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 are more experienced and better prepared in tea purchasing.
แตกง่าย are definitely better than the cheaper ones.
Here, we don’t just mean it for the teas sold by different vendors because it is obvious that it is not so under the circumstances. Even it is not right when we 茶包 study the contact of the prices and the standard of the teas dealt with by the same vendor. As a item, tea price is decided 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 the most expensive green teas in China. Do you know why they are so expensive? Of course, they are wonderful indeed, but is it the only reason for the high price? No, another main reason is that they are manufactured in Suzhou and Hangzhou, the two richest places in China named as paradise by Chinese intellectuals and poets. That is why Dragon Well and Biluochun are often known and turn into so popular. Some others kinds of teas such as Huoshan Huangya, Dinggu Da Fang, Huangshan Mao Feng are also wonderful in quality, however, they are not so fortunate as Dragon Well and Biluochun because they are manufactured in the remote areas and 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, some other teas good in quality but lower in price are also good options. As a matter of fact, China is so big and there are so many famous teas.
Another example, nowadays, Chinese crave for the Mingqian tea (tea farmed before Qingming around 6th April), driving the price of the Mingqian tea such as Mingqian Dragon Well Tea to the sky high. Is the Mingqian Dragon Well Tea really so good? Is it worthwhile? Not necessarily. Tea quality relies on many factors such as the tea cultivar, growing area, and harvest time and production method. Harvest time is only one of the factors. Now a great deal of Mingqian Dragon Well Tea we found in the market was made of tealeaves from tea cultivar named as Wuniuzao. The Dragon Well Tea made from Wuniuzao cultivar is much worse in taste and flavor compared with the ones from the traditional cultivar Longjing Qunti while Cultivar Wuniuzao is more than 10 days prior to when the Qunti cultivar in tea sprouts growing, and more and more tea farmers join in growing Wuniuzao in order to produce more Mingqian tea and create extra income. During recent years, the Wuniuzao Dragon Well Tea is growing fast in quantity year by year.
Teas farmed earlier such as Mingqian tea is definitely 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 is 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 lower altitude of the same area, however, they are much later in growing, sometimes later 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 foot of the mountain.
I can buy the authentic famous teas so long as I go to the producing areas of its origin.
Every 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 get the authentic Dragon Well or Biluochun by doing so? Not necessarily.
Thanks to the celebrity status of Dragon Well and Biluochun, the local Chaqing (plucked fresh tealeaves but not processed) is many times higher in price than those in other areas, and the local Chaqing which is quite limited can’t fulfill the sought after. The huge profit drives individuals to find lucrative ways. More than 19 years ago, Chaqing from the Huangshan, Anhui state and Wuyuan, Jiangxi state were taken to Hangzhou for production. Both areas are close to Hangzhou and have a great deal of quality Chaqing. However, in recent years, 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 only solve the scarcity of the local Chaqing but also produce much more Mingqian tea because the tea trees and shrubs sprout almost a couple of weeks prior to when the ones in Jiangsu and Zhejiang.
Pay too much awareness 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 but some tea manufactures have their own unique grading system and there are always the grade emerging you will probably have never heard of in the market such as Better, Special A, and Jipin. You will be confused by the grades even as a professional. We suggest you worry about it but don’t pay too much awareness of it. The best way is to create a sample comparison between teas of similar prices without caring too much about the grades.
Green tea should be green in color and the greener the better
Totally false, nowadays, more and more people even young Chinese assume dried green tea should be green in color and the tea in becomes yellowish color is not the tea of the current year. To take people’s fancy, more and more tea makers make the tea light roasted, resulting in greener tea with bad taste. In fact, authentic Dragon Well tea manufactured in the traditional ways is becomes yellowish in color instead of green, the same as Huangshan Maofeng.

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