Friday, February 15, 2008
Posted by 醉茶生 at 09:16 AM | Comments (0) | Permalink
Categories: Tea Da Hong Pao

The Taiwanese tea company, Tenren, maintain a line of teas called Cháwáng 茶王 or “King tea”.  These are ginseng-flavoured teas and the word “King” is used to mark them out as being worthy of particular attention:  the 913 King’s tea is TenRen’s best selling tea, but it has no meaning beyond a marketing ploy.  The tea is a around 50% oxidised and 50% roasted.  The flavour of ginseng is detectable, but neither oppressive nor bitter.  The tea itself is intensely fragrant with a sweet aftertaste, but the leaves do not really tolerate more than four to five infusions.

There are a number of trees to which title “king of tea trees” 茶樹之王 has been given.  The most famous is not a single tree, but a grove of five trees called Dàhóngpáo 大紅袍 “Big red robe”, growing in the face of a cliff called Jiǔlóngycháo 九龍巢 “Nest of Nine Dragons” on Mount Ｗǔyí 武夷巖 in Fújiàn 福健 province, southern China.  A thin stream of water flows continuously from a crack in the rock face, to fall gracefully on either side of the grove.  The origins are unclear and according to one legend, this tea were used by a scholar as an aid to study; upon passing the imperial examinations, he cast his red scholar’s robe over the trees and in gratefulness, carved these three words into the rock.  In ages past, the leaves harvested from these tea trees were reserved solely for the use of the Emperor and his household.  Leaves from these five trees are considered so valuable that the stone steps leading up to the grove were destroyed and a constant guard mounted at the foot of the cliff.  In 1998, 20g of this tea was sold at auction for 15,680,000 renminbi (over twenty thousand US dollars).  Descendants of the original five trees up to five generations removed may also use the title Dahongpao, but descendants farther removed than that use the title Xiaohongpao 小紅袍.  In common with most teas from Mount Wuyi, Dahongpao is usually made into a heavily roasted, heavily fermented oolong.  Dahongpao tea is a good to average tea: it is very dark and smoky, and may carry with it the flavour of dried red dates.  The high cost of this tea is due largely its rarity and historical associations, and not to its quality.

Ｍěnghǎi district 勐海 in Yúnnán Province 雲南, has been the site of pilgrimage for tea afficionados around the world since the 1950’s when large untouched stands of twisted old tea trees four to five metres tall were first described by Chinese botanists, who declared that they had found the birthplace and origin of tea.  The largest of these trees is called the King of Tea Trees 茶王樹 and was discovered in 1961.  It is 32 metres tall, more than three metres in circumference, and is estimated to be around 1,700 years old.  The tree today receives pilgrims not only from within China, but from Japan and Korea as well.

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