丨This article was originally written by Xiao Chen Chashi
丨First published in the headlines: Xiao Chen Tea Affair
丨Author: Village Gu Chen
《1》
Winter is a melancholy season.
Because of the cold, it is inseparable from hot tea, and when you drink it alone, it is most likely to be melancholy and dreamy.
I think of some past events that have long been dusty.
N years ago, Wuyi rock tea was not as top as it is now, at that time, everyone did not have much contact with rock tea, the time was short, and it was still in a state of ignorance.
The tea drinkers naturally caught the Tieguanyin and Shengpu fed by the market.
Once, I was invited to participate in a rock tea tasting in Shanghai.
The tea party was very exciting, and I drank several bubbles of core Zhengyan tea, including many good teas such as Niulankeng cinnamon and Beidoufeng cinnamon.
I didn't fully understand the beauty at the time.
But with the advice of professionals, there is some enlightenment.
At that time, Wuyi rock tea did not have as many "flower intestines" as there are today, and it was the traditional Zhongzheng road.
So much so that every bubble of cinnamon is drunk with a big cinnamon bark style, thick, scorching, and drunk, and every sip has a feeling of hormones.
《2》
A big coffee in the tea circle came to Fuzhou a while ago.
I drank hard rock tea for N days in one go, and wrote down in the circle of friends that "no bubble of core Zhengyan tea can get out of Dahujian".
Chiguoguo's 7 points to show off, 3 points to envy.
It means that he was received with a high standard in Fuzhou and enjoyed the authentic core rock tea that is rarely drunk outside of Hu Jian.
This confession, although a little too sure, is quite reasonable.
You must know that the core Zhengyan of Wuyi Mountain has three pits and two streams, and the energy is out of the range with a ruler, and the tea trees in the Niulankeng can be counted as few, and the core Zhengyan tea produced in a year is really not enough for Hu Jianren to plug his teeth, how can it still flow out of the province.
I once asked a few people in Tianxin Village, who did the core rock tea sell to?
Their answers were basically the same, and very few were sent directly to outside the province, and most of them were collected by locals.
This means that domestic sales turn to domestic sales.
The tea sellers stationed in Wuyi Mountain used the method of being close to the water and the first to get the moon to transport these good teas to Fuzhou, Xiamen, Sanming and other hot-selling areas of rock tea.
Moreover, the tea sellers have their own set of techniques for making money, and they use this kind of good tea to feed those heavyweight and upper-class people until they have an appetite, and eventually become sticky and dependent.
SO, even if the price of core rock tea continues to rise in the past few years of rock tea, they still have no shortage of customers and are in short supply.
《3》
The more I thought about it, the more interesting it became.
Now the rock tea that is advertised as not being able to get out of Hu Jian's gate has actually slipped out of the house more than ten or twenty years ago and gone to the north.
Flowers bloom inside the wall, and the outside of the wall is already fragrant.
Perhaps, the Wuyishan people who invited us to Shanghai at the beginning turned their attention to the market outside the province because they couldn't sell rock tea in the province.
The reason why he chose Shanghai is because of the openness, inclusiveness and openness of the metropolis.
The price of core rock tea was acceptable and affordable for Shanghainese people – even if the price was not as high as it is today.
If you want to find a reason for the short-sighted Hu Jianren to look down on rock tea, it may be because Hu Jian's tea resources are too rich, and under the rain and dew, he has not yet been fortunate to come to Wuyi rock tea.
However, the original rock tea was not hyped and not sought after, but it also had benefits, at least maintaining a pure, clear atmosphere.
It is like an undeveloped tourist place, with blue sky and green water, like a paradise, welcoming a few self-driving explorers.
Once exposed by a certain Internet celebrity V, there will be no peaceful days here, and countless people will eat, drink and laze every day, and they will never return to the unstained appearance of the past.
Therefore, after the treasure of rock tea, which was hidden in the dust, was developed, it was contaminated with the fireworks of the world.
Speculators saw the profit space of rock tea, so they began to lay out, close the network, and grasp the core resources in their hands.
Once the core resources are controlled by a few people, how many authentic core rock teas can get out of Hu Jian?
《4》
Nowadays, with the blessing of convenient communication, developed Internet, convenient transportation and other factors, the resources of Wuyi rock tea have been opened to all parts of the country, and the rock tea that has stepped out of the gate of Fujian has increased one after another.
Some people will ask, how can so many rock teas flow outside the province, why can't they get out of Hu Jian?
Open resources do not mean that resources are shared.
Just imagine, how many bubbles of cinnamon in the cattle pen pit that flood the Fuzhou market are real, let alone in the market outside?
A brew of core Zhengyan tea, after several layers of middlemen, to the province, the price has been unrecognizable.
Faced with rock tea, whose profit margins have been squeezed out, they can only find another way out, and low-cost tea is sold at a high price.
For example, rock tea with a three-digit purchase price may just meet the standard of ration tea, and they can sell it at a four-digit or five-digit price if they label it as a certain pit or a certain stream.
A tea merchant in Yunnan Province chatted with me and said that she likes Wuyi rock tea very much, and from a personal point of view, she especially wants to share the best rock tea in Wuyi Mountain with the locals.
However, every year, when she asks the Fuzhou tea merchants who contact her, the price of the core tea is so expensive that she smacks her tongue.
You can only take some cheap basic tea, but for the sake of sales, you must also use the universal version of the well-known mountain farm, otherwise it will not sell.
Therefore, the current rock tea is going out, but how many ghostly tricks are there in it?
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Xiao Chen Tea Village Gu Chen, column writer, the original new media in the tea industry "Xiao Chen Tea Affairs" chief writer, has published a white tea monograph "White Tea Tasting Notes", and has written more than 4,000 original articles from 2016 to 2020.