Tea Education

The following article is based on my experiences and the experiences I have seen others go through when it comes to buying tea. As I continue to gain experience sourcing tea my opinion may evolve and change. This is where it stands now. This article is directed mostly toward tea sellers, but the consumer can benefit too. We all like a good story. We like to tell ourselves and we like to tell other people the trials we had to go through to get what we have. For tea buying, this often comes in the form of someone sourcing tea...

I opened the bag, looked in, and let out a sigh.  “You don’t think it's good?” asked the shop owner in chinese.  Since she asked I replied honestly.  “No”.  “This is good!” She said “You don’t understand Gua Pian. This is high quality.”  I was looking at the leaves of a Gua Pian that didn’t need much knowledge about Gua Pian to know was not good.  Gua Pian is a green tea from northern Anhui. Its home, Liu An, is located right outside the capital of Anhui, Hefei. Being in the most southern part of Anhui, Huang Shan, the Gua...

Huang Shan Mao Feng often falls under the radar for most tea drinkers. Its soft flavor doesn't attract alot of attention. With not so much information on this tea available, it can be hard for tea drinkers interested in this tea to know where to start. While this is only one tea, a quick search through the internet will yield Mao Fengs in all sorts of shapes. This can be hard for people getting into Mao Feng as they dont know which shape they should be looking for. So today I will go over the three most common shapes of...

  In this episode of Mao Feng Mondays I look a little deeper in a topic that has been bothering me recently, teas on the market too early. Mao Feng is picked in late March at the earliest, with the best teas being picked early April. That being said, I am already seeing teas on the market in China and in America, so I went to see what was up. It turns out they are from special cultivars that are designed to pick early. The pick early and look very pretty and therefore make very good tea gifts, that being...

The final video of the 2020 tea season. I traveled to Hou Gu the site of a very popular Mao Feng from last year. Hou Gu is located in the core region of Huang Shan next to a monkey sanctuary. Outsiders, even chinese, are forbidden go see the fields as they are located in the sanctuary grounds. The tea last year had a chestnut note that I hadn't tasted before. This year I may have learned why. The night I was there I walked up to the tea making room and saw smoke coming out. As I walked in I...