How to distinguish between picking tea before rain and spring tea

Spring is coming, and people who buy tea also take advantage of this season to buy tea. So when we buy tea, do we all know how to distinguish between tea before rain, tea before harvest and tea before spring? Is there a clear distinction? Let's take a look ~

How to distinguish between tea before rain, picking first, spring first and so on.

spring tea

Tea that germinates after overwintering is made of tea. The time is mainly from beginning of spring to Grain Rain Festival, and the tea collected during this period is generally called spring tea. It is usually collected before the end of May. After a winter dormancy and nutrient accumulation, the overwintering buds are rich in organic matter, with moderate temperature and sufficient rainfall in spring, which makes the spring tea buds plump and rich in substances, and their freshness, fullness and coordination are extremely high.

Toucaicha

It refers to the first picking of a few bud leaves that have reached the picking standard in the tea garden after the spring. So the first tea picking belongs to the first spring tea, but it is much smaller than the first spring tea. Because the quantity is very small and the screening scope is very small, the quality of the first wave of spring tea used for trial production is not necessarily the best in the first spring, so there is no need to blindly pursue the first tea.

Touchuncha

The first wave of tea picked in spring is the first spring tea as long as it is picked for the first time in the New Year. For the famous tea in China, the first spring tea represents the highest quality. But even for the first time, different kinds of tea are picked at different times.

Generally speaking, the time of spring tea with green tea head can be extended from February to March, and it is picked in Guizhou in the middle and late February, Wenzhou Yongjia Wuniu early variety in the middle and late February, Fuding white tea in the early March, and Jiangbei tea area is often picked around Qingming. In some high-altitude tea areas, the picking time of Touchun tea is late.

Mingqiancha

Tea picked in front of Tomb-Sweeping Day. After a winter break, the tea tree itself is rich in substances. In addition, the temperature was generally low before Qingming, and the number of tea trees germinated was not only limited, but also the growth rate was slow, and the yield that could meet the picking standard was very small. Therefore, there is also a saying that "tea before the Qing Dynasty was as expensive as gold".

Yuqiancha

Tea picked in front of Grain Rain. Although tea before rain is not as delicate as tea before tomorrow, tea before rain is often fresh, thick and bubble-resistant, because the temperature is higher, the buds and leaves grow relatively fast and the accumulated inclusions are rich.

It should be noted that the two concepts of "before the Ming Dynasty" and "before the rain" are only most meaningful to the tea areas in Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Anhui. Like Yunnan in the south and Shandong in the north, there will be no concepts of before the Ming Dynasty and before the rain. During the Qingming period, some green tea gardens in Shandong had not yet sprouted; In Tomb-Sweeping Day, Yunnan tea-producing areas are full of green leaves and branches.