Not everyone can walk out of a barber shop with a smile, and even tea trees may not. Pruning the tree crown is a big or small matter for tea trees. It doesn’t mean that if it’s cut, people won’t be able to see it, nor does it mean that the air in higher places will be fresher than on the plateau after leaving the bushes.
Different mountain owners have their own set of experiences regarding the attitude towards leaving bushes. Therefore, whenever we follow the mountain owner to the tea mountain, we always ask a few questions: “Do your tea trees have bushes left?” “Why do you leave them?” “What is the difference between leaving bushes and not leaving them
Compared to directly discussing the benefits or drawbacks of staying in the jungle, in the eyes of many people, whether or not to stay in the jungle is more of a purposeful and functional choice.
If we talk about the expression of tea flavor, the trees that leave clusters and the trees that are normally pruned have two different directions in terms of flavor production. If we further divide them, rock tea and white tea will have different interpretations.
Or simply from the perspective of mountain field management, the practice of retaining vegetation may be slightly more labor-saving than not retaining vegetation, as labor costs always account for the majority in this industry
When we visited the tea mountains in various production areas of rock tea and white tea, we heard many rumors about leaving and not leaving tea. Let’s learn from them and sell them now!
01. The charm of Liucong, you should know!
1. Enrich flavor expression
On the side of rock tea, the practice of leaving clumps often comes with the hope of creating a clump flavor in the tea soup. Cong flavor is undoubtedly a representation of high-end taste in the aesthetic taste of rock tea. Many mountain owners have taken advantage of the unique mountain background to leave tea trees in the Cong, and have launched many good teas that make people frequently pluck grass.
Cinnamon leaves clusters in peach tree beds
Congwei is a complex and comprehensive flavor that encompasses moss, woody, brown rice, and zongzi leaf flavors, rather than a single presentation. To obtain the scent of a tree by preserving it, it is a long-term investment that requires patience. The combination of tree crown preservation and tree age is indispensable.
The cluster flavor comes from the woody aroma of the tea tree’s own branches and woody parts, as well as the aroma of tea fibers and attachments, combined with the surrounding ecological atmosphere.
The branches of the old plum bushes are covered in moss
As the tree ages, the canopy of the tea tree grows larger, and the lower part of the tea tree receives less light. Moss grows between the trunks, becoming one of the participating guests in the expression of flavor.
Of course, there is also a situation where a tea tree of the same age has reached the state of an old tree. Sometimes, it may have been pruned a little or harvested bald last year, and even the size of the crown has not changed excessively, but the clumpy smell disappears.
In addition to leaving clumps, there is also a semi pruned way. Ye Haibin found that fully trimmed cinnamon was not enough to highlight the high-end flavor of rock tea. After trying various states of raw materials, he felt that cinnamon with a certain age had the best overall comprehensive state in the semi pruned and partially pruned state.
Cinnamon managed by a semi clump
In terms of white tea, the concept of “congwei” is still rare. Let’s put it aside for now, but in the circle of white tea, they have their own alternative related expressions: wilderness or natural farming methods.
This is slightly different from rock tea, where the main change is only the tea tree. People subjectively control the maintenance of the tea tree crown, and occasionally intervene when the moss grows too much. The retention of white tea bushes is more of a subsidiary task under large-scale mountain management – not interfering with the growth of tea trees.
Zhenghe Town, Qianzhen, Nanyaoxia Old Wilderness Wild Vegetable Tea Garden
According to the expression of most white tea plantation owners, they have a natural and free to grow attitude towards the entire plantation, not just ignoring the growth of the tea tree crown, but also disregarding the entire plantation.
Zhenghe Deep Pit Tang Song Ancient Tea Garden Fu’an Dabai Wilderness Old Tree
Tea trees and people only meet a few times during the tea season. The central idea is that the fewer human activities that tea trees encounter, the better, and the less human intervention, the better. It is believed that this type of tea will produce wild game and have a more delicate water texture.
If it is an ancient tree, the more it is preserved, the more flavorful it becomes. If it is used as a single plant, the complexity and individual expression of white tea flavor can also be explored.
2. Transform “superficiality” into sophistication
In the context of rock tea heavy water seeking fragrance, Huang Guanyin appears less likable. As a highly fragrant, high-yielding, and stress resistant excellent variety of Huangguanyin, they do not like the variety characteristics of Huangguanyin, believing that its aroma is “demonic”, not high-end, and easy to get greasy when drinking.
Leave a clump of Huangguanyin at Dakengkou
Driven by this phenomenon, many mountain owners have coincidentally chosen to “remove the yellow Guanyin”. Through various means to weaken the variety characteristics of Huangguanyin, such as planting in the core mountain field, detailed treatment in the roasting process, advantages in tree age, and clump management, we aim to make Huangguanyin’s “superficiality” more advanced.
Mao’er Stone leaves a clump of yellow Guanyin trees, with dense moss covering the trunks
In the Huangguanyin Collection made before the Rock Tea Classroom, the owner of the mountain field, Ye Song, chose to leave Huangguanyin in the bushes. The high aroma of Huangguanyin will weaken after being left in the bushes, becoming a unique type of tea and instead becoming a highlight.
02. The benefits of pruning, you should also know!
1. Standardized tea garden management
From the perspective of standardized tea garden management alone, the benefits of pruning are very obvious. We can count a lot of them, such as promoting nutritional growth, increasing yield, prolonging the economic age of tea trees, regulating tea tree picking, and having a good control effect on tender pests and diseases.
Taking the most significant point as an example, many people will “topping” tea trees to change the top advantage of tea tree growth and prevent “individual students” from being too prominent and causing confusion in tree crown growth. By manually pruning and changing the strong growing top to lateral branches, expanding the tree crown and increasing the number of branches, the yield of tea trees can be increased.
The advantage in terms of yield is that the tea trees in the bushes cannot provide it. Many times, Teacher Y will suffer from pulling out the grass, but many good teas cannot be shared with everyone due to lack of quantity. It’s really lacking! Helpless, I can only eat ‘alone’.
The yield of tea trees decreases after leaving clumps, the difficulty of harvesting increases with the growth of years, and the difficulty of the process of tea tree leaf growth varies greatly
At this moment, ‘standard’ can straighten its own body, and the flavor is indeed lacking a bit of independent flavor, but it cannot resist my convenience, efficiency, and standardization!
2. More standardized sample submission for competition
If we talk about the quality of tea itself, the tea leaves produced from trimmed plateau tea are more standardized and meet the standards for competition.
The rock tea competition is another big difference, as the evaluation of white tea places great emphasis on appearance score. From a certain perspective, appearance standards are an important indicator of meeting the competition conditions.
2024 518 Tibetan Tea Festival and White Tea Appreciation Conference Tribute Eyebrow Group Tea Samples
As we watched throughout the 518 Tibetan Tea Festival, we learned that the evaluation criteria for white tea were comprehensively considered, and the best white tea that truly reached the level of museum collection was selected impartially. So, in the eyes of expert reviewers, “standards” are very important.
Even though tea trees in clusters may leave some growth space at the beginning, they are relatively densely planted for later tea gardens. The sprouting speed of tea trees near the ground and at the top is very different. Sometimes the top buds and leaves are already peony grade, while the bottom tea buds are just sprouting, which makes it difficult to control the picking grade and meet the standards for sample delivery.
Another fatal flaw is still lack of quantity. Everyone knows to some extent the degree of internal competition in the “love to choose” sample of the White Tea Doucha Competition. Without even measuring it, what else can I choose? At this point, the advantage of high-quality and high-yield plateau tea gardens emerged, hey! Choose as many standards as you want, and choose as you please!
In the final analysis, Liucong is still a functional choice. There is a need for flavor exploration, and if you want to create a high-end product line, then Liucong. If you want to sell in large quantities or send samples according to competition standards, then standardize pruning.