Don Mei: Hey teaheads.
This is Don from Mei Leaf.
In THIS video: How To Source QUALITY tea.
In this video I'm going to show you how WE source our teas.
This video is going to go under the "Tea Trips" playlist.
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I am FREQUENTLY asked HOW we source our teas, and I thought, hey, why don't I just BRING
you along WITH us.
I travel to the Far East usually a FEW TIMES a YEAR to source teas.
THIS time we're traveling from LONDON to Feng Huang village, which is CLOSE to the border
of FUJIAN province in Guangdong province.
The JOURNEY is going to take the BEST part of a day.
We NEVER KNOW what to expect on these journeys.
It's ALWAYS full of adventures.
But I HOPE that it's going to give you an INSIGHT into the life of a tea buyer.
So, my bags are packed, the TAXI is about the arrive, so if YOU'RE READY, let's go to
China.
Don : Okay, guys.
We're in Beijing.
We've been traveling for about 15 hours.
TEN hour flight, and we slept for about FOUR hours.
So not BAD, but we're pretty TIRED.
We now have got to wait another FOUR hours in Beijing airport before we get on ANOTHER
plane to go to Chao Shan.
That's about a THREE hour flight.
Then we've got a two hour drive up into the mountains.
So we've STILL got about NINE hours of traveling to go.
We're going to grab something to eat, and I'll see you when we get to our hotel.
So we're FINALLY here at our hotel in RaoPing city, which is NEAR Feng Huang village.
Feng Huang village is about TWO hours drive away.
We're going to SET OFF tomorrow morning and go.
It's been TWENTY-THREE-AND-A-HALF hours journey, door-to-door, to get here, so I am EXHAUSTED.
I'm going to take a shower, then I'm going to HIT that bed, and I'll speak to you tomorrow.
Hey guys!
It's the next morning, and I've had SEVEN hours of sleep, and I'm feeling ALTOGETHER
more human.
It's a LOVELY, MISTY day outside, PERFECT tea-country weather.
I've got a Gai Wan of Dan Cong - NOT a GREAT Dan Cong - that the hotel supplied.
We've HAD breakfast, and we're about to drive up - for about TWO HOURS - to Feng Huang village
- to "Phoenix" village.
The MISSION for today is RECON.
It's about SPEAKING to as many FARMERS as possible, LOOKING at leaves, FINDING OUT about
this year's harvest, and TASTING tea.
Now, of COURSE, we already HAVE suppliers up in Phoenix village, but if I meet them
TOO EARLY then I'll get SUCKED into a "politeness exercise" where I'll have to spend TOO MUCH
TIME with me, and what I REALLY want to do is taste what OTHER farmers have to offer.
Now that MAY sound a little bit UNFAITHFUL to you, but I think I'd be doing my customers
a GREAT DISSERVICE if I just BLINDLY buy from the SAME supplier EVERY year.
So I'm going to go, and explore, and taste as much tea as possible.
I will SEE you up in the mountains.
So this is Wu Dong village, which is FURTHER UP the MOUNTAIN to Phoenix village, and this
is where the BEST Dan Cong is produced.
You can SMELL the wood fire in the air, the wood they're using to burn to heat the tea.
EVERY ONE of these places is producing their own tea.
You can see EVERY SINGLE household is producing their own tea.
It's very LOUD and NOISY, but you can probably spend about a month here - they LOVE to HOOT
- just tasting teas from the different households, before you could find the one that is YOUR
tea.
Just walking up Wu Dong village we're stopping into different farmers homes to taste their
tea.
Who knows?
It might be GREAT.
It might NOT be.
This is the RANDOM chance that you have, but we're in the PERFECT location to find AMAZING
Dan Cong.
Look how much LEAF he uses to the Gai Wan.
Normally, we say, you know, HALF full, MAYBE kind of TWO-THIRDS full.
This is BULGING with tea leaves.
One of the things Chao Zho style brewing is that they use a Gai Wan, they DON'T tend to
use a Gong Dao Bei.
They don't pour into a FAIRNESS cup.
The SKILL of the BREWER is to be able to pour EVENLY from the Gai Wan to the cups to provide
an EVEN brew for EVERYONE to try.
THIS tea is definitely a tea that I've NEVER TASTED before.
It tastes VERY FRESH, very BRIGHT, a very, very CLEAN, SHORT finish, and a very FRAGRANT
ALMOND flavour, like Marzipan.
This is known as Ju Duo tea, or "Jigsaw" tea, because the EDGE of the leaf is SERRATED,
but Mr. Liu Sr. is saying that it's just a NEW NAME for Xiang Ren, which is the ALMOND
flavoured tea.
So it goes to show that you NEVER know, really, if it's a NEW cultivar, or if they've just
RENAMED it for marketing purposes.
So that was our FIRST TASTE of the 2016 Dan Cong from this farmer, and I felt that it
was LACKING a BODY and a DEPTH to it, and I'm not sure if that was because of the CULTIVAR,
because of the HARVEST, but it was a BIT TOO THIN, and a little bit TOO MUCH of SHORT and
QUICK finish.
I like to look for teas that have a LONGER FINISH and a MORE STRONG, WARMING flavour
profile.
So we're
going to KEEP LOOKING.
Whoa!
We've found an AMAZING Dan Cong here.
The aroma is INCREDIBLE.
This is a Song Chong Dan Cong.
Second generation.
Young girl : Almost MY AGE.
Over 30 years old.
Don : About 30 years old, second generation graft from the Song Chong tea tree.
The flavour is SO DEEP.
It's got SO MUCH BODY.
The FRAGRANCE is SO SWEET.
It's like Marzipan and flowers, it's GORGEOUS, and the body is really rich.
Now, this is still MAO CHA.
This has still NOT been CHARCOAL ROASTED yet, So this has NOT had its FULL FLAVOUR MATURATION
yet.
So this is GOING to be CHARCOAL ROASTED, and then I'm SURE it's going to be EVEN BETTER.
But just tasting the MAO CHA, this is a really SPECIAL tea.
This is a Jiang Hua Xiang, Ginger Flower, and it is SO UNBELIEVABLY fragrant.
The flavour is really, really ALMOST CREAMY.
It reminds me of a - DARE I say it - superior version of a Jin Xuan, but with more FLORAL
notes to it.
UNFORTUNATELY it's VERY MUCH out of our price range.
I just found out the PRICE of this, and this is something in the region of $800 a KILO
for WHOLESALE.
So that means 100 grams WHOLESALE would cost $80, which means ANY tea supplier would be
charging MULTIPLES of that.
So it's WAY out of our price range, but we can ENJOY it NOW.
Unfortunately, I don't think I'll be able to bring ANY of this back to London.
Wow!
The fragrance is something unbelievable.
This is second generation, ginger flower Dan Cong.
Young girl : So let me further explain a little bit...
Don : Oh!
If only I could transfer this fragrance through this camera.
It is amazing.
The other thing about being in tea country is when you eat a meal they will always supply
you with alcohol, and they won't trust you, or do deals with you, unless they see you
drunk.
Just watch.
Cheers!
Ah.
Good morning.
It's day two here.
We're at a hotel at the top of Wu Dong mountain.
You're going to have to forgive me.
I'm quite hungover.
As usual, the farmers wanted to get the foreigners drunk, and they succeeded last night.
Also, I'm still on London time, or my time circuit is a little bit frazzled, so I only
got four hours of sleep.
But I'm here, it's a sunny day, and I'm excited to try some more Dan Congs.
Yesterday we tried four new farmers, and tasted their teas.
Three of them we were not too impressed with the tea.
It was good, but not quite the quality that we were looking for.
One of the farmers had amazing tea, really, really incredible tea, but very, very expensive
- in my opinion a little bit overpriced.
What we're going to do today is we're going to meet our current suppliers of Dan Cong,
and see how the 2016 harvest is for them.
Now one of the issues that we have at the moment is because everybody is harvesting
the tea is not finished.
It's being made into Mao Cha.
It's being made into raw, processed tea.
It hasn't gone through the extra steps of maturation and charcoal roasting.
So we're having to taste a tea and take a guess at what it's going to become.
This is one of the skills that you develop as a tea buyer, tasting the Mao Cha and knowing
that some of the rough edges are going to be rounded out, and taking a good, educated
guess at what that tea is going to become.
So let's go and see what our current supplier has in store for us.
We're at our tea supplier's plantation, and they're picking around us.
Nested within the plantation is Song dynasty tree.
Take a look over here.
This is a 700 year old tea tree.
It's still very healthy.
It's flushing.
It'll be picked in about three days time, and it will produce about six to seven kilos
of "single tree tea".
That's to say that they're not going to mix this with anything.
This batch of tea will be solely from this tea, and will be very expensive, but highly
revered.
So that's an example of a 700 year old tea tree.
We're in our current supplier's factory, and they are producing this Dan Cong.
This one here is the Ginger Flower Dan Cong.
It's fresh out of the oven, so it's still really warm, and it's a really wonderful opportunity
to just smell the warm leaf, which is giving off so much aroma.
The smell is incredible.
It's like sweet flowers, but the overarching aroma is one of almonds and butter cookies.
Really buttery and luxurious and comforting, really warming.
This is Ginger Flower Dan Cong, and you can just pick up this kind of zesty freshness,
this certain ginger spiciness on the nose.
But the real dominant aroma is that of these lovely baked cookies.
Amazing.
See, this is a happy face.
This is a Ginger Flower Dan Cong.
I don't know the price yet.
A 2016 harvest.
This is a Mao Cha, so it hasn't been baked yet.
It hasn't even been sorted.
This is rough tea, and already this tea is just bursting with fragrance.
The aftertaste is very much like - I wouldn't say ginger - more like galangal - like really
perfumed gingeriness.
I'm really happy because our current supplier is certainly doing an amazing job, and I'm
looking forward to tasting all of her teas.
This is from very old tea trees.
How old are the tea trees?
Three hundred year old Dan Cong tea trees.
This is their entire harvest from the year, so this is about 1.5 to maybe just under 2.0
kilos of tea.
It goes to show you the kind of rarity that you can get to.
So one supplier can only produce less than two kilos of this tea.
I'm hoping that we can try it.
She's certainly being very generous.
You can see how the Gai Wan is overflowing with leaf.
This is proper Gong Fu brewing.
Ah!
It's got a slight jasmine taste to it.
Actually, it's surprisingly soft, considering that it's a Mao Cha.
It's very soft.
It's got a thick mouthfeel, but a very soft finish.
Second infusion, looks a bit stronger.
Let's give it a try.
Definitely stronger.
This has a real mineral taste at the start - so slatey and rock, similar to the rock
Oolong mineral notes.
It's still got a buttery aroma.
It's still got a kind of jasmine-like nose when you breathe out.
But the finish is really nice.
It's got this slight citrus fruit finish, like a grapefruit or a pomelo finish to it.
This is gorgeous.
I dare not ask the price if they're only producing less than two kilos a year, but it's a real
privilege to taste.
We've left the mountains and we've gone to the villages below.
Up in the mountains we were tasting Mao Cha, the freshly picked tea.
Now we're tasting the finished tea - either from this year, or from last year.
It's a simple case of, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."
Because our current supply is still the best tea that we've tasted.
We're tasting through their samples, and we've just discovered this one here.
This is a Song Chong, so it's second generation graft from the Song dynasty trees.
It is a wonderful tea.
I will doing a video on this separately, but we're going to get a clutch of teas and we're
going to head back to London.
Hey guys!
I'm in London.
I arrived in around midnight last night.
The flight was a couple of hours delayed due to bad weather in China.
It was another epic trip, but I've got some sleep, and now I'm enjoying the fruits of
my labour with some fresh Dan Cong from the mountains.
So why do I source tea in this way?
Well, there are five reasons.
The first reason is simply that this kind of speciality, high grade, tea is very difficult
to get if you don't go directly to source.
Most of this tea is sold to the local market.
The second reason is price.
Because I'm going directly to source it means I cut out the middlemen and I can negotiate
a better price.
The third reason is education.
I get to taste so many different types of tea.
I get to see the tea production from the field to the cup, and that gives me knowledge which
adds value to my business, and adds value that, hopefully, I can impart onto you.
The fourth reason is supplier relationships.
I've now sat, drunk lots of tea, shared dinners with these suppliers, and that means that
I'm much more likely to get the better quality tea from them.
I've also picked up many contacts, and drunk lots of tea from other producers, and that
means that if next year my suppliers do not make the grade in terms of their harvest then
I can easily reach out and source from other people directly from source.
The fifth reason is simply personal.
It is a great experience to travel to these tea mountains, to see the tea being produced
in such a beautiful environment.
So this is one type of tea from one province.
Now we have many different types of tea, so we endeavour to do this for all of our teas.
I have to say that this is not common practice.
Most tea sellers will buy from wholesalers - either in China, or Japan, or Taiwan.
Or they will buy from wholesalers within their local area.
Especially in Europe, it is the case that most of the tea is bought from tea wholesalers
in Germany.
These big tea wholesalers go out and buy tons and tons of tea to sell onto their market.
Now the problem with this is, of course, that first of all you can't find this kind of speciality
tea, because these wholesalers are looking to buy in large volumes at large profit margins.
The second reason is that you're restricted to their catalogue, so if they decide not
to stock a certain tea then you simply can't get it.
The third problem is price.
The wholesaler obviously has to make their cut, and so they will add an extra price onto
the cost of the tea.
Now it may seem quite extravagant for us to travel over to China, and it is an expensive
process, but because I make savings purchasing directly from source I can pass some of the
savings onto our clients, and I can use some of that savings to fund these trips and it
means that we better tea, at a better price, and everybody learns from this experience.
So I hope that this has given you some insight into the life of a tea buyer.
That's it teaheads.
If you made it to the end of this video then PLEASE give the thumbs-up.
Check out our YouTube playlists and let us know if there are any VIDEOS that you would
like us to make.
If you're ever in London then come visit us in Camden to say "Hi!" and taste our wares.
If you have any questions or comments then please fire them over.
Other than that, I'm Don Mei from Mei Leaf.
Thank you for being a part of the revelation of true tea.
Stay away from the tea bags, keep drinking the good stuff, and spread the word, because
NOBODY deserves BAD tea.
Bye