80% of the population depends on tea for a livelihood in one way or another here in Anxi, the birthplace of Tieguanyin, world renown oolong. To be sure fads come and go every year and a Tieguanyin is not always the most fashionable tea every year. Since the mountain range is so huge, all this raw material has to go someplace. They can get sold to Wuyi to be made into Dahongpao, or Phoenix Mountain to make ‘Phoenix tea’, or even green teas. For most people, they are not going to taste the terroir difference. For Americans, forget terroir- there’s just green tea or black tea in a teabag. Actually, the best example ever- once I was in a restaurant in SOHO, NYC, billing itself as a tea house restaurant. On the menu was: Hot Tea. That’s it. The wine list was a book and coffees were a dozen choices, but this ‘tea house’ had only one option for tea. Phew, glad it was hot. Now, why did I just spend my whole life getting terroir specific tea from the indigenous varietals picked on the perfect day made by the best artisans in the villages, again?
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