Red Circle Tea

We spent the morning at Long Jing Village sightseeing and where the average tourists cup of tea at an open air tea house is now 50 yuan per cup. That’s up from the already outrageous price of 20 yuan per cup that it was last year. Let’s put that in perspective. A bottle of water at a convenience store is 3 yuan, a bowl of street noodles is 4 yuan, a dish at a nice restaurant is 20 – 40 yuan, breakfast at the hotel was 18 yuan, and the woman who offered us a table was asking for fifty yuan for one cup of tea.  This is a great illustration of how little tea there is to sell, and how much the price has gone up this year. For touristy gifts of small canisters of tea the price has gone up 4-5 x, for wholesale 2-3 x. It’s a tough pill to swallow if you’re trying to ask someone to pay that much for tea, and it’s painful and sometimes ridiculous to consider paying what some people are asking if you’re not buying a great tea. If you buy Dragonwell tea at all this year, it better be damn well worth drinking.

In the afternoon, we met with Ms Lee and asked her for the truth: how is the tea? We had asked if she had anything comparable in taste to what we purchased last year, tea from April 2^nd. She brought us a tea, told us it was comparable and let us decide. The cardinal rule of tea is cultivate your palate, and trust it.  Taste for yourselves. We tasted it, and it was by far the best tea we’d come across this trip. It has about 90% of the flavor spectrum of last year’s tea, it has fragrance, clarity in color and sweetness in the taste. It had all the aroma we were looking for, and it was bursting with the brightness of a new tea. Unfortunately, there is very little of this tea, and of course the price went up, way up. Here’s a picture of the entire harvest of the batch of tea we bought. We bought what she would sell us, and will have this tea until it sells out. We tried another grade of tea she offered and it had more depth, but very little fragrance and very little sweetness. No, the first tea was the best, and it’s the quality we feel represents the best of the harvest. We purchased the tea, and asked: When was this tea picked?  We were shocked to learn it was picked on March 28^th – we didn’t realize it, but the tea we chose was picked on the very first day they were able to harvest this year! Due to the difficulties of this year’s harvest, this is a tea that was hard won, and damn well worth drinking. Dragonwell is a tea that should be in every tea drinker’s collection. If you’re new to Dragonwell tea, there’s no need to start off by trying a lesser grade, with a top grade tea you’ll learn more, and  the experience of a genuine Pre-Qing Ming tea is truly unforgettable.

We’re up on Hangzhou, and yes, the harvest is in progress.  The ladies we spoke to today who were picking leaves said they’d been picking for a week now. There is good news and bad news. The bad news is there is definitely damage to the tea plants, and it’s easily visible. Black buds,  half formed buds, dead flowers that were tragically interrupted in full bloom. But! There is promise too. Not nearly as many plants died as we feared.  We learned that snow does come to Hangzhou and doesn’t have to be disastrous, but it doesn’t normally come this late and wreak this much havoc. Tea plants re-bud dozens of times during the harvest. And new harvests are in progress. We believe as of today 4/4 that the buds you see here are one or two days away from being prime tea. The struggle farmers face is that if not picked today, the price of the tea drops precipitously. Because today, these teas can be called Pre-Qing Ming and command a premium price. But, in terms of quality, if picked today, I fear they risk the result of a weak tea flavor, an incomplete brew. Where to find the balance between picking a great crop and getting the best return on your year’s investment? Probably ultimately in blending of leaves that are pre-Qing Ming and post-Qing Ming (and depending on the farmer or vendor, selling as pre or post).  Today, Dragonwell – any Dragonwell is selling for almost triple last year’s price.

One question I have for Ms Lee is that last year she mentioned Varietal 43 was being cultivated on Mei Jia Wu to bloom 2 weeks early, thus giving the farmer the advantage of being the first to market. At the time, I wondered strictly about the taste, i.e. would it be worth getting your tea to market if it didn’t taste the same, or taste good at all. But since this season’s snow, I’m forced to wonder : does that mean that if you’re growing tea to come to market 2 weeks early, is the farmer adding increased risk of crop loss if snow is now more of a present threat to harvests?  And will farmers take that risk?

The heady smell of diesel, the sharp tang of new plastic, and the tickle in my nose from the cigarette smoke from the 5 men standing to my right also waiting for taxis greets us. Yes, we’re in China. Our luggage may not be, but that’s yet to be determined. So far, here we are with the clothes on our backs, passports and the name of a) a hotel we’ve booked and b) the number for Ms Lee of last year’s Dragonwell fame. She’s expecting us today, the day before Qing Ming Festival. This year it falls on the 5^th of April. The festival of lovingly tending to the graves of ancestors, and the capitulation of the Pre-Qing Ming teas. Here, we’ll study the Dragonwell varietals from the four famous mountains and processing steps involved in making a great tea. We’ll head up the mountain and see what’s happening with this year’s harvest.

In happy anticipation of our first trip to China this spring, we phoned Ms Lee in Hangzhou to let her know our date of arrival, April 3rd.  “If you’re looking for green tea fields” she said ” you won’t find them here, here, they’re all black. It snowed and the trees are dead.”   This was shocking and unexpected news. Apparently, there was a devastating snow storm just a couple of days ago, and Xinhua news says there was approximately 10 cm of snow in Hangzhou.  Ms Lee said At LEAST 30% of the Dragonwell tea harvest is completely lost, if not 50%.  Some estimates say 4/5ths of (specifically) Qing Ming Dragonwell tea will be lost.

Snow is horribly damaging to tea plants.  When the plant experiences freezing temperatures, it can literally kill the plant overnight.  Leaves shrivel and turn black and the plant dies at the root.  When that happens, it means the loss of up to 35 years of work  a farmer has put into cultivating their farm. When a tea plant dies, it must be replaced and it can take 3 – 5 years before the harvest can resume.

This is the first we have heard of this terrible news.  We’ll update you on the status of the tea harvest as we learn more, and of course our trip to Hangzhou is still going forward as planned.  Stay tuned!