The 2019 Ding Gu Da Fang competition

Non-oxidized tea
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luchayi
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Thu Apr 18, 2019 12:38 am

Just few days ago there was the 6th edition of a competition in She county (Huangshan) to select the best Dafang green tea of the year.
This tea is really similar to the Longjing and it has a long history because it originates in Ming dynasty.
I will speak more about its history in the future... for now I hope you will enjoy the beautiful pictures of this event to celebrate the Ding Gu Da Fang tea.



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pedant
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Sun May 12, 2019 7:50 pm

nice pics, @luchayi! thanks for sharing.

i look forward to hearing more about the tea's history and what sounds like a relatively recent competition (only 6 years?).

i've never had dafang green tea. how does the price compare to longjing of equivalent quality?
luchayi
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Tue May 14, 2019 3:05 am

It was a gift so I don't know the price, but if you buy the best handmade quality fresh just after the harvest you can pay also 80usd 100gr.
You can find it more cheaper, but I never had a similar quality from any tea shop. The tea of the competition's winner was sold at asmost 1500usd 100g.
For the history I hope to find time next month to speak about it in detail...
By the way it's a great tea!
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tjkdubya
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Sun Sep 22, 2019 9:37 pm

Here's one specimen of Dinggu Dafang I tried recently, from a friend specializing in Anhui/Zhejiang fully handcrafted greens, and in particular trying to revive Ming-era styles. I don't remember the exact price but it's at the $1/g level for mainland retail.

For context, this producer is zeroing in on farmers willing to collaborate with him on everything from harvesting to processing techniques and iterating on them, the aim being to produce teas approaching specific stylistic ideals. From identifying a new farmer partner to a product being available is a 3-year initial process. Sounds very niche but the mainland market is big enough to sustain many focused efforts like this. Margin is razor thin, competition is high, and target customers for this kind of stuff are very picky about both quality and price.

Given all that, $1/g is sounding pretty cheap for this level of effort. I'm sure, plenty of cheaper, still high-quality, stuff from more commercial efforts, and as the OP notes, way more expensive stuff where your money is paying for many things besides the tea and the craft and the effort.

Which is to say, it's possible $1/g can get you truly excellent tea, and support people doing great things. It's also very possible and likely $1/g can get you an overpriced tea far from organically produced...
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tjkdubya
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Sun Sep 22, 2019 9:40 pm

luchayi wrote:
Tue May 14, 2019 3:05 am
It was a gift so I don't know the price, but if you buy the best handmade quality fresh just after the harvest you can pay also 80usd 100gr.
You can find it more cheaper, but I never had a similar quality from any tea shop. The tea of the competition's winner was sold at asmost 1500usd 100g.
For the history I hope to find time next month to speak about it in detail...
By the way it's a great tea!
Thank you for sharing. I would love to take a look at what you've learned.
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