Hi tea lovers, just wanted to give you an update. From mid-November to early December, the store manager tasted nearly 20 batches of high mountain Winter Sprout Oolong and “didn’t find anything good.” So, the 2022 high mountain Winter Sprout Oolong is officially off the menu. That’s two years in a row without offering high mountain Winter Sprout Oolong. XD
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Growth Conditions for This Year’s High Mountain Winter Sprout Oolong
During the winter harvest, the store manager already had a feeling that this year’s Winter Sprout Oolong wouldn’t turn out too well, as the winter tea yield was low and slow-growing. Sure enough, the Winter Sprout Oolong turned out “terrible.” A lot of high mountain Winter Sprout Oolong comes from tender buds left unpicked during the winter harvest. Since this year’s winter tea yields were already sparse, there simply weren’t many tender buds to leave behind. Combined with the winter harvest being half a month later than usual, the Winter Sprout Oolong was picked later too. With the cold weather, the leaves matured too quickly, leaving the brewed tea quite lacking in flavor.
The store manager tried almost 20 batches, and most of them had a “weak, thin flavor” or were just mediocre in quality. Plus, because the leaves were old and brittle, many were broken into tiny pieces during rolling and fell apart instantly upon steeping. Quality like that would just get returned by you guys, so the store manager decided to skip buying high mountain Winter Sprout Oolong this year~
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Many tea farmers chose not to harvest high mountain Winter Sprout Oolong this year because the low tea leaf volume makes production unprofitable. With low yields come fewer options, making it impossible to pick out any good tea. Lishan, Cuifeng, Cingjing, and Qilai Mountain definitely don’t have any good goods, and the remaining batches from LongFengXia and Budongyu Fanzitian aren’t looking too optimistic either. This year’s high mountain Winter Sprout Oolong is truly going to be absent.
Just a quick update: I’ll be sampling Winter Sprout Oolong from Zhushan and Mingjian Township over the next couple of days, and I’ll share any good news with you all soon!
