This is one of the cheaper beengs from EoT 2018 preorder cakes. Unfortunately, it's already sold out.
The cake is double wrapped, with inner wrapper from handmade paper with a blue cloth sewn into it (a style typical for EoT since last year) and a name of the cake sewn under the cloth. The second, inner wrapping paper is clean white, not hand made.
Cake itself looks really good, nice big leaves, good compression, not too tight but neither too loose, you need a pick to pry some leaves from it. I'm drinking this beeng for about a week now, so part of the cake is already missing.
The tea itself is nice, without any smoke - when taking these photos I forgot my tea in the pot and it brew for 20 minutes instead of 20 seconds, and it was really really strong, yet when I tried it I felt no off or unpleasant flavors. For the regular brews the energy of the tea is good, aftertaste is decent and I did not felt any taste that would make me think that the tea will age badly.
I was able to squeze maybe 12-14 good infusions (using 8 grams for 150 ml pot) before the tea went in a direction I did not like. Most of the time I gave up before the tea, with one exception when I overbrew the second infusion, yet still I was able to make a few decent infusions after that.
This is the first tea I tried in 2018, yet comparing it to other teas from the past this one have a promise to be good or even great. Yet it's drinkable right now.