2012 YS Chen Xiang/2007 Longfeng 5yrs commemorative cake

I'll start this post with a little background on "both" of these Wuliang teas, then I'll write about their taste and I'll conclude with discussion of pricing.

1) Appetizer - some background
Longfeng has made an edition of two cakes to commemorate their 5 years anniversary on market. This Wuliang piece from 2007 is one of them (the other one comes from 2012 Yongde material). It is a tea of "Longfeng own production" - which means "made by Scott and paid by Longfeng" - we're used to that already. But things are even juicier this time: http://www.yunnansourcing.com/store/product.php?id_product=2174 The previous "own productions" were, at least, disjoint with what Yunnan Sourcing was selling. However, it is no longer the case. Wait for the dessert to read more about that. Now, however, let's get back to the tea which has nothing  to do with dirty politics (good for him).

2) Main course - the tea itself
The tea comes from Wuliang, an area I'm not too fond of, despite its relative cheapness.  However, I dislike prejudice even more than I dislike Wuliang, so I approached the tea with pure mind. It was harvested in 2007 and pressed in 2012. Therefore, it aged 5 years in loose form, which makes it a bit unusual (and the cake falls apart easily too).

Before I venture into describing the taste, I have to add that this tea, in my opinion, badly needs yixing. When I prepared it in a porcelain tester or porcelain teapot, it was almost nasty, dominantly smoky (in an unpleasant way), etc. In yixing, the smoke is somewhat ameliorated. 

The wet leaves smell Wuliangish, woody, a bit smoky (like a half-burned log), with some dark fruit under that and something I'd describe as "perfume" - which is weird, but I've seen a chap on steepster saying that too, so there may be something about it. This combination of aromas is good, as some Wuliangs I had were just half-burned log with extra dose of unpleasant vegetalness.

The liquor is light orange (not as dark as on the photo, I got to have a talk with my wide-angle lens and its exposure setup) and smells nicely - woody and perfumy.

The taste starts as buttery (this gradually disappears as  steepings go on), woody-dark fruity, very decent and friendly, given that this is Wuliang material. Good complexity and thickness (very good, given Wuliang). The smokiness is rather light. Unfortunately, as steepings go on, the smoke and woodiness take over the liquor and while they are never unpleasant, they do not greatly please me either. But even my girlfriend (who dislikes smoke in tea even a tiny bit more than I do) deemed the smoke acceptable. It rather reminds me of Xiaguan production and Xiaguan style of smoke. This tea is somewhat similar (imho a bit better) to some of the 2003 Xiaguan "X-Mark" serie. Fortunately, the smokiness/woodiness is more akin to 2003 Xiaguans, rather than modern Xiaguan smoke that I dislike. I guess that this Xiaguanesque character is one of reasons why Mr. Prachar chose to sell his tea as his own as he seems to like Xiaguan a lot (well, surely much more than I do).

The aftertaste is nothing to write home about, there is some smoky vegetalness; on the other hand, there is light, long tingling which I like. Qi? No. But I guess you can't expect too much from a cheap Wuliang.

3) Dessert - conclusion
I rather enjoyed drinking this tea and for more Wuliang-loving people (Hobbes?), this might be a tea worth pursuing. It's a fine, unassuming tea, and a cheap one too: $24 per 400g cake from 2007, which is, in today's era of young tea craze, a very good price for anything. I certainly enjoyed it way more than I enjoyed YS 2011 Wuliang - which may be result of a couple extra years of aging, not necessarily superior material.

Now, $24 is good price, is it not? And Longfeng asks about $28 here. So far so good. However, things get uglier when you realize that Longfeng asks $28 per >>200<< grams, while YS asks $24 per >>400<< grams. 

Things get even worse with the other cake from Longfeng "own" commemorative edition as it is the Yongde for which YS asks $18 per 400g and LF still asks $28 per 200g. Talk about a markup... Unless you want to, I won't write about that Yongde cake. It's not bad, actually it's good for $18, but it's not that interesting yet. For the $56 per 400g asked by Longfeng, one will do much better with Finepuer's Daxueshan which is like two classes higher tea and costs about the same. Of course, if you return to "normal" pricing of YS, the $18 is a good price.

But, if you preordered both of the commemorative cakes from LF, you were given the awesome opportunity to buy 1kg of Xinghai tea nuggets at the "extremely discounted" price of cca $75...while it costs $39 at YS site. While this is still a big markup, it's probably almost feasible (if you wanted to buy just that 1kg, you'd have to pay a lot on shipping). However, the babbling about how the offer is only for the "worthy" who preorder the commemorative cakes, and how great bargain that is - that is not feasible.

I ask myself what went wrong. Is the Czech puerh scene really in such a bad state that we should consider YS's most basic cakes to be some great teas commemorating an important anniversary? 

Don't get me wrong, I'm not flaming against the cakes from YS, which, although not the top of what market offers, are priced very competetively and I'd say that they are a rather good buy for the people who like these regions. What I'm against is robbing and making fools of local people. I know of several people who bought whole tongs of these commemorative cakes... My condolences. Tong of both 2012 and 2007 tea cost you about 6960 CZK after discount. If you have rather bought 4 and 4 of the respective cakes from YS, you'd have had 200g of each more, in more practical packaging for aging, and you'd have paid  less than 4800 CZK, shipping and VAT included. Not mentioning you'd have cheap shipping by that time so for the spared money, you could buy a whole lot (2 kg) of that super-duper Xinghai nuggets if you wanted them. And you'd have good discount coupon for the next time.