am pleased with my purchase and would recommend a tasting if you can obtain it.

One of a few sheng samples I picked up from BTT a little while ago. I have heard that some of their stuff is really dank, so I was sort of prepared for that going in. The dry leaf definitely does smell a little bit humid, and also has a slightly sweet woody character. After a rinse, the aroma was much more musty/humid.

The flavor, unsurprisingly, started off pretty dank. It was only really up front about it for the first 2-3 steeps though. After that, it was a much more mellow woody, earthy flavor. It’s evident this tea wasn’t super-humidly stored, as it still has some youth to it. The steeped out leaves still show a bit of a green hue, and the tea can definitely get astringent (even a little sour) if oversteeped. The tea brews out for a decent while as well. Texture is pleasantly thick. I didn’t pick up much of any qi off of the tea.

Potentially a good daily drinker type of cake for somebody who prefers aged sheng. It’s not complex, but it’s pleasant and at $79 for a full-sized cake, is a pretty good value for decent (not amazing) 15 year old tea.