The best action to keep your mouth alive in the present moment is to grab fresh food, especially in the rapidly recovering spring when everything is coming back to life. If you wander around the mountains, you will encounter countless Wang Baochuan digging wild vegetables. He is not guarding the cold cave, but only for the taste of spring.
In Mount Wuyi, Qingming pastry, spring bamboo shoots, and flower cake are full of seasonal temptations from their names. In this hot spring tea season, green tea and white tea have also started a competition for fresh food. It must be the first taste bomb of this year.
Who doesn’t strive for spring with such a beautiful and colorful scenery? Only rock tea.
No.1
Why doesn’t rock tea have the first sip of spring?
The tea season in Mount Wuyi has come to an end. In the past month, the tea fragrance of the whole city is almost 24 hours from day to night. Rock tea also competes for spring. What is indisputable is the spring that is carried out in the mouth in that season.
In the early years, the production cycle was extended due to the limitations of production conditions. The entire production process, from picking, withering (drying), making green (shaking and standing), frying green, rolling, baking, picking, re baking, to stacking, was almost entirely completed by manual labor from beginning to end.
Taking the later stage of picking as an example, Lin Fuquan recorded in the chapter on rock tea picking in “The Production, Manufacturing, and Marketing of Wuyi Tea” that the tea picking work is generally composed of 16 sorting tea workers and 4 re picking workers. In terms of work efficiency, those with poor skills can pick 4 screens of semi dry tea per day, while technically proficient picking workers can complete 7 screens of work per day (6 frying pans per screen for semi dry tea weigh about 35 pounds).
No matter how skilled the artificial technology is, the entire production process still needs to last for several months, which will rub shoulders fiercely with spring.
Nowadays, with the successive emergence of rolling machines, shaking drums, automatic dryers, and color sorting machines, production conditions have improved from manual to mechanical, and production efficiency can be said to have skyrocketed. However, the current season of rock tea still cannot catch up with the opportunity of spring for foodies, which is determined by the special production process of rock tea and its proud temperament.
In terms of production technology, by the time it reaches the picking standard for open face harvesting, it is already approaching the end of spring, not to mention the annealing time required for it under various fully heated tempering. Freshly baked rock tea may not necessarily be on top, but it will definitely be on fire. Rock tea: “My kindness and sense of responsibility urge me not to follow the trend of spring
On the surface, it’s a cup of tea, but behind the scenes, it’s a fire
From the perspective of the personality of rock tea itself, its growth environment and initial production are like the nine-year compulsory education it receives, with enough ink in its belly and various microbial enzymes in their most active period, full of enthusiasm and eagerness to try.
In the early years, there was a process of water roasting, which involved sacrificing as little as possible the contents of the tea while destroying enzymes and preventing them from inducing the tea to take a wrong path. Afterwards, the tea itself needed a “post ripening” stage of half a life, in other words, it was exiled to time for conversion in an appropriate storage environment.
This stage of “running away for half a life” is very important for tea. Tea leaves that are roasted directly without going through this stage will have a fixed quality, and whether they are good or bad will be difficult to handle in the later stage. It is a trend of tea production that can be seen at a glance.
The appropriate tea leaves that have undergone the transition from post ripening stage can be seen from the clarity of the soup that they are no longer confused and chaotic. The degree of roasting in the later stage only considers personal higher and market demand.
Therefore, the personality and craftsmanship of rock tea itself are not related to the spring of that year, and even worse, good products will be seen again the next year.
No.2 The freshness of rock tea does not live in spring, Where is that?
In fact, it is not impossible to compete for the freshness of rock tea from the past. In the tea production stage of rock tea, there is a node called Maocha. At this time, it is its youthful and vibrant youth, and the fresh taste experience is very rich. The fried peach fragrance, passion fruit, mango fragrance, and osmanthus fragrance with a floral aroma bloom freely in the freshness of amino acids.
But beware, the freshly baked boy is like a hot and spicy landmine battle, leading you to a dazzling world of flowers and fruits. After experiencing various compensations such as overheating, ulceration, foaming, and throat locking, if you insist on trying something new, I won’t stop you.
There is no need to compete for the freshness of rock tea, because even after experiencing four seasons, its freshness will not fade away. Its long shelf life allows you to remain fresh and fresh when its optimal drinking period begins. Compared to hairy tea, it has less negative compensation and more comprehensive characteristics.
Light heat can bring a more direct and refreshing experience. Although the amino acid content in tea with medium and sufficient heat is reduced, some free amino acids and other umami substances such as theaflavins and gallic acid can also be coordinated with good mountain charm to create a refreshing feeling.
The shelf life of rock tea is always defined by a specific time range, and its freshness can even be found in some aged teas that have been aged for many years.
10 years of natural aged tea color
Every tea has its own life trajectory, what if it misses the blooming of spring? It has enough substrate to even support its vitality for a lifetime!