How to Identify Fake Aged White Tea and Why Aged White Tea Prices Vary So Much

Speaking of the current prices of aged white tea on the market, the phrase “all over the place” sums it up perfectly. Especially when you take a look at certain online shopping platforms, you will absolutely be stunned. The price fluctuations of aged white tea are just too extreme! Expensive aged white tea can cost over ten thousand yuan per jin, while cheap tea costs only a few dozen yuan per jin, or even less than half a hundred. So why is some aged white tea cheap and some expensive? How do you identify aged white tea? Today, the editor will expose the inside story of unscrupulous merchants selling fake aged white tea, and clear the name of genuinely flavorful, meaningful, and delicious healthy aged white tea!

Why is some aged white tea cheap and some expensive?

Tea friends often ask: “Why is aged white tea precious? On a certain online shopping platform, you can get a jin for just a few dozen yuan. Hmph, I am not drinking your family's aged white tea anymore.” Seeing conversations like this leaves many tea farmers dazed in the wind, unable to recover for a long time.

Actually, if you look at the so-called few-dozen-yuan-per-jin tea with its pitch-black color, and then compare it to tea leaves that look like camouflage, you suddenly feel relieved. Although these few-dozen-yuan teas have an obvious advantage in price, this tea... looking at these pitch-black tea leaves, can you still bring yourself to drink it?

Value determines price; this should be the principle of making tea. A tea with value will absolutely match its price! Fake aged white tea is naturally worth only a few dozen yuan, because its value is only that much. No, actually it is not even worth a few dozen yuan; it has no value at all!

Below, the editor will introduce several common methods for identifying fake aged white tea:

"1"Fake aged white tea one: aging acceleration

The reason aging acceleration is listed as the first type of fake method is simply that it is the most common, and tea friends are also most easily fooled and confused by it. The reason aging-accelerated white tea can run rampant is that its cost is low but its profit is high, so quite a few unscrupulous tea merchants began selling this kind of aging-accelerated white tea in large quantities.

Since the cost is not high, the corresponding price is also very cheap, and it may even make you feel like you are getting it for free. Who does not want to snag a bargain? For example, we often talk about 12-year aged white tea, but it only costs 66 yuan with free shipping! Are you tempted? But there is no pie falling from the sky, only traps.

When you can no longer resist wanting to buy it, the editor still has to advise you: for tea that goes against market value, you should still buy cautiously. The older the vintage and the cheaper the white tea, the more you should first understand its quality clearly before buying.

Second, aging-accelerated aged white tea has many flaws in appearance. Because aging-accelerated aged white tea must go through high-temperature roasting and fermentation, its pigment substances have already been largely destroyed, so the color of aging-accelerated white tea looks very black, frighteningly dark. Aged white tea that ages under normal conditions is colorful, vibrant, and layered, looking somewhat like camouflage clothing, with yellow-brown, bronze, deep green, dark green, and so on. The more uniform the color of the aged white tea, the more you need to pay attention.

Finally, aging-accelerated aged white tea cannot stand up to drinking.

With aging-accelerated white tea, you will know the truth once you try drinking it. But this identification method is also the last resort when you truly cannot tell by looking. It is a method used when there is no other way. After all, once you have drunk it, you cannot return it, and the loss is still yours to bear. Aging-accelerated aged white tea, once brewed with high-temperature water, no matter how well it was disguised before, will reveal its true form under the action of boiling water. Aging acceleration is simply fermenting white tea and roasting it at high temperature, using physical methods to accelerate an originally natural process. It is similar to pulling up seedlings to help them grow. At this point, the internal substances have already been destroyed, so naturally there is no mellow mouthfeel; it even has a burnt taste when drunk, and the tea soup is bitter, astringent, and thin. The brewed leaves have no sense of freshness at all; with a slight rub of the hand, they become mushy and broken. The brewed leaves of normal aged white tea would never be like this; even with a bit of force, they will not be rubbed to pieces. This kind of aged white tea appears most frequently, but it is also the easiest to see through. As long as you pay attention, you can avoid being deceived.

"2"Fake aged white tea two: pile fermentation

White tea made by traditional craftsmanship requires spreading the fresh tea leaves thinly on bamboo sieve trays, letting the fresh leaves breathe freely, thereby forming their own unique quality. This process is also called withering. Only after withering and drying does white tea belong to lightly fermented tea and possess good quality characteristics.

Pile fermentation refers to piling sun-dried raw tea to a certain height (usually around 70CM), then sprinkling water, covering it with burlap, promoting the action of tea enzymes, and allowing it to ferment under damp-heat conditions for about 24 hours. After the tea leaves have transformed to a certain degree, they are spread out to dry. In the traditional production of white tea, however, white tea cannot be piled high together; otherwise, the fresh leaves will generate heat during respiration, thereby damaging the tea quality and darkening the color.

After pile fermentation, depending on the degree of fermentation, the color of the tea leaves has already turned from green to yellow, chestnut red, and chestnut black. Can this kind of tea still be called white tea?

The pile fermentation of white tea is also intended to create a fake vintage, making new white tea of the current year look like aged white tea. This is a kind of smoke screen, and tea friends should not be fooled. Likewise, to distinguish pile-fermented white tea, you also look at its color.

The more uniform the color of the white tea, the more tricks are hidden, and the more cautious tea friends should be.

"3"Fake aged white tea three: falsely reporting the vintage

Besides aging acceleration and pile fermentation, falsely reporting the vintage of white tea is also a fake method.

Although this method avoids the flaw of the tea leaves looking too uniform in color, the color is too bright and also looks abnormal. As the aging vintage grows longer and longer, the color of the tea leaves constantly changes, just like in autumn, when leaves continuously change from fresh green to withered yellow. This is a natural and irreversible process.

"4"Fake aged white tea four: passing off inferior goods as good ones

There is another kind of aged white tea that is even more infuriating. In appearance, it is indeed a perfect cake of aged white tea; from color to aroma, there is nothing to criticize. But after prying open the tea cake, it leaves people stunned. Where inside can you find complete leaves? They are all broken tea bits and dregs. This kind of aged white tea truly “deserves” the saying of being outwardly splendid but inwardly rotten, a complete “straw bag.”

Real aged white tea, whether in appearance or in the inner part, should have complete tea leaves with a consistent color. It cannot be like making dumplings, where the outside looks glossy and appetizing but the inside is inferior.

Verifying this is also very simple: just pry the white tea open directly and observe whether the color of the tea cake is uniform and whether the leaves are equally complete.

You get what you pay for; value and price correspond to each other. If you want to avoid the trap of aging-accelerated aged white tea, you still have to start with yourself. Do not suffer a big loss for the sake of a small bargain. Do more basic homework on aged white tea; to forge iron, you must first be strong yourself.