To save tea friends from constantly asking, the store manager wants to confirm that “all 2023 autumn teas are a total washout.” Dayuling, HuaGung, Malieba Suspension Bridge, Cuiluan, Farm Edge, Cuifeng, Meifeng, Qilai Mountain, LongFengXia, along with the Lishan, ShanLinXi, and Alishan tea lines—we haven’t purchased a single batch. 😅😅
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The 2023 high mountain autumn tea season has been plagued with issues. The primary troublemaker was Typhoon Khanun, which damaged roads and delayed harvesting. Then, leading up to August 20th, we only had two consecutive sunny weekends (August 7th-8th and 12th-13th). The rest of the time was either completely rainy or plagued by afternoon and evening downpours, creating terrible conditions for harvesting and tea making.
What’s even worse is that without enough clear days during the middle of the season, waiting any longer would mean the leaves would become too mature to harvest. Consequently, quite a bit of tea was harvested right in the rain, which compromises the quality even further. In the manager’s opinion, this season’s autumn tea is simply “not up to par” and “a complete flop.” Before the harvest started, I boasted that I’d find autumn tea that could outperform most winter teas. Little did I know, after sampling 50 different batches, I couldn’t find a single good one—not even anything passable. Talk about embarrassing.
We’re sorry to let everyone down this autumn, so we’ll just have to ask you all to wait for the winter tea. If things go smoothly, the first batch of winter tea should be harvested in about a month. Right now, we still need to assess the extent of root damage on the tea trees from the previous heavy rains, as well as check whether soil nutrients in the plantations have been severely washed away. These two factors will be key indicators of the winter tea’s quality.
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The ShanLinXi and Alishan teas were being harvested. It was still raining on August 26th and 27th, and now Typhoon Saola is heading our way tomorrow. We had a drought during the spring tea season, and now heavy rain for autumn—I honestly don’t even know what to say.
#MyPersonalTakeDoesNotMeanAllAutumnTeaIsBad
