Red Circle Tea

It hasn’t snowed this badly or this late in the season to disrupt the harvest in over 60 years. Ms Lee said in her lifetime, this is the first time this has happened. Apparently, it snows a bit every year, around Chinese New Year’s (February 15^th) but when it snows, tea plants are in a dormant stage, and relatively unaffected. To understand why snow affects the spring harvest in such a devastating way, it’s important to understand what’s happening to the tea plant in spring.  What’s so special about the pre-Qing Ming harvest is that as the weather warms in late February early March, and the tea plant slowly awakens from the dormant stage, the tea plant begins to bring in more water through its roots, and begins to circulate liquid in a concerted effort to the emerging buds. As the plant begins to bud, it is releasing all the minerals stored in the root system for the first time using all it’s energy to come back to life. Therefore, the flavor of the first few flushes are the best, offering depth, body and sweetness, a complete spectrum of full flavor. After these harvests, the mineral content is severely depleted making most of the post Qing Ming teas less flavorful, and ultimately, for the last few harvests devoid of a complete flavor.  To try to save the tea plants this year, they covered each row with a plastic blanket and pumped in hot air to bring the temperature up, and keep the plant alive.  It helped fend off some of the worst damage and kept the roots from freezing, but this year’s late snow will affect the harvest for a few years to come.

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