The Fourth Tea-Picking Festival of Anji White Tea kicked off on April 09, 2012

It is good news for both the tea merchants and tea drinkers that the fresh Anji White Tea is now available on the market.

According to the local tea farmers, this year’s tea-picking festival has attracted a lot of tea merchants as well as regular customers to the Anji County in the north of Zhejiang Province. The first fresh teas picked during the spring time are always the favorite to both tea merchants and tea drinkers since the quality of the spring tea is the best of all. In order to buy the first fresh spring tea, businessmen come to Anji from places far away and there are even people from Northeast of China like Liaoning Province.

Anji White Tea is not a variety of white tea. It is actually a green tea. The fresh leaves of Anji white tea trees changes from white color in spring to green color in summer. Tea-pickers will pluck the white fresh leaves in spring in order to make the famous Anji White Tea. The fresh leaves will be processed with the green tea processing method, and therefore it becomes a green tea.

As more and more people like drinking this tea, the production volume of Anji White Tea has reached 1000 tons in 2011. Local people also take measures to protect their high quality Anji White Tea against the fake ones. First, they create a “mother-son trademark” system, which enhances the brand image of Anji White Tea and helps people to get the origin-traceable high quality tea as well. Second, a new Anji White Tea Industry Alliance has already been established during this year’s tea picking festival in order to strengthen the competitiveness of Anji White Tea.

Anji Baicha will be soon available at tea-adventure.com

As far as health and food safety are concerned, nowadays organic food has become more and more popular in people’s daily life. Organic tea is not an exception.

Organic tea is produced without using chemical pesticides or fertilizers. And the  tea turns out to be healthier and it provides better taste than normal tea. Here are some reasons why organic tea should be the No.1 tea-drinking choice.

1. A natural and healthy growing environment is the basic condition for producing high quality tea. So organic tea plantations are usually at remote areas where there is no industry and pollution. Here is an example, a tree plantation named 3H-Sender is  famous for producing high-quality organic tea Tieguanyin. It’s located in a remote village called Daishan, in Zhangzhou, Fujian, China. It’s surrounded by green mountains and it normally takes people about several hours to drive there. The location ensures a good and non-polluted environment for organic tea. At the meantime, the processing does no harm to the natural environment. So producing organic tea is a win-win choice.

2. Organic tea has a much higher standard of planting and manufacturing processes than normal tea. A lot of human labor instead of machine work is involved in the process of planting, fertilizing, weeding, picking and final processing. Any chemical pesticides or fertilizers are refused. Tea farmers use natural compost instead such as manure of animals. That makes sure that the tea has a healthy and good taste. Also, anything related to pollution should not be involved in tea producing process.

3. One difference between organic tea and inorganic tea is that the flavor stays even after being brewed 8 to 10 times， while normal tea will be out of flavor after 3 or 4 times. So the flavor of organic tea is comparatively better.

4. As for health, organic tea is better than inorganic tea. Because of better and healthier environment, the organic compost used for processing the tea turns into various nutritious elements such as catechin, tea polysaccharide, tea polyphenols and various micro elments which are good to the human body.

In conclusion, compared with inorganic tea, organic tea has a higher quality according to strict processing principles. And it’s more beneficial to the human body.

So for a better environment, and a healthier life, organic tea is your best drinking choice. And we’d like to provide you with organic tea of high quality.

Tea News / Updated March 28, 2012

Where all tea was expected to be late this year, the sudden hot temperature changed this all.

The tea pickers are happy now because they can go to the high mountains and pick the first high quality fresh buds and leaves. Fortunately, the weather suddenly has become very suitable for the tea trees to grow recently since the Mid-March, with a lot of sunlight and rainfall. Therefore all the tea trees begin to contribute their fresh buds and leaves for processing. As a result, more and more green teas now are available in the market like the famous Spring Snail. The high quality Westlake Dragon Well will also be available soon. This first flush is very rare and therefore expensive (ranges start from at least 200 euro for half a kilo of this tea).

Other famous green teas like Monkey Chief and Yellow Mountain Maofeng will be later than Westlake Dragon Well and Spring Snail available in the market. The Monkey Chief is a big leaf variety, therefore the tea trees need more time to grow than other green teas. Normally, the availability of Monkey Chief will be at the end of April while the Yellow Mountain Maofeng will be available after the Qing Ming Festival (4th, April). This year we expect the Monkey Chief around the 15th of April.

However, this natural product depends on the weather circumstances. Rain season is approaching and we do expect the temperature to drop a number of degrees.If you’re interested in this first flush tea (mainly small buds), send us an e-mail. We can provide this tea per one kilo.

You may not be familiar with teas mentioned below but they all got their special and interesting names that you would like to know. In this article, you will know more about Chinese teas and the meanings of their names.

1. Name by Queen
Oriental Beauty Oolong Tea (Dong1Fang1Mei3Ren2)
This tea got a beautiful name because of Queen Victoria. The British tea businessmen presented this Oolong tea from Formosa (Taiwan) to Queen Victoria. She was amazed by the amber infusion and its mellow and sweet taste. Drinking this Oolong tea made her feel good. Although this tea had been already called ‘Pengfeng Tea’ in Taiwan (‘Pengfeng’ is a Taiwanese slang, which means brag), the Queen thought the name was not a good match to its characteristics of high quality. Because it was from Taiwan, she named it as ‘Oriental Beauty’. Since then, because of this beautiful name, this Taiwan Oolong tea has gained an increasing popularity around the world. So what we can learn from this story is: if you want to change something, you can simply change the name or just ask the Queen for help.

2. Name by Poet
Cactus Tea (Xian1Ren2Zhang3Cha2)
'Cactus Tea’ is a green tea. You may wonder why it is called ‘Cactus Tea’. Does it have something to do with the cactus? The answer is no. Although its Chinese name is ‘仙人掌茶' (‘仙人' means immortal, ‘掌'means palm and ‘茶' means tea. And ‘仙人掌' means cactus), the name of this tea only has something to do with ‘仙人' and ‘掌'. This tea has a long history which can be traced back to Tang Dynasty. 'Cactus Tea’ is also called ‘Jade Spring Cactus Tea’ for this tea was created by a famous monk of Jade Spring Temple in Hubei Province in Tang Dynasty (this monk was an enthusiast for tea and brewed the tea with the water from the Jade Spring River everyday. He is also a relative of Libai, the most renowned poet in Chinese history). Travelling to another famous temple located in Nanjing City, Jiangsu Province, the monk came across with Libai to whom he offered his hand-made tea as a gift (the tea didn’t have an official name yet at that moment). After drinking this tea, Libai liked it so much. With the tea’s appearance of palm-shape and its origin from the famous Jade Spring Temple (where Immortals live), Poet Libai named it ‘Immortal’s Palm Tea” with his imagination.

3. Name with Color
Anji White Tea (An1Ji1Bai2Cha2)
'Anji White Tea’ is from Anji County in the northern part of Zhejiang Province. At first sight of the name of this tea, you may think it is absolutely a white tea. However, it is a green tea. It is called ‘Anji White Tea’ because of its white fresh leaves which are picked from white tea trees (a special variety of Camellia Sinensis whose fresh leaves appear in white color during the spring time and gradually shift to green color when summer comes. Therefore tea farmers pick the white tea buds and leaves in spring). It is processed with a green tea method, it is therefore a green tea. Due to the slightly different processing methods, frying or baking, ‘Anji White Tea’ can be separated into Dragon-shaped tea or Phoenix-shaped tea (note: in Chinese culture, dragon represents boy while phoenix represents girl).

4. Name with Lucky Number
Qizi Cake Tea (Qi1Zi3Bing3Cha2)
'Qizi Cake Tea’ (Qi Zi Bing Cha) is a Puerh tea cake as well as a good-luck tea from Yunnan Province. Compressed tea like a tea cake makes tea shipping more convenient (especially during the Ancient Tea Route). Qi Zi Bing Cha literally means seven pieces of cake tea, 357g (7.7 Chinese tael) for each piece packed in paper and 7 pieces to one package packed with dry leaves of bamboo shoots. But why people from Yunnan like number 7 so much and pack seven cakes to one package? The reason is that seven is a lucky number, which represents good fortune and family union, in the minority culture of Yunnan Province.

Now, you may want to give a beautiful and reasonable name to some tea by yourself like Queen Victoria and poet Libai. And I am sure you can do it very well if you like drinking tea.

“This is the first time that Yongchun Buddha Hand’s sprouts have been sold to other province at such a large scale”, said excitedly a staff from the Agricultural Bureau of Yongchun County when mentioning about the quarantine certificate for these 100 thousand sprouts to Guangxi Province in the southwest of China.

These 100 thousand Yongchun Buddha Hand’s sprouts are purchased by a local Guangxi resident, Mr.Chen, who likes drinking tea and has a very decent knowledge about the Yongchun Buddha Hand Oolong tea.

In March last year, Mr.Chen contacted a manager of a tea company from Yongchun County online and he therefore learned more about Yongchun Buddha Hand black tea (Yongchun Buddha Hand black tea is made out of tender buds through a 100% fermentation processing, after which it obtains a mellow taste with characteristics of  both black tea and Oolong tea). Therefore Mr.Chen bought kilos of this black tea and falls in love with this special tea immediately after drinking it.

“If I can grow this tea in my hometown, I don’t need to buy it somewhere else”, said Mr.Chen. He both sees the good taste of Buddha Hand black (tastes better than local black teas) and its promising market prospects. Therefore he decided to offer free Buddha Hand tea sprouts to the local farmers and then ask them to sell the fresh leaves back to him for processing.

He then motivated the local farmers to assart about 20000 square meters’ mountainous area and went to Yongchun County to purchase 100 thousand Buddha Hand sprouts. According to Mr.Chen, there will be a great harvest a year later if planting these sprouts during the raining spring time.  

Note:
Yongchun County has a long history in tea production. It is the origin of the Yongchun Buddha Hand Oolong tea which is a semi-fermented tea.

A special tea set was presented to mark the Queen’s 60 years on the throne in the U.K on 06 February, 2012. The cup of this set is only 6mm tall and the teapot is only 14mm tall, so tiny that they can be balanced on a fingertip. This tea set is designed by artists Karen Griffiths and Peter Armstrong for fine china company Stokesay Ware. They say it is the smallest bone china tea set all over the world. Although tiny tea sets have been available in the U.S., they are usually made from porcelain. The set will also go on display for the first time at Birmingham's National Exhibition Centre as part of the Miniature event, showing miniature and dollhouse objects.

Often referred to as the “Wonder Tonic” and “Medicinal Tea”, Puerh tea has been well know in China for over 1700 years. Find more in this article about why Puerh tea is both popular and healthy…

Introduction
This article explores the health benefits of raw Puerh and why years storage causes the chemical composition to change making a healthier tea.

What is Puerh tea
Puerh tea is made out of the tea plants big leaves (Camellia sinensis) native to the southwest region of Yunnan Province, China. Because of the inherent qualities of these leaves, the tea does not lose its flavor with time like other teas. Instead, like wine, Puerh tea's flavor improves with each passing year (a post-fermentation process) becoming more complex and mellow. The fermentation is not only responsible for the mellow and earthy taste but also for the many acknowledged health benefits. Puerh tea is categorized into two types, namely raw Puerh or green Puerh, and cooked Puerh or ripened Puerh.

2.  Why is Puerh tea healthy?
Accounts on the health benefits and medical use of Puerh tea have been documented in various ancient scripts and famous books throughout Chinese history.

As Puerh tea is a nearly completely fermented tea, there are many beneficial substances created during the fermentation process like statin. Clinical trials have confirmed that statin decreases the incidence of major coronary and cerebrovascular events and this may be due to its hypolipidemic and anti-inflammatory effects. Other health-giving compounds existing in Puerh tea are catechins, which constitute 5-15% of the dry weight of Puerh tea (tea catechins are the major component of tea polyphenol, which are also mainly responsible for the bitterness of tea. That is why raw Puerh tastes rather bitter than cooked Puerh before being stored for years). Catechins are readily extracted from tea by hot water infusion.

Is aged raw Puerh the only healthy Puerh tea?
The researches show that it is the change in chemical composition that makes raw Puerh healthier to human bodies after years’ storage. During the storage of Raw Puerh, an important post-fermentation occurs owing to the yeasts and other fungi within the tea. Some of these microbes appear first, and others appear later. By altering the chemical composition of raw Puerh (certain amount of catechins in raw Puerh is transformed into other healthy substances which at the same time lowers the concentration of the catechins to a right amount for human health). They play a crucial role in developing sensory characteristics (not as bitter with smooth and soft taste) and its health benefits. Processing the tea differently results in different chemical constituents and the color of tea infusion. Different from the post-fermentation process of raw Puerh, the cooked Puerh undergoes an immediate wet-piling process to obtain the strong and earthy flavor. The concentration of catechins in cooked Puerh is not as high as that of raw Puerh after the wet-piling process. Therefore after years’ storage, the health-giving substances originated from cooked Puerh are not as many as those from raw Puerh.

Does the appearance of Puerh influence its health effects?
Puerh tea appears as either loose leaf style or compressed style. There is no evidence that the appearance of Puerh will influence its health effects. However, you can get a better aged loose Puerh than aged compressed Puerh after years’ storage, due to their different degree of exposure to the air. Loose tea may have had better exposure to oxygen during its storage, which results in the slightly different tastes between these two Puerh teas.

Conclusion
We can conclude that aged raw Puerh is healthier than young raw Puerh and cooked Puerh. People like drinking aged Puerh, not only for its health benefits but also for its unique character of constantly changing taste over every passing year…

Having a cup of raw Puerh tea everyday can be a great, healthy habit. 

The fresh Westlake Dragon Well green tea will be soon available in the tea market this year. Because of the snowing weather in Hangzhou area recently, the fresh tea leaves will not be picked and processed until the end of March or the beginning of April. Although it is a little later for this famous green tea’s availability in the market this year than previously (usually in the beginning of March), the snowing weather is good for the growing of the tea leaves.

This article explores the differences between raw and cooked puerh. Not only the color is different, as well the way of processing, the aging effect, the taste and even the origin of the leaves.

What is Raw Puerh tea？
Without much processing like green tea, raw Puerh should be post-fermented for several years before it obtains a very nice taste (however the leaves should be of high quality to achieve this result). Young raw Puerh is rather bitter, but can still has a full taste. The color of the dry leaf is a dark green and a bright yellow green infusion, which over years becomes darker and darker. Almost all raw Puerh teas appear in a cake (bing) shape, as well raw puerh loose-leaf variants, mini bricks and tuocha which are available on the market.

What is Cooked Puerh tea?
Cooked Puerh is kind of the young but’ ready to drink’ variant of the raw Puerh. This tea is aged already in a process compared to black teas. Compared to raw Puerh, cooked Puerh undergoes an extra wet piling process, therefore the taste of this tea could be similar to a eight year old raw Puerh (however, some Puerh lovers see the cooked Puerh as just a different kind of Puerh). Cooked Puerh has a strong but mild taste with an earthy flavor. The infusion and the wet leaf are all dark red, almost black. Cooked Puerh does ferment a little like raw Puerh but the difference in taste after some years will not be as drastic.

The differences between raw and cooked Puerh
General differences
The young raw Puerh is often a bit bitter but with long-lasting fragrance and aftertaste. The cooked Puerh, however has a strong, mild taste and distinctive earthy flavor from the beginning. Cooked Puerh does not have to age first. Raw Puerh needs time to age (storing in a proper place without sunlight and rain). After being stored for years (namely the post-fermentation process), the appearance and taste of the raw Puerh changes and will no longer be bitter. Since Puerh drinkers wanted to find another way as well for commercial reasons, the recipe for cooked Puerh was developed only since 1974 (where raw Puerh has thousands years of history).
Difference in origin of the fresh leaves
Cooked Puerh tea consists of tea leaves from different areas, in order to meet the taste preferences of many tea drinkers; Raw Puerh is always related to the origin, a mountain somewhere in Yunnan, most of which is located in southern Xishuangbanna.

Conclusion
Although a very old raw Puerh is one of the most unique teas available, some do not want to wait for this aging process and prefer a more affordable tea, the cooked Puerh is always a good alternative with its own characteristics.

Trying different kinds of both raw and cooked Puerh is a real Puerh tea adventure.
 

3H-Sender is the future of tea farming, both sustainable and organic, cleansing for your health.

Located in Zhangzhou City, Fujian Province, 3H-Sender Tea runs a special tea farm. Here is the famous organic Tieguanyin oolong tea produced. This way of tea farming is regarded as the future of tea production. Oolong tea: now both sustainable and organic. Over the last few months also producing organic black tea: the Black Guanyin.

1. Company introduction

This special tea farm can guarantee a tea that is good for your health from tea garden to the teacups, in cooperation with tea-adventure ltd.

It all started with an idea, something had to change… When people drink tea it should be good for their health, thought Doctor Lin Fang some years ago. This all should start with a tea farm where all the trees, insects and animals can live in a habitat enabling them to thrive together. Where tea trees with a good fragrance attract beneficial insects and repel the harmful insects. Small spiders should be able to live in the tea farm in order to catch bad insects, etc. No insecticide or pesticide allowed and no chemical fertilizer should be used for promoting tree growth. Zero harmful elements are the new standard. Even when you ask this today in China, they would say this is not possible….
However, Linfang combined her knowledge as a doctor and tea lover working out a very sophisticated system of trees, insects, and fertilizer and convinced her husband to join her project.
Together they searched for a perfect place to start this tea farm and found a mountain top far away from any possible harmful influence in the mountains of Hua An, Zhangzhou.

Now five years later we can enjoy the result of the remarkable idea. We can drink what resulted from this future tea farming. This has already been acknowledged for being one of the few tea farms in the world honored with the organic certifications of the US and Europe, as well Japan.

How this great idea turned into a remarkable project:

2. The standards for organic tea

1) Observing  the nature rules and the principles of ecology during the manufacturing process of materials
2) Adopting the agricultural technologies which are advantages to the sustainable development of ecology and evironment
3) Without using the material such as chemical pesticide, fertilizer and growth regulator  or the compound additive during the processing.

One of the secrets for the success of this tea farm is the sandalwood tree. Sandalwood is a very valuable Chinese Medicine. It is said that even often standing nearby this sandalwood tree can enhance your immune system. And all tea trees of the 3H-Sender farm have this privilege every single day.

3. The strengths of 3H-Sender organic tea

(1). Natural advantages
Before reclamation, the tea garden was the primitive mountainous region of natural secondary forest, far away from the pollution of conventional tea garden and farmland. Surrounded by hills and with continuous ridges and peaks, there are more than 200 days shrouded in mist and cloud in the morning and evening every year. The annual average temperature is 16-20 Celsius degree and more than 300 days are frost-free. The tea garden is located at the high mountain with altitude of 500-800 meters and has the acidulous red soil, which nakes it very suitable for planting the high quality organic Tieguanyin tea.

(2). Nutrition for tea trees
Sheep manure and cow dung from Inner Mongoli prairie
Organic tea stem and tea dust from the tea farm itself
Decomposed manure from wild grass

(3). Water irrigation
By means of advanced irritation system, the natural and clean mountain spring water is drawed to every corner of the tea farm.

(4).Weed control
1). The internal and surrounding of the tea garden are weeded by hand without using any herbicide. the grass that has been pul out will be returned to the tea garden after decomposing.
2). The land is laid the cut-off mountain grass on the root section of tea tres, so that the new-born grass sprout will die without sunshine. In the meantime, after the decaying of mountain grass, it becomes the organic fertilizer absorbable to tea trees and has the function of keeping moisture for tea trees and avoiding soil sealing.

(5).Pest control
1). With a good ecologic environment in the tea garden, there are a lot of natural enemies of pests, such as many birds, frogs and spiders, in and around the tea garden.
2). The sandalwood are interplanted in the tea garden. The tea trees can emit a fragrance to repel the pests and provides shade for tea tree in summer.
3). Using the solar insects-killing lamp.

(6). Process Quality Control
From tea harvesting to processing, packaging and on sales, every step is operated strictly in line with standard and regulations. Every batch has been recorded in detail to make the product traceable.

(7). Quality certificate
1). Since June 2007, 3H-Sender has passed the organic certification of national organic tea garden and organic tea processing factory every year
2). ISO22000 (HACCP) was achieved in August, 2009.
3). In 2010, organic certifications from EU, U.S. and Japan were achieved.

4. Is organic tea more expensive than inorganic tea?

Organic tea is more expensive because of the two factors: One, more human labor is required to manage the tea farm and pick the tealeaves; Two, all the fertilizer is organic, which is surprisingly more expensive than the inorganic.

Why organic tea is reasonable:
Organic tea has a lot of labor input and only uses the organic fertilizer; hence its cost is several times higher than conventional tea. When purchasing organic tea, you might feel it is a litle expensive. But from the respective of the nutrient purchased by unit amount, it must be cheaper. The organic tea can be brewed in hot water for more than 10 times, while the conventional tea moght lose its scent after being brewed for 5 times. Drinking the organic tea for long term. you can feel the improvenment of immunity significantly, reducing the cost of going to hospital. If we think over the cost such as polluting the environment and decreasing of soil fertility during manufacturing conventional tea to the price, its price might be higher than organic tea.

5. The color, fragrance and taste of organic Tieguanyin tea

(1)    Color
No chemical fertilizer is applied during the plantation of 3H-Sender organic tea and no pigment is used when processing, hence, the color is not so greenish black like the conventional tea. Because the farmland manure is used and certain particular section is not watered well, there exists a few yellow tea leaves and the color is not the same, which is a nomal phenomenon.

(2) Fragrance
Tieguanyin tea produced by 3H-Sender is completely pure without additives. Without adding spice or essence and mixing with other varieties of Oolong, therefore, some customers might feel that the 3H-Sender organic tea is not fragrant enough if they are used to other teas with fragrance. However, it is indeed like this for true Tieguanyin tea, “a fragrance of orchid in the empty valley”.

Generally, common teas may smell very good in the beginning, but its fragrance will weaken afterwards; on the contrary, 3H-Sender’s organic tea will become even more fragrant with age. Of course, we have tried the tea and the responses from our customers are very good as well.

(3) Taste
After drinking the 3H-Sender organic tea, your throat will feel refreshed and sweetness lingers. It can help produce saliva and quench thirst, and the tea of high quality can make your mouth full of sweetness and lingering fragrance. If your throat or tongue feels dried or even feels thirsty after drinking the conventional tea, it might be the reaction of pesticide residue.

(4) Organic Tieguanyin grades
Tea grades are mainly determined by its appearance and inner values (Tieguanyin tea is no exception). Since 3H-Sender is experienced in producing and processing the Organic Tieguanyin tea, they know how to recognize high quality Tieguanyin tea.

 
This is a true organic tea that you will love it indeed. Our job is transferring it to the customers from the organic tea garden without any contamination. Of course, it is a tea that will benefit your health as well.

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