A Tea Addict's Journal

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The retaste project 9: Dayi 2005 7542

January 17, 2012 · 11 Comments

Haven’t done one of these in a while – not that I haven’t been drinking any tea, but just haven’t gotten around to some of my older holdings.  So, here’s an unusual one:

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It’s not exactly an everyday occurrence for me to drink Dayi tea. In fact, I almost never do, mostly because I’m not particularly fond of a lot of their newer productions, and the older ones are very expensive, with prices that are often times completely insane for the quality they provide. Most of this is due to the secondary market being very robust and the name brand effect – Dayi is really one of two brands that is truly widely recognized and has some brand value, regardless of what you think of their products, and for what it’s worth, they’re quite consistent in what they produce – the teas are rarely spectacular, but they are reliable.

I got this particular cake at a local shop here in Hong Kong probably one or two years ago, so it hasn’t gone through my storage very much. I have, however, had a good chunk of it already

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I actually have slight reservations as to whether this is the real McCoy, or if this is a fake. If it were real, this would probably be a production 502 7542, as the production date is early May, whereas the 501 I’ve seen is from mid April. Curiously enough, in the whole wide world of Taobao, there isn’t a single 502 production 7542 for sale.

The tea, as you can see from its colour, has been through a bit of traditional storage, although not heavily so. It has a nice brownish green colour, with a nice whiff of storage, but no mold on the surface or anything like that. In fact, I’d say it is rather well aged. I just bought a cake blind, since I didn’t know what to expect at the time.

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The tea actually brews very well, and has a nice, deep character that is normally not present in a lot of 7542s I’ve had that are of recent vintage. It is no longer bitter in that new tea kind of way, and is instead quite pleasant to drink, with a nice roundness and softness that seems to indicate it can do more in the future. In all, I found it very satisfying, and am wondering if I should go back and get more of it – provided they are still selling it.

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If I go get more, say, a tong, this will actually be my first purchase in any real quantity of a Dayi product. It’s coming rather late in my tea career, but I suppose it’s never too late.

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