Hey there, welcome to our channel! Now, if you're a tea enthusiast,
you're in for a treat. Today's video might seem a bit unconventional for tea lovers like you,
but trust me, it's worth your while. We're diving into something unique,
and rarely discussed on our YouTube channel – our specialized tea consulting service tailored
for tea producers, owners, and farmers who are ready to step into the world of specialty teas
or enhance their current offerings. If you decide to stick around I truly appreciate it,
but if you're looking for something more customer friendly, I totally get it.
And hey, if you're a farmer or producer who has been referred to this video, a big thank you
for joining us! Throughout this video, we'll walk you through what we bring to the table,
who we are, and why choosing us is a game-changer for your tea offering.
What we Offer Anshuman,
a black tea expert and owner from Darjeeling, India, learned invaluable insights after just
a few days of interaction with Jianli, our tea consultant. Even after months of prior tea-making
immersion in China, he says that he found our expertise transformative. If you're navigating
the leap from orthodox or CTC tea to the world of specialty tea,or you're already crafting specialty
teas and want to refine quality or expand your range, our comprehensive services hold the key
to unparalleled success. As Chinese tea experts and seasoned consultants, we stand ready to tackle
your challenges head-on. Who We Are
We are a dynamic trio. Our team comprises three experts: Jianli,
stationed in China and Phil and myself, based in Canada. You may have already perused our website,
but allow me to spotlight what's most relevant to you as a tea producer. Jianli's extensive
experience of almost 30 years includes decades of immersive travel across China's tea regions.
For the last decade she has been closely collaborating with tea producers, guiding them
in developing new tea varieties and enhancing their existing offerings. This comprehensive
approach encompasses all six tea types. Recent years have seen her commitment deepen, spending
up to 10 months annually in various tea regions, driven by her passion for perfecting the craft.
Jianli’s incredible amount of experience in the field, combined with her solid academic
understanding of tea (read more here), makes us so powerful in action. And simply
nobody can compare. Our advantages:
All 6 tea types. Jianli has been travelling all over China’s
tea regions working with Chinese tea producers developing new teas or improving the quality of
their existing product lineup. The tea trip videos on our YouTube channel showcase a few places that
Jianli has visited. She is an expert in all 6 tea types. If you take a tea producer from Wuyi,
they will be expert in oolong and likely black tea making, but they won’t know how to make green tea.
If you have a tea producer from Yunnan, they are expert in making sheng pu’er, and possibly
shu pu’er or black tea, but not likely oolong tea. Same with green tea, a Long Jing green tea
producer might know how to make black tea as well as green tea, but not white tea or other types of
tea. Even within green tea, Long Jing and Mengding Gan Lu (a sichuan green tea) have very different
process. Why are they processed differently? Simply speaking, because the environment and
the cultivar are different. And over the many years these teas were produced, the methods
gradually transformed into different ways of making green tea, bringing out the best from
that cultivar and that origin. The Chinese tea cultivar plants you introduced to your land are
inevitably different from when they are growing in their home region. What if the green tea process
you are imagining doesn’t work so well with them? Now what? Do you have time to wait hundreds of
years as trial and error gradually converges you on the right method of making the tea,
as it did for the classic teas? Of course not! You need someone who has extensive experience working
with various tea cultivars in various terroirs and various conditions. You need someone who
expertly understands the dynamics between leaf and process and is well seasoned to tailor the process
for your plantation or farm. And that someone is Jianli Wu. Give a man a fish or teach a man
to fish? Our goal is to not only show you how to make specialty tea, but to teach you the reasons
why it works. Why does the aeration thickness of the leaves have to be 1 inch not 4 inches?
Why can the leaves only be rolled for 15 minutes? Why is the resting time 3 hours not 3 hours and 15
minutes? How do these changes affect the result? Only when you fully understanding the essence and
the nuance of tea processing, can you be confident handling different situations. We want to make
sure that after we finish the project, you can adjust the machines, tweak the steps and keep
developing into your future. Especially as we are facing global climate change, drought years,
wet years, constantly challenging the consistent quality of your tea. And as a tea producer,
you know how important consistency is. A rigid, formulated recipe of tea making steps is just
not going to deliver. Remember I mentioned that Jianli travels a lot? Often 10 months in a year!
China’s peak tea season is usually concentrated in a few months, so why is she still travelling
in the slow season to make tea? Because these tools we are teaching the tea producers are
so powerful they want to see her whenever she is available. The tea farmers we have worked
with have told us they learned so much about processing tea that they didn’t even know they
needed to learn. And the knowledge is so valuable and well explained that they still get incredible
benefits for the upcoming tea seasons. There’s a good reason that Jianli is highly respected and
called teacher by many tea producers in China. Tea appraisal. The way of appraising tea is very
different between orthodox, CTC and specialty tea. An Indian tea estate owner who specializes
in orthodox tea and CTC tea wanted to produce specialty green tea. As a matter of fact,
he bought Chinese green tea machines and tried them. Besides the machines not being installed
quite right, he also didn’t understand the tastes produced by his experimental results, because he
is a long time black tea drinker, and very new to green tea. In the end, the machines just sat
in the corner of the factory collecting dust. We will show you how to appraise specialty tea,
and most importantly help you link what you taste to what happened in the process room. Why is my
green tea aroma is so dull? Is it because of long aeration, or is the kill green temperature wrong?
Why does my oolong tea taste like a green tea crashed into a black tea? What went wrong? How
do I fix it? The answers to these questions can actually be found through tea appraisal. With
careful tasting and deduction you can pinpoint exactly what went wrong. Thanks to Jianli’s
extensive experience with processing, we’ve curated a considerable collection of tea samples
for educational purposes. These are wackadoo experimental teas, that we have collected along
the way, and they are perfect for illustrating the dynamics between the nuanced tea processes and
resulting taste. Our tea appraisal skills along with this tea sampling pool, combined with our
deep knowledge are so illuminating that you just can’t find this kind of training anywhere else.
Why do you need to learn this? We want to teach you to fish, not give you a fish. This is a vital
tool for your future endeavors. We’ve taught tea producers all over China how to appraise
tea professionally so that they can take what they learned during the project and move forward. We
receive an enormous amount of samples from tea producers we’ve worked with with comments like,
“After you left, we dialed down the withering, but slightly increased the rolling time, and we
got sample #1. The aroma improved but the flavor become thinner, and the resulting leaves still
had a high breakage rate so I further tweaked the resting time.” They share their development with
us and we share with them our feedback. They ask us, “Is the direction right?” “Are there
any other ways to overcome the issues?”, etc. This is a skill that has benefited many tea
producers in China, and we believe it will also guide your future product development,
making every step, every change more purposeful. Communication. Most Chinese tea producers don’t
speak English, or speak very limited English. Sure, it’s easy to find a translator who speaks
English and Chinese. However, most translators don’t speak the language of tea. This is where
I come in handy. As a native Chinese, I speak the language of tea in Chinese, and after 9
years in the North American tea industry, I’m also speaking the language of tea in Enlgish. Moreover,
I’m well aware of the various pitfalls in the English tea world caused by translation mistakes
and misunderstandings. Many times I have seen Chinese meaning get totally lost in translation
because it’s not translated by someone who understands tea. When it’s just casual tea talk,
it’s not a big deal. But when talking about tea producing skills and techniques,
these become expensive mistakes. If your questions were not accurately delivered,
or the answers were not accurately conveyed back to you, your learning is greatly diminished. You
might feel like you learned something, but when the project is over and it’s time to proceed on
your own, you will start to wonder again. As I’ve been emphasizing over and over, we want to give
you a turbo boost and then for you to continue to rocket forward afterwards, to be able to develop
and improve your tea on your own. In order to achieve this, fully understanding the specialty
tea process and mastering the nuances of the process and its impact is crucial. And this can
only be achieved through accurate communication. Machine use. Teaching tea producers how to use
different machines to make better teas has always been part of our work. But it has been
steadily expanding. In Jianli’s recent visit to Indian, she noticed that some producers had
bought Chinese tea machines, but didn’t know how to install them. Or, sometimes, they put
the machines together successfully, but didn’t know how to calibrate the machines. In the end,
the salesman of tea machines are not the ones that make tea. So Jianli helped them set up
and adjust the machines, as well as instructing them how to make tea with them. So if you are
brand new to specialty tea making and getting started with various Chinese tea machines,
we can get you set up quickly. Professionalism. Because someone is
good at doing something doesn’t mean they are also good at teaching others. Well,
Jianli has been working with and teaching tea producers for years. Besides experience,
we have also developed a system to best deliver the messages to tea producers from different
backgrounds, allowing her vast academic, field and tasting experience to make sense to your ears.
So here’s how we all fit together with you: We've got Jianli, our chief consultant,
and the mastermind steering the ship. I'm your co-developer and interpreter, ensuring every
step is seamless and communication is on point. Finally, Phil plays a vital role as our diligent
assistant, meticulously recording each step for future reference. And when the journey concludes,
upon your request, we provide a comprehensive report and summary of the entire project.
To get started, simply shoot me an email at zhen@zhentea.ca,
and I'll be your point of contact. To delve deeper into your requirements,
I recommend a video conference – a platform that enables us to efficiently pinpoint your needs and
explore how we can provide valuable assistance. Following this, we will engage in a comprehensive
discussion encompassing crucial details such as quotes and schedules. It's important to highlight
that our approach is entirely customized to your needs and meticulously tailored for each project,
regardless of your current standing within the specialty tea domain. Your success is our goal.
Well, that's a wrap for today! Thank you so much for tuning in. We're genuinely
excited about the prospect of working with you and unleashing
the full potential of your tea craft. I’m Looking forward to hearing from you soon!