Now more and more people adore Chinese premium teas but purchasing Chinese famous teas seems challenging. Here, we listed five common misconceptions we concluded when people buying Chinese teas in recent years. Read them, you may tend to be more experienced and better prepared in tea purchasing.
Expensive teas are much better than the cheaper ones.
Here, we don?t just mean it for the teas sold by different vendors since it is obvious that it’s not so under the circumstances. Even it isn’t right whenever we ?? study the contact of the prices and the standard of the teas dealt with by the same vendor. As a item, tea price is set by the supply-demand contact. In other words, in fact, people?s preference which is sometimes nonrational has great influence to tea prices.
For example, Dragon Well and Biluochun are almost probably the most expensive green teas in China. Have you any idea why they are so expensive? Of course, they’re wonderful indeed, but could it be the only reason for the high price? No, another major reason is they are manufactured in Suzhou and Hangzhou, the two richest places in China named as paradise by Chinese intellectuals and poets. This is why Dragon Well and Biluochun are often known and become so popular. Many others kinds of teas such as for example Huoshan Huangya, Dinggu Da Fang, Huangshan Mao Feng are also wonderful in quality, however, they are not fortunate as Dragon Well and Biluochun because they are stated in the remote areas and so are difficult to be transported to towns and cities especially in ancient times. Therefore, if you want to buy Chinese teas, don?t just focus on Dragon Well and Biluochun, various other teas good in quality but lower in price are also good options. As a matter of known fact, China is so big and you can find so many famous teas.
Another example, nowadays, Chinese crave for the Mingqian tea (tea farmed before Qingming around 6th April), driving the cost of the Mingqian tea such as Mingqian Dragon Well Tea to the sky high. Is the Mingqian Dragon Well Tea really so excellent? Is it worthwhile? Definitely not. Tea quality depends on many factors such as the tea cultivar, growing area, and harvest time and production method. Studies show is only one of the factors. Now a lot of Mingqian Dragon Well Tea we found in the market was made of tealeaves from tea cultivar named as Wuniuzao. The Dragon Well Tea created from Wuniuzao cultivar is much worse in taste and flavor compared with the ones from the traditional cultivar Longjing Qunti while Cultivar Wuniuzao is a lot more than 10 days ahead of once the Qunti cultivar in tea sprouts growing, and much more and more tea farmers interact growing Wuniuzao so as to produce more Mingqian tea and create more income. During recent years, the Wuniuzao Dragon Well Tea keeps growing fast in quantity year by year.
Teas farmed earlier such as for example Mingqian tea is certainly much better than those farmed later
Not necessarily, you can see it from what we?ve talked above in Disbelief #1. In fact tea cultivar plays a more impressive role in tea quality than the harvest time. And here’s another example. You know the temperature becomes lower when the altitude increases in the same area and we all know teas growing at high hills are much better than those at the low altitude of the same area, however, they are much later in growing, sometimes later a lot more than 15 to 20 days. And we find teas made of leaves farmed from high hills of 1000 meters above the sea level around Mid April are always better than Mingqian tea at the base of the mountain.
I can choose the authentic famous teas so long as I visit the producing areas of its origin.
Each year, when tea farmers start farming and producing teas, huge throngs put into the producing area, especially in Mejiawu, Hangzhou, the core producing area of Dragon Well and Dongshan, Xishan, the two core producing area of Biluochun. Can they really obtain the authentic Dragon Well or Biluochun in so doing? Not necessarily.
Because of the celebrity status of Dragon Well and Biluochun, the local Chaqing (plucked fresh tealeaves but not processed) is many times more expensive than those in other areas, and the local Chaqing that is quite limited can?t fulfill the popular. The huge profit drives individuals to get lucrative ways. More than 19 years ago, Chaqing from the Huangshan, Anhui state and Wuyuan, Jiangxi state were taken up to Hangzhou for production. Both areas are close to Hangzhou and have a lot of quality Chaqing. However, recently, to meet the sought after of Mingqian Dragon Well and Biluochun, Chaqing from Sichuan and Guizhou are brought by air to Hangzhou. By dong so, it can not merely solve the scarcity of the neighborhood Chaqing but additionally produce much more Mingqian tea as the tea trees and shrubs sprout almost a month or more prior to once the ones in Jiangsu and Zhejiang.
Pay too much knowing of the grade of the tea.
The grading of tea is much sophisticated and confusing. For example, there are commonly six grades of Dragon Well tea however, many tea manufactures have their own grading system and there are always the grade emerging you will likely have never heard about in the market such as for example Better, Special A, and Jipin. You will be confused by the grades even while a professional. We suggest you be worried about it but don?t pay an excessive amount of awareness of it. The most effective way is to develop a sample comparison between teas of similar prices without caring an excessive amount of about the grades.
Green tea ought to be green in color and the greener the higher
Totally false, nowadays, increasing numbers of people even young Chinese assume dried green tea extract should be green in color and the tea in becomes yellowish color isn’t the tea of the existing year. To take people?s fancy, a lot more tea makers make the tea light roasted, leading to greener tea with bad taste. Actually, authentic Dragon Well tea stated in the traditional ways is becomes yellowish in color rather than green, the same as Huangshan Maofeng.