Wednesday, December 12, 2007
Posted by Miss Neddy at 08:00 AM | Comments (1) | Permalink
Categories: Tea Related

Tea leaves can vary substantially in price, even for the same kind of tea. In my local supermarket, there are shelves of teas, and i can buy Longjing (Dragon’s Well), Tie Kuan Yin (Iron Goddess of Mercy), Pu’er or Jasmine tea for well under a dollar per 100gm. But the Tie Kuan Yin I drink costs more than US$80 per 100gm, and the best Longjing can set you back US$100 per 100gm. Jasmine tea too can be bought as cheaply as you might buy bread, or it can cost as much, weight for weight, as silver.

So why the huge discrepancy in price? A complete answer would be very complex, but I will try to explain the main factors:

1. Labour
Cheap teas are grown in large quantities usually on the plains or at low altitudes, where the weather is hotter and more arid. They are plucked by machines much like combine harvesters are used for harvesting corn or wheat, so twigs, diseased or dead leaves and other stuff are indiscriminately collected. The good tea plantations are in the mountains, and some are located at altitudes higher than 1000 feet above sea level.  The leaves are plucked by hand, usually by girls who expertly select only good leaves and leaf buds; depending on the kind of tea, it can be just the bud or the “heart”, one bud and one leaf, or one bud and two leaves. The work is fast and furious, as leaf-plucking starts before dawn and usually cannot continue much further than late morning, as the fragrance of the leaves will dissipate under the sun’s heat.

The leaves are then left to dry in the sun, a process known as withering (萎凋) . The leaves are then massaged and rolled about to bruise the leaves for better oxidation. This is done by a tea master who may be a permanent staff at the plantation, or - more commonly - a freelancer who is hired by tea plantations when his services are required. After that the tea is roasted on a specially made wok to prevent further oxidation and to dry the leaves out thoroughly. The heat of the wok cannot be too hot, and the “roasting” process is more gradual and temperate than the term suggests. In fact, the roasting may be conducted in a series of steps, such as “second green” 二青、“third green” 三青、“luminous drying” 辉干 and “furnace drying” 烘干.

All this expertise and work contributes to the price of the tea. For some flower teas, while the tea leaves may not be of optimal quality, the sheer quantity of flowers required will drive up the price. A good jasmine tea may use up three to five times the weight of the tea leaves in flowers to infuse it sufficiently, and good jasmine flowers don’t come cheap.

2. Rarity
Tea bushes planted at higher altitudes are necessarily more sparse, as the soil in the mountains is rockier than the plains. A large plantation may produce a few hundred kilograms of tea leaves per harvest, smaller ones may produce less than 50 kilograms. And actual harvesting may be conducted only twenty to thirty times a year. The seasons play a part as well, as certain teas are only harvested in spring, or spring and autumn. More rarely is a tea harvested in summer, as the weather is considered too hot, and the tea will taste “singed”. Even more rarely are winter-harvested teas, although I have had the privilege to try a Dong Pian 冬片 (Winter Flakes) which was rich in flavour and had an elusive, milky fragrance. Spring teas are prized for their fragrance, autumn teas for their taste.

Another factor related to rarity is the fact that many teas are inextricably associated with particular location. The best Longjing must come from Hangzhou, the best Tie Kuan Yin from the Wuyi Mountains, the best Pu’er from Yunnan and so forth. Since only so many tea plantations can exist in a particular locale, these tea plantations can afford to charge a premium for their tea leaves. I won’t say if this perception is right or wrong, as I’ve had some excellent teas which originated from outside their “accepted” locations, but given that soil quality, climate and other factors can affect the tea leaves markedly, tea connoisseurs are likely able to tell the difference.

3. Reputation
Locations such as Wuyi Mountains and Alishan are famed for their teas, and even more specifically, there are tea plantations in these locations that are more admired than others. These plantations are able to charge a premium for their tea leaves, just as famous cocoa bean or coffee plantations do. Being, as it were, a “front-end user”, I cannot comment too much about this, although I do know my usual tea suppliers cultivate long and intimate relationships with certain plantations so that they are able to get first pick of the harvests and even give suggestions (read: orders) on how the tea master should process the leaves.

4. Other Factors
If I were honest, I would name this section “sheer stupidity in human nature”, but since I have been foolish enough myself to part with large amounts of money for a tea I love, I must be a little more circumspect. Pu’er is one major casualty in the escalating price wars for good tea leaves, mainly because Pu’er can be kept for long periods of time. With a booming economy in China, there are now many more people with sufficient disposable income to pay a premium for good tea. This means a drop in supply for exported teas, which drives up the price. 10 years ago, I was able to buy a decent cake of seven-year-old Pu’er for around US$5; today that price has more than quadrupled. That’s just for the lower grades; older Pu’er tea can go up hundreds or even thousands of dollars for one cake. Many buyers are speculating in Pu’er as if they were shares or antiques, which is bad news for genuine tea drinkers.

So there you are. This is actually just a brief overview of the many factors, which I have gathered in bits and pieces through conversations with tea masters, tea merchants and tea farmers. A full answer would probably be more the length of an academic journal article, which I admit I don’t have the qualifications nor the knowledge to write.

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