Hi,

I have a question to the helpful folks at rec.food.drink.tea. I have
received a nice gift from my sister: it is a piece of a compressed cake made
of dry buds and leaves of some kind of dried herbs. She bought it from a
small vendor of Chinese teas, for quite a high price admittedly. The vendor
said it was a puerh cake made of the finest tea buds. My sister wrote the
name of the tea on the wrapping as she heard it from the vendor: "Shen puerh
Ya Ping".

I have brewed and tasted the tea and I have my serious doubts. It does not
taste and smell like tea at all - has almost no taste and has a weak and
unpleasant sweet smell - and the wet buds definitely do not look like
Camelia Chinensis. I am wondering what it could be, and I hope that some of
the more experienced readers of this group could tell me.

Here you can see some pictures of both the dry and the wet leaves:

http://i29.photobucket.com/albums/c2...hitecake01.jpg
http://i29.photobucket.com/albums/c2...hitecake02.jpg
http://i29.photobucket.com/albums/c2...hitecake03.jpg
http://i29.photobucket.com/albums/c2...hitecake04.jpg

Thank you,
Gyorgy