When I first entered the tea door, I had a lot of tea art classes in order to learn how to make tea. In order to make tea well, I went to Jingdezhen no less than ten times. In order to have an artistic conception when drinking tea, I read tea books from ancient times to today, and visited museums. But when I came to Mount Wuyi, these moves were totally useless.
The traditional technique used to brew rock tea is also highly praised by everyone! But when I came to Mount Wuyi, I was educated sometimes.
Will you reflect on how well I did before putting it aside? Now the responsibility lies with whether the tea is made well or not! However, whether it’s the Wuyi brewing method or the learned one, fortunately, what remains unchanged is the ‘tea soup’.
Mount Wuyi’s indigenous method of soaking naturally brings flavor differences. It is reasonable and has been continuing. It must have its own advantages, otherwise I will not fall with the wind.
01 The atmosphere has changed
For Mount Wuyi people, they eat too much and eat too well, and drink tea or make tea, which is just a normal thing for them.
This couldn’t help but make us Wu Piao leave envious saliva and tears of jealousy, hating ourselves for not meeting the ground!
In the past, brewing tea was a matter of luxury in the living room, while brewing tea in Wuyi tea was a matter of casualness in the kitchen. Just as a person is still the same person, just with different dressing styles and different images, it does not prevent it from still being a delicious Wuyi rock tea.
Mount Wuyi doesn’t care much about the space and environment for making tea. When guests come, please sit down. When the hot water is heated, the tea shop in the living room will start, focusing on being comfortable.
The tea set on the table does not pursue luxury and extravagance, but focuses on practicality. With a pot that can heat water, a lid bowl, a fair cup, and a teacup, it has all the conditions to brew a good cup of tea.
Before, drinking tea and brewing tea was a clean, peaceful, and artistic conception.
Mount Wuyi is not like that. The atmosphere of making tea in Mount Wuyi is full of clanging bells and bustling energy. The sound of water, sipping tea, lighters, the rumbling sound of planes flying by, and the laughter of children are endless. When the hot water just boiled is poured on the tea, the “world fireworks, firewood, soy sauce, vinegar, tea” is visualized here.
Often, people come in while drinking, and after having two drinks together, they know they are here to talk about craftsmanship. They freely discuss how the market is doing this year, who makes the best tea, who wraps the mountain again, and who wins the award. It’s so lively that it’s very exciting to hold seminars and tea parties
I came back from a meeting and gained a lot from it. It also provided us, a self media that makes a living by writing, with a lot of writing inspiration. Hmm, I’ll come back next time.
02 The technique has changed
The tea making masters in Mount Wuyi did not make tea in a teapot, but grew up watching tea! We have heard more than one mountain ranger say that this area and this area were planted by me after school when I was a child, and they are now several decades old! They know tea like the back of their hand, and they can easily brew it!
Firstly, the local brewing method in Wuyi emphasizes “randomness”.
Randomly arrived, is this tea not difficult to drink no matter how you brew it? But one thing they remain steadfast in is their obsession with the lid bowl! On the table are all white porcelain covered bowls and purple clay pots, which are rare to find on earth because they exist in heaven.
The 110cc cover bowl is a permanent guest on the tea table. When you go to Wuyishan Tea Farm or Tea Factory to drink tea, you can hardly find a larger cover bowl.
Apart from unwavering loyalty to the lidded bowl, in other aspects, the main focus is on following one’s fate.
When holding a cup of tea in your hand, start with 8.3g, 9g, 10g, and reach a maximum of 15g. Regardless of the amount of tea or roasting heat, the 110cc lid bowl remains unchanged.
The people of Mount Wuyi also adopt a casual attitude when it comes to the time when the tea flavor concentration comes out of the soup. The speed of Mount Wuyi people making soup is two extremes, which is not just good. Of course, there are audience groups behind the length of sitting in the cup.
The drinking tradition of sitting in a cup is mostly due to the high threshold for drinking tea for a long time, which is also related to the local salty and spicy diet habits, as well as the smoking behavior of many tea makers. In addition, with age, taste is inevitably degraded, and high concentration is needed to meet the needs of taste buds.
However, it is more about the pursuit of the style of tea soup. In Mount Wuyi, “thick, fierce, evil, top” is an important indicator to judge whether a tea is good or not.
Quick serving is not only a pursuit of flavor, but also to meet and adapt to market demand. The strong and unpleasant taste of rock tea is not something that everyone can accept. Quick serving can reduce the concentration of tea and better meet the taste of most customers, in order to achieve the goal of closing deals. But it cannot be ruled out that the quick release soup is a cover for defective tea.
03 So many tricks, it’s not for your own good
In the tea circle, I have only seen about two kinds of flowing water. One is the tea making technique of Chaozhou Gongfu Tea, and the other is the scraping technique of Mount Wuyi. The S-shaped flowing water line is both dazzling and showing off, because I have learned this thing for several years, and every year it is pointless.
However, this is not just for scraping and playing with. The bubbles on the cup lid, whether caused by tea saponin or fluff, inevitably have an odor. Scraping off the foam will make the taste and aroma of the tea clearer and more unified, making it easier for us to appreciate the beauty of Wuyi rock tea.
Smell the fragrance, but have you seen the watery fragrance of Mount Wuyi? When I first arrived, I didn’t understand. I thought that pouring water until it was full would overflow, and then the clear water would turn into yellow tea juice. This not only affected the separation of tea and water, but also made it unsightly. The lid of the cup was also used to smell it, and the temperature also decreased. Later, I found out that they were not inferior to this. This was the confidence given by Rock Tea!
Smelling the fragrance of water is not only for enjoyment, but also because there are many ways in the fragrance of water! It can smell maturity, aroma type, clarity, mountain range, storage, and get a glimpse of the whole picture. Some masters even know if too much fertilizer has been applied as soon as they smell it.
I saw it in the review, but I was a regular visitor in Mount Wuyi. When I came to drink tea, I first set up several bowls and then set up a spoon. I didn’t know that I wanted you to pick up the bowl and scoop up the tea!
The spoon for dividing tea soup is not its primary function, but for smelling the aroma. The spoon soaked in the soup bowl is extremely fragrant, especially the back of the spoon is a gathering place for aroma, which often makes you addicted!
Tea sipping is a skill that everyone in Mount Wuyi can master. Tea rolls in the mouth and makes a sound. You can’t miss any corner. Tea soup invades your taste buds. Let’s enjoy the delicious Wuyishan rock tea! You may say that making noise while drinking tea is so impolite! But they only care about the tea soup.
They, who share weal and woe with Wuyi Rock Tea, never stop all year round. They prepare materials and patrol the mountains before the spring tea season, followed by the day and night spring tea season, review and pile up, round after round of roasting, and then busy packaging and listing.
It is enough for them to make tea and sell it. It is not important to have a sense of ceremony when making tea. However, the seemingly imperceptible way of making tea on the tea table makes us feel “the beauty of tea soup”, “the beauty of aroma”, and “the beauty of craft” to the greatest extent. The art of tea soup is also the art of living in Mount Wuyi.
It is to make a cup of balanced tea soup, or to make Wuyi local flavor. In the essence of tea, it is enough to make a good tea soup. But then again, who can enjoy tea better than Mount Wuyi people!