Taiwan Tea Harvest - Winter 2019
Every tea vendor would like to claim that each harvest is better than whatever has preceded it. However no honest vendor can claim that of the 2019 winter harvest; the teas range from poor to good, with far more in the former category than the latter one. The weather was extremely dry resulting a late harvest of mixed quality. Even the good teas lack the complexity one finds in the best of years.
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Ethan Kurland
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I appreciate & am grateful for Tillerman's honest candor. I hope he is not punished for it.
Unfortunately, many consumers don't reward honesty. For example, I've advised people who want green, high-mountain oolong (gaoshan) from this Winter that they would do much better getting gaoshan from the previous Spring. Properly packaged & stored Spring tea is just as good now as it was half a year ago. Nonetheless, many people think that now is the time for new Winter tea; so, rather than take my advice & buy Shanlinxi or Dayuling from me from last Spring, they will go to another vendor who tells them what they want to hear (the lie, "The latest Winter gaoshan is excellent).
Other advice tea lovers might take is to try some tea that they have not tried before, such as Oriental Beauty and/or to take the best of a season (in my opinion, some excellent black teas of this Winter taste great & are very good value for money).
I see some similarities between the cigar business & tea business: overly emphasized: variety (too much); acquiring product that is not good now but may be great later (think Pu-erh); accessories; stories about product that are more interesting than mediocre products that the stories are tied to;....
(Most cigar smokers will die with many butane lighters, humidors, cigar cutters, & hundreds of cigars that they did not need, use, nor have anyone to leave them to. Some like me, will stop smoking & have years to look at what he has amassed & wonder how schizoid he is. Who was that guy who needed 2 each of six different kinds of cigar cutters when one can poke a hole into the end of a cigar with almost anything?) What will happen to tea drinkers' collections of terrible teas that did not become wonderful while being aged, teaware,....?
A good tea vendor will tell the truth & have some good product to sell in stock always; a good customer will not resent being reminded that there are limitations. If people want to believe that every tea that they like will get better & better every season, they should look at the fires in Australia to see whether man is completely the master of nature.
I suggest that gratitude for nature being kind to us should be expressed by buying more than a tiny bit of what we know is good; &, that weo leave room in our cupboards other good teas when they come. (They may not come soon, but our cupboards should not filled with samples of teas which mostly will be disappointing.) When a season cannot give all that we want, let us enjoy what it does give us that season that is excellent & what was excellent from previous seasons.
Unfortunately, many consumers don't reward honesty. For example, I've advised people who want green, high-mountain oolong (gaoshan) from this Winter that they would do much better getting gaoshan from the previous Spring. Properly packaged & stored Spring tea is just as good now as it was half a year ago. Nonetheless, many people think that now is the time for new Winter tea; so, rather than take my advice & buy Shanlinxi or Dayuling from me from last Spring, they will go to another vendor who tells them what they want to hear (the lie, "The latest Winter gaoshan is excellent).
Other advice tea lovers might take is to try some tea that they have not tried before, such as Oriental Beauty and/or to take the best of a season (in my opinion, some excellent black teas of this Winter taste great & are very good value for money).
I see some similarities between the cigar business & tea business: overly emphasized: variety (too much); acquiring product that is not good now but may be great later (think Pu-erh); accessories; stories about product that are more interesting than mediocre products that the stories are tied to;....
(Most cigar smokers will die with many butane lighters, humidors, cigar cutters, & hundreds of cigars that they did not need, use, nor have anyone to leave them to. Some like me, will stop smoking & have years to look at what he has amassed & wonder how schizoid he is. Who was that guy who needed 2 each of six different kinds of cigar cutters when one can poke a hole into the end of a cigar with almost anything?) What will happen to tea drinkers' collections of terrible teas that did not become wonderful while being aged, teaware,....?
A good tea vendor will tell the truth & have some good product to sell in stock always; a good customer will not resent being reminded that there are limitations. If people want to believe that every tea that they like will get better & better every season, they should look at the fires in Australia to see whether man is completely the master of nature.
I suggest that gratitude for nature being kind to us should be expressed by buying more than a tiny bit of what we know is good; &, that weo leave room in our cupboards other good teas when they come. (They may not come soon, but our cupboards should not filled with samples of teas which mostly will be disappointing.) When a season cannot give all that we want, let us enjoy what it does give us that season that is excellent & what was excellent from previous seasons.
Last edited by Ethan Kurland on Wed Jan 15, 2020 12:46 am, edited 1 time in total.
very well spoken @Ethan Kurland
+1
Interestingly, I never really liked Baozhong, yet this year I have been given two that I found were quite excellent and comparable in depth to a high mountain tea. Very surprising. Maybe luck.
Also lucky me I am still stocked up on last year's winters harvest, which was and still is very good, confirming what @Ethan Kurland says about quality tea being able to be stored for over a year, without loosing flavours.
Sipping on Tillerman’s Laoshi 2019 Winter DongDing. When I first received it I was on the east coast, away from home where teas just don’t taste the same. The air, the humidity, the ambiance,the commotion or a combination of those factors change how teas taste, even though I’m using the same kyusu and same bottled water as in LA. Anyway, when I first tried his winter DD I thought it tasted a little bit lighter than last years, so I just used more leaf and a little more time steeping. The results were very pleasant, different than the previous year, but then I thought it was because I was away. Now that I’m back home though I’m still finding it very good. Yes, not as complex and the wet leaf aroma is somewhat muted, but I’m enjoying it none the less. Modifying how a tea is steeped to fine tune the results in this case has worked out really well.
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Ethan Kurland
- Vendor
- Posts: 1027
- Joined: Thu Oct 12, 2017 1:01 am
- Location: Boston
- Contact:
Nice to get these wise reminders. It may take even more than a couple of sessions to get good results, but unless tea is truly bad one should be able to prepare an enjoyable brew eventually. Thanks for reminding us not to give up on good leaves.
Appreciate the honesty...Tillerman wrote: ↑Tue Jan 14, 2020 3:40 pmEvery tea vendor would like to claim that each harvest is better than whatever has preceded it. However no honest vendor can claim that of the 2019 winter harvest; the teas range from poor to good, with far more in the former category than the latter one. The weather was extremely dry resulting a late harvest of mixed quality. Even the good teas lack the complexity one finds in the best of years.
I do have a question though for you guys in the know.
Would you say the lower elevation / more budget stuff would also be negatively impacted by this weather as much?
I ask because i am looking to stock up on some nice jin xuan for daily drinking... the winter 2019 stuff is more prevalent (teafromtaiwan) but there are some places with spring 2019 options...