1998 Zhongcha 8582

The vendor states that this is identical to 1998 Menghai 8582. While I have never had the real thing, I cannot imagine anyone paying $800+ for this tea. I did find it to be in line with other teas in its price range for fake teas with this amount of age. I’ve had better teas that were less and lesser teas that were more expensive. Now about this tea. My only gripe is that I only got 8 steeps. At almost 21 years of age I expect at least a dozen. The flavor is nice and indicative of clean dry storage. I get notes of cedar and the classic New England root soda Moxie, without the sugar. People either love or hate Moxie as it is bitter and earthy. If you are a fan of Moxie (especially the old recipe before it got too sweet) try this tea. This tea also has nice muscle relaxing qi, sorta similar to 2005 Naka by W2T but not as intense…

If ever there was a poster child for name recognition driving sales, this tea must be it.

I haven’t the slightest whether this bears any resemblance to a Menghai 8582, and after trying it, I’m certainly not inclined to she’ll out the cash I’d need to in order to find out. Lest you get the wrong impression from this intro, however, I’ll skip to the point – there’s nothing wrong with this tea, but I’ve had similar experiences muxh cheaper from more unknown old cakes that were much cheaper. Tastes like dirt? Check. Easy drinking? Check. Costs 200? That’s a negative, good buddy.

As usual, this could be end user error, improper humidity in the room I drank, the cheap gaiwan I was using, an improper spring water, or probably a half dozen other things – but a similar conclusion was reached by the person I sent a bit of the sample to, so I’m forced to conclude that the reason this price is so (relatively) affordable for what is, is regrettably due to what it is.