There’s a lot of fake tea out there. By which I mean knock-off tea— technically still tea, but not what it claims to be. And usually not great.
Recently I’ve ended up with several of these, and thought it would be fun to share some findings. If you’re buying from well-vetted sources, then this is less of a concern. But if you’re like me and find joy in random tea shop visits, well, you never really know what you’re going to get.
Plenty of it is plainly obvious. Sometimes the wrapper color is off, the text is a bit too large, or the paper material is wrong. Or it’s the shape of the cake— too wide, too thick, too uneven. But there’s also the more insidious ones, where you don’t know until you open it. Or even worse, you don’t know until you drink it. At which point you’ve probably already paid for it.
In particular I’ve had several experiences with fake Xiaguan cakes lately. This brand is pretty common in Taiwan pu’er shops, though frequently it’ll be the more nondescript brick teas and tuochas. Stumbling on a genuine pre-2005 8653 isn’t common. In general I’ve become pretty wary of buying anything that’s claimed to be Xiaguan from a seller I’ve just met. Here are some reasons why.
2003 Xiaguan Teji Tiebing
Recently someone gifted me a 2003 Xiaguan teji tiebing. It carries some cachet as a pre-reform Xiaguan tea, though is not particularly sought-after. It’s one you see around Taipei quite a lot.
Before even unwrapping it, it didn’t feel right. The paper is too soft. Also the black text encircling the crane logo is off-center. This kind of misalignment isn’t entirely unheard-of, as wrappers were stamped instead of printed at this time, but it’s still a potential red flag.
But when you grip the cake between forefinger and thumb, it’s too thick. Maybe 2-3mm, just enough to be noticeable. It also crunches under pressure from your fingers. Proper Xiaguan iron cake compression is denser than this, and doesn’t budge.
Upon unwrapping, more concerns. First, it’s missing the unique double-sided neipiao that specifically comes with Xiaguan Teji cakes (and can be seen in the Wushing yearbook, above). Also the leaf grade is weird and too varied. There’s plenty of ugly looking larger leaves. Also thick chunky stems, lots of them. Slightly below the neifei there’s a tea tree flower pressed into the cake.
Then there’s the back side, where there’s perhaps the single biggest indicator of something amiss: the “nipples” (乳釘) don’t look right. They’re far too rounded and smooth; they should be pointy and rough in texture.
I broke off a bit from the side, within which I found a seed shell and several strands of hair. Also some plastic-like fiber from a polyethylene tarp or bag. All in the amount for a single session. And when digging into the cake, again, the compression is wrong. Too loose. And the leaves come off in large flat flakes. They haven’t undergone the rounian of a typical factory tea. There’s just so much that feels off, you don’t even need to drink it to know. But of course I had to try it, at least once.
And it’s not great. The tea has some woody aged-type notes but is overall thin, watery. And doesn’t taste quite like pu’er. It also doesn’t sit well in the stomach; something about it just feels unpleasant. A bit later, I’m finding everything about it is pretty terrible. I didn’t make it past the third steep.
The wet leaf reveals all kinds of chaos. What even is this? There’s some greener-looking leaves that might be sheng pu’er. Some of the others look more like broad-leaf oolong. And then there’s these brittle dark brown leaves that might be shou.
This particular counterfeit is actually quite pervasive. If you dig around online you’ll find multiple sellers in Taiwan offering it; it’s easily spotted from the nipples on the backside. There are even conversations about its existence. For reference, the reputable Taobao seller mx-tea used to sell the authentic version:
As fake teas go, this one is pretty obvious. And undrinkable. I won’t be going near it again. On the bright side, it was a gift so didn’t cost me anything. Though, it does make it awkward next time I see the guy.
Artistic Font Tiebing
I don’t know much about this tea. I bought it from a collector who has loads of older factory teas, much of it pretty wet stored, and mostly not famous cakes. More just random cheaper Zhongcha teas. I suspect she got much of it in the late ’90s / early 2000s, when there was a lot of really cheap tea coming into Taiwan.
I asked her about Xiaguan and she brought this one up enthusiastically, insisting it was a Xiaguan iron cake from the late ‘90s, just not an 8653. Though there’s little to confirm this. The neifei is a generic bazhong without any text beneath it, and there aren’t really any other identifying details. To be fair, this is pretty common with teas from this time period. She showed me the tong and it’s a nondescript brown paper tong, without the Zhongcha markings that most Xiaguan iron cake tongs have.
This cake too has various details that might raise one’s eyebrow. The biggest is that the nipples are far too spread-out and sparse. Their shape is also not right, too flat. And the cake is noticeably too thin. It is however, extremely dense; hard even to get a tea knife into it. Also there’s some poor quality control: the occasional chunk of bark or crushed seedpod (not tea seeds, something larger on the scale of a brazil nut). And the leaf grade doesn’t look right— some of the leaves are far too big.
But despite all this, it’s a pretty decent tea. I’ve actually drank it quite a few times. I’m fairly sure it’s not a legit Xiaguan production, but it does taste very much like Xiaguan. It has a certain kind of pre-reform Xiaguan-like smokiness (that’s different from the ’05 T8653 for instance), and also a specific overripe berries type note I associate with some Xiaguan teas. It brews very dark, is good and thick, is pretty resinous and incense-like. Tastes decently aged. Late ’90s or early 2000s seems right. Pretty good lingering huigan. Overall it’s rather comfortable to drink.
This one strikes me as being in more of a gray area; it doesn’t really feel like an intentional counterfeit. It’s not like it has a neifei that says Xiaguan on it. It’s really just the collector’s claim to go on. Which feels like more of an exaggeration than anything— it is certainly within the realm of Xiaguan. At the very least, I can sort of understand why she would call it that. What matters at the end of the day is that it’s actually pretty decent. It’s certainly a far cry from that fake Teji cake.
1998 Xiaguan 8653
This third case is a bit different. I went through quite a journey with this one. The thing is, it generally looks right, with some possible red flags. But it doesn’t taste right, at all.
Recently I was fortunate to get a chunk of a ’98 8653 from a friend. It’s a wonderful tea; everything you’d expect from a good Xiaguan tea, but amplified. More concentrated and resinous. Hankering for more, I took a chance on one from the Facebook auctions.
When it arrived, all seemed pretty ok. The wrapper’s particularly pristine, which might be worrisome considering it’s the kind of very thin wrapper that tears with the slightest handling. But it does look like a real Xiaguan wrapper— the paper fiber style is correct.
Upon opening the cake, it looks pretty decent, though a few details caught my eye. The bing hole has this strange multi-part depression. Which I’ve seen in one other cake before, but isn’t normal. Maybe just a production mishap with this single cake.
Then there’s a single silvery-white furry leaf bud pressed into the back of the cake. The other buds in this cake are much more gold/orange than silver/white. And aren’t furry like white tea. Kinda weird for a cake that’s 25 years old. I recently saw something similar on a Menghai Tea Factory cake from 2002, but it’s also not exactly normal.
At first glance, the neifei seems odd, too faded. Upon closer inspection, it’s actually just pressed into the cake upside down. Though the dimensions of the paper are slightly different from another ’98 neifei I compared it with. But neifeis aren’t always identical. Sometimes there are issues in the stamping process— the paper gets misaligned, or one color’s ink is drier than the rest.
Breaking into the cake, the compression and leaf grade seem about right. There’s a believable proportion of buds on the surface, everything is properly choppy and relatively uniform. There’s the occasional chunky stem but overall it looks pretty good.
Ever holding out hope, I gave it a try. The real ’98 is intensely smoky and resinous, in a really pleasant and concentrated way. Across a session, it settles into a surprisingly sweet profile, with a nice long aftertaste. This cake though, has hardly any of these traits. It tastes a bit like hongcha actually, it has that same sweetness. Slightest hint of smoke, and something that reminds me of long-ago wetter storage.
The real ’98 cake is also very attention-grabbing, makes you want to keep drinking, rapidly and continuously. This one just doesn’t; it’s pretty off-putting. I found myself getting easily distracted and forgetting to come back to the cup.
After drinking this cake too many times— sometimes that itch is just so hard to scratch— I’m still a bit dumbfounded. Its appearance is overall pretty believable. More than anything because the leaves, both dry and wet, seem right. But then you drink it, and it’s all wrong. A friend recently pointed out that Xiaguan productions in the ’90s are particularly notorious for quality control issues. For instance, poor blending, leading to significant variation within a single production. It seems possible this could be the case here.
I think this cake could also be the result of especially poor storage— stored very wet early on (not HK trad, just bad wet storage), and then sucked dry by air conditioning for a decade plus. So what’s left is the faintest whiff of wet storage and an overall just very dull, dead tea.
Such are the risks of buying tea from auction. While I’ve had plenty of good experiences with Facebook auctions, I’ve started to wonder if the ‘98 8653 is cursed. You see all manner of sketchy examples of this cake on there. Recently a seller’s been listing some that have clearly already been unwrapped. I got another not long ago, from a different auction seller, that bears a fair amount of visual resemblance to this one, except that it reeks through and through of industrial chemicals— like it was stored in a paint factory for 20 years. Needless to say this is one particular cake I won’t be gambling on any more.
Some takeaways
So what have I learned from all this? Well, there’s a lot of sketchy tea out there. Of course it’s best to buy from a trusted source. Especially when it comes to teas that are more famous, and more often faked, like Xiaguan.
Reference sources like the Wushing yearbooks are great, but they’re just a start. And some counterfeits are really good. Handling as many cakes as you can helps, you get a better sense of variation. The same goes for unwrapped cakes. But of course drinking lots of tea so you can recognize when something’s off is more important.
And again, building trust. When you’ve just met a shop owner, you have to decide how much you’re willing to believe them. If it’s the kind of place that has Dayi and other famous cakes prominently displayed, and they seem to be moving large quantities, these tend to be good signs.
And even though every now and then you might find a counterfeit tea that’s somewhat decent, they’re few and far between. Most of the time, who knows what’s actually in there. And whether it’s even safe to drink.
In closing, let’s take a moment and appreciate the beauty of a fine factory cake. Here are some authentic Xiaguan cakes from this period, and approximately what anything you find should look like:
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