Hung Chong Tai vendors in the US?

[wave_code]

I've been looking to try more HK tea and while I can get from some of the well known/long standing tea shops like Yee On and Ying Kee shipped here I'm also curious to try out Hung Chong Tai's tea. There are a lot of decent but very cheap teas that seem much easier to find even just at asian groceries in the US, and this seems like this also falls in there. I don't expect amazing tea for the price, but wetter storage profile tea at super cheap daily drinking prices I'm all for it. Here you are lucky if you can even find Golden Sail

I've seen it for sale with a huge price difference both at Wing Hop Fung and tsemporium.com. TS sells a cake for just $18, and it looks like they also have a 7581 style brick from them too, WHF sells for $30. Of course neither has any age info (it seems this is pretty standard for these cakes - just a neifei in plastic wrap), but being grocery store grade/medicinal tea I imagine neither place is probably storing them super particularly, but I'm wondering if there is any justification in the price difference between the two. Anyone tried cakes from either place, or know of another source for these teas I should check out?

[Andrew S]

Is modern Hong Tai Chang traditionally-stored, or is it just cooked and sold as-is?

(there's a Malaysian-stored example from the 90s on the TWL website, but I assume that that 's not quite what you're looking for)

Andrew

[wave_code]

Thanks @Andrew S - actually a different vendor - although looking at TWL that cake sounds tasty! This is much more budget
different vendor - a HK tea shop. @debunix had inherited an older cake of theirs- viewtopic.php?f=12&t=1224&start=15

also it sounds like they won't be around for much longer, according to this instagram post which make it sound like they are shutting down-

[Andrew S]

Thanks, my mistake. It looks like MarshalN posted about their loose puer early on during his tea blog: http://www.marshaln.com/2006/12/wednesd ... r-20-2006/

It does seem as though there are likely to be fewer and fewer traditional storage warehouses and shops that sell that kind of tea, which is unfortunate, but i suppose that that just reflects market demand.

Let us know if you do end up trying it.

Andrew

[Bill C]

I had recently bought some Hung Chong Tai Pureh Tea Cakes from TSEmporium:
https://www.tsemporium.com/en_us/xprodu ... 7498001900
Then I tried to find out more info about it I found this discussion posted in this forum:
viewtopic.php?f=12&t=1224&hilit=Hung+Chong+Tai
The picture (front label of the Puerh tea cake looked exactly like the ones I got from TSEmporium.
So I searched and came across this link in which one poster was talking about one could buy both these types of Hung Chong Tai Puerh Tea Cakes from TSEmporium which sold one for @$18.89 for 3 for $51, but it was sold for $29.99 at Wing Hop Fung (currently they offer a 20% discount on tea) and he wondered why. I took a closer look at the one sold at Wing Hop Fung, although the front label of the Puerh Tea Cake looks similar to that sold by TSEmporium:
https://winghopfung.com/products/pu-erh-tea-cake
But if you look closely, on the bottom of ones at TSEmporium, it says in English "Bo Nay Tea", "Bo Nay" is the Cantonese pronunciation of Puerh.
But on the front label of the tea cake at Wing Hop Fung, it says instead "BLACK TEA", they also put 2010 in its title. I could not tell how old the ones sold by TSEmporium was.
So my question is: how old are the Hung Chong Tai Pureh tea cakes sold by TSEmporium? I searched everywhere but there were really not too much info about this type of Pureh tea cakes and I don't know how anyone can identify their ages.
Of course, the best way to find out is to brew some and taste it. I vividly remember in the 60s and 70s I often drank some of the "hundred-year old" Pureh tea brewed by my maternal grandpa who at that time was the owner of the renowned Tai Tung restaurant in Hong Kong. I could never forget the taste of them. Unfortunately, these days it would not be easy to find something close to it since prices of Pureh tea cakes had gone up so unreasonably high.

[wave_code]

Hi @Bill C. As far as I have found there is absolutely no way to know how old the cakes from TS Emporium are - although I haven't directly tried contacting them and asking them if they know and would share that, or at least when they purchased them from HCT. I have to give them another try each, but I can say that of the two I actually preferred the brick I got though. Although it breaks up really easy, now the cake is pretty dry- kinda just generic shu that you would expect for the price. I've heard from one person that normally HCT teas are typical HK storage character, while others have said they didn't find their teas particularly wet - the cake and brick being the only ones I have had I can't say whether they are typical or exceptions from teas you would normally get from them directly. I can say if you want typical HK storage notes better to look elsewhere, but if you want a cheap drinkable shu that ships from the US then its not bad.

A ways off but assuming Wing Hop Fung still has some around in May when I'm back in the states I'll probably pick one up to compare.

[mbanu]

I have to give them another try each, but I can say that of the two I actually preferred the brick I got though.

The brick packaging looks very similar to the packaging used by Macau Hualian, but I don't know if it is just an homage or not.