Thanks for these links. This blog is obviously one to check out. I've read that gongfu brewing is a recent phenomenon, though most people on this forum would agree that it produces good results. I found these comments on how flavour relates to quality to be especially interesting:LeoFox wrote: ↑Thu Jul 29, 2021 10:13 pmhttps://tillermantea.net/2017/12/taste/
https://tillermantea.net/2018/01/margins/
"But how are the limitations of language to be overcome when discussing flavor? The answer is found in experience. The more experience one has at tasting, the clearer, and more accurate the identification of flavors become. It’s like the answer to that old joke “How do I get to Carnegie Hall.” Practice, practice, practice. With practice, and as one becomes better at identifying the various flavors in tea, one also finds that there is increasing agreement with others as to what constitutes good tea. And this brings us directly to the issue of assessing quality.
The next obstacle to scale is: “what does quality mean?” Although we may be able to determine the flavor of a given tea objectively, how do we decide whether this flavor is better or worse than other flavors; what standards are used? Here I introduce the observation that all standards of quality are culturally rooted and are culturally relative. That is, to be meaningful, every evaluation must be grounded in a cultural context. In this manner, it makes sense to say Bach is a better composer for organ than Bruckner, even if one prefers Bruckner (a wild stretch for sure, but possible I suppose.) But it makes no sense to say that Western classical music is better than Chinese classical music even if we do have a preference for one over the other for the two are products of entirely different cultural contexts. Further, the fact that culture is a social construct does not confer license to claim that quality is a subjective thing. For standards of quality to be subjective, culture would need to be an individual construct as opposed to collective one; and it is not. .
We also can see now that although quality and preference may influence one another, essentially they are independent concepts. They are manifestly different things. As such preference, which is a subjective stance toward a product, in this case tea, cannot serve to make quality evaluations of tea. We cannot contend that the quality of a tea is in the eye of the beholder. We like what we like but that fact doesn’t make what we like good."
These are interesting observations. Even if you have a lot of experience drinking tea and know what you like, if you don't know what is the standard of quality for a particular culture, you may very well prefer Bruckner to Bach. (I like Beethoven, Schubert, Telemann, and Purcell, but acknowledge that Bach is the better composer.) And while preference will ultimately determine which teas you buy, I'd like to get an idea of what, according to Taiwanese culture, are some really good high mountain oolongs. Ultimately, I'll probably end up buying what I like, but I want to know what is objectively good tea, if such a thing exists.
The discussion of tea vendor profits is also illuminating. Even when I've dealt with farmers directly, prices have been about the same, though at least I know, or hope, that the money is going to the farmer.