Biluochun is a traditional Chinese tea, one of the top ten famous teas in China, and is a typical representative of curly stir-fried green tea. The origin of Biluo spring tea is the East and West Mountains of Taihu Lake in Suzhou, which has a long history and is deeply loved by green tea lovers in Jiangsu and Zhejiang.
Before and after the Qingming Dynasty is the season when Suzhou Biluo Spring Tea is listed in large quantities, and it is also the best time for tea lovers to buy new tea. Lao Yang shared with you from a different angle, tea friends should know the biluochun knowledge.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="4" > first, the origin of the name of Biluochun tea</h1>
There are many legends and explanations for the origin of the name of Biluochun Tea. The most widely circulated story is that the Kangxi Emperor of the Qing Dynasty gave Biluochun a name during his southern tour. The "Liunan Continuation" written by Wang Yankui in the Qing Dynasty records that "several wild tea plants are produced in the stone wall of Biluofeng in Dongting Dongshan, and each year the natives hold bamboo baskets to collect and return for daily use. Kangxi a certain year, waiting to be picked, and its leaves are more, the basket is not enough to store, because of the same, the tea is hot, the fragrance is suddenly emitted, and the tea pickers clamor for 'frightening incense'... He is old, the car is driving Xin Tai Lake, Song Gong bought this tea to enter, on its name is indecent, the title of BiluoChun. ”
The local folk of Suzhou spread the story of the Biluo girl. A long time ago, there was a beautiful girl named Biluo living on the West Dongting Mountain, and her song was like a sweet spring, bringing joy to everyone. Later, the Biluo girl fell in love with a young man named Ah Xiang in Dongdongting Mountain, but at this time, a vicious dragon appeared in Taihu Lake and took a fancy to Biluo's beauty, and finally Ah Xiang killed the evil dragon, but he also fainted due to excessive bleeding. In order to save Ah Xiang, the Biluo girl traveled all over the cave court in search of herbs. In the end, he found a tea tree full of young leaves and saved Ah Xiang, but the biluo girl was too tired to die. In order to commemorate the Biluo girl, the villagers named this precious tea "BiluoChun".
In Dongshan, Suzhou, there is also the Ming Dynasty prime minister Wang Jun, who lived under the Biluo Peak in Dongshan, so he named the tea produced under the Biluo Peak as Biluochun.
There is also a saying that the dried tea strips of Biluo Spring Tea are tightly knotted, the pekoe is revealed, the color is silvery green, the emerald is attractive, curled into a snail, produced in spring, so it is called "Biluo Spring". Lao Yang personally prefers the idea that the naming method because of the appearance characteristics and production time of tea leaves is the origin of the naming of Biluochun tea. This view is more in line with the actual situation of the name of BiluoChun Tea.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="9" > second, can you buy authentic Biluochun in Suzhou</h1>?
In Suzhou, is it even said that you can definitely buy authentic Biluochun in the East and West Mountains? This problem has always been an important topic for tea lovers when buying and drinking Biluochun.
Suzhou "Biluochun" tea has always faced the problem of "small production areas and large markets". According to statistics, the current planting area of tea in Wuzhong District, the main production area of Suzhou Biluochun, is about 28,000 mu, of which 18,000 mu is on Xishan Island. According to the Jiangsu Provincial Radio and Television Corporation Rong Media News Center, "In recent years, the annual output of Biluo spring tea in Suzhou Dongting Mountain is about 100 tons. ”。 Suzhou tea plantation area is limited, the annual output is difficult to increase on a large scale, it is difficult to meet the strong demand of the national market, the overall trend is that the supply exceeds demand. And Suzhou local tea prices are high, Sichuan, Zhejiang and other places of Biluochun tea prices are low, the yield is guaranteed, the quality is not bad, therefore, some tea merchants and tea farmers in Suzhou use foreign Biluochun tea to impersonate local tea sales for huge profits. This kind of counterfeiting is not uncommon in the main production areas of Biluochun in Suzhou's Dongxi Mountains, and some well-known brand manufacturers also have the behavior of "hanging sheep's heads and selling dog meat".
Compared with the biluochun made of high-quality small-leaf fresh leaf raw materials and the traditional biluochun stir-frying process, the biluochun tea made from the shape and sensory quality of the tea leaves is relatively high in terms of tea appearance and sensory quality, and it is difficult for ordinary tea friends to accurately distinguish it.
Local tea production is small, foreign tea and local tea is not easy to distinguish, the market demand is strong, tea merchants, tea farmers use foreign tea to impersonate local tea profitable, resulting in foreign tea in the Suzhou market flood. According to the Xinhua Daily's March 20, 2020 "Biluo Qingcha" article: "What is more worrying is that the real Dongting Mountain Biluochun that can be bought in the Suzhou market is conservatively estimated to be no more than 10%, which has become an open secret in the industry!" Due to the large area, high output and greater profit margin of the foreign tea producing area, the absolute advantage of "siege" has almost been formed for the origin of Biluochun. Therefore, even if tea lovers come to Suzhou, they may not be able to buy authentic Dongting Biluochun.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="14" >3, "scary" and tea making technology</h1>
Suzhou Biluo Spring Tea has a slender shape, curled snail, tender and long-lasting, fresh and mellow taste, sweet aftertaste, and has the characteristics of strong floral and fruit aroma (frightening fragrance). The distinctive features of Suzhou Biluo Spring Tea originate from the traditional and delicate harvesting process. The production process of Biluo spring tea is mainly fresh leaf picking, high temperature killing, kneading and kneading, rubbing the ball, and drying it over low heat.
Biluochun picking requirements are extremely high, requiring the picking of a single bud, a bud and a leaf or a bud and two leaves, with three major characteristics: one is to pick early, the second is to pick tender, and the third is to pick clean. Fresh leaves are required to be fresh and vigorous, and rain leaves, diseased insect leaves, purple bud leaves and peeled buds are not picked. After picking, the buds and leaves must be carefully picked in time, and the fish leaves and the buds that do not meet the standards are removed to achieve uniformity and consistency of the buds and leaves. A moderate spread (withering) must be carried out before stir-frying tea. Spreading is the source of craftsmanship produced by the aroma of Camellia sinensis.
When stir-frying tea, it is required that "the hand does not leave the tea, the tea does not leave the pot, the kneading is fried, the stir-fry is kneaded, the stir-frying is combined, the continuous operation, the pot is ready". After the frying is completed, further re-fire drying is also required to reduce the moisture content and Titian in the hair tea, and to reach the requirements of long-term preservation of the finished tea.
The traditional Biluo spring tea has the characteristics of "full of hair, bee legs, copper wire strips" among the local population. "Full of hair" refers to the tea cord wrapped in silver fluff. "Copper wire strip" refers to the biluo spring dry tea bent into a "snail" shape, the strip is slender and tightly knotted, like a curved copper wire. "Bee legs" are used to describe dry tea strips that are curved, thin, and covered in fluff like bee thighs. Kneading the dough is a necessary process to form the appearance characteristics of biluo spring tea, and it is the process of the appearance of the hairs on the buds. At present, the process of rubbing the dough can not be replaced by machines, so biluochun tea is mostly fried by hand, and the mechanized semi-manual biluochun production is very small.
The hairiness on dry tea is the biggest difference in appearance between Biluo spring tea and other well-known green teas. Tea lovers also judge the quality of tea by the number of millihairs in dry tea, generally speaking, the more millihairs on the tea, the higher the price of tea. However, Lao Yang reminds all tea friends that the "milli hair" in Biluo spring dry tea is also divided into "mixed hair" and "flying hair". "Mixed hair" refers to the millihair of the tea leaves wrapped around the strips of the tea leaves, and the hairs do not fall off. The more hairs in the "mixed hair" tea, the better the quality. "Flying hair" refers to the separation of the hairs and the cords in the Dried Tea of BiluoChun, and the wind blows the hairs to fly, forming the phenomenon that the tea is tea and the hair is hair. The hairs in "Flying Hair Tea" can be added later, and the Flying Hair also shows that there are defects in the production process of tea leaves, so the hairs in Flying Hair Tea do not represent the quality of tea leaves.
In addition, the turbidity of tea soup is also one of the biggest differences between Biluochun tea and other famous Chinese teas. The turbidity of the tea soup of Biluochun tea is a unique phenomenon formed due to the entry of hairs on the tea leaves into the tea soup, which has nothing to do with the quality of the tea leaves.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="21" >4</h1>
The traditional Dongting Biluo Spring Tea is made from the raw materials of small leaf tea trees of the Dongting group in Suzhou, which are represented by small leaf tea varieties such as "willow leaf strips", "sauce plate head" and "chai tea". Suzhou's native tea varieties are late-growing and cannot be picked until the end of March to the beginning of April. Early planting of tea plants such as Wuniu in Zhejiang can be marketed more than half a month earlier than all local species in Suzhou. Spring tea listing, is a tongue and time race, the sooner the famous green tea market is more conducive to seize the market, can produce more economic benefits. Therefore, around 2003, Suzhou Dongting East and West Mountain began to plant "Wuniu Morning", Fuding Dabai, Longjing 43, Sichuan Tea No. 9 and other foreign tea varieties in batches. The introduction of foreign tea varieties can make Suzhou Biluo spring tea listed earlier every year from a positive point of view, and from the unfavorable aspect, the planting of more foreign varieties has a negative impact on the protection of tea plants planted by local small-leaf groups and the maintenance of the traditional quality of Biluo spring tea.
Through the practice of tea making and tasting, it is shown that the Biluochun tea made from the raw materials of foreign varieties of tea trees has obvious differences in appearance, aroma and taste compared with traditional small varieties. If you want to drink the traditional taste of Suzhou Biluochun, in addition to buying local Tea in Suzhou, you must also buy Local Tea Tree Varieties of Biluochun Tea.
On March 27, 2021, Lao Yang and the old seniors of the Suzhou tea industry conducted a "fresh leaf determination" (single time) of small leaf species in the Dongting group at Guangfu Tea Farm, and the results were: 1, 2.5 grams of fresh leaves containing 77 buds and leaves; 2, 500 grams of fresh leaves containing 15400 leaves (individual); 3, hundred bud weight (grams) 32; 4, bud and leaf composition (conversion): single bud number accounted for 6%, one bud and one leaf accounted for 33.7%, single leaf accounted for 15.6%; 5, The length of buds and leaves (cm) is 48.9% of 1 to 1.5 subtotals (38 pieces) and 51.1% is 51.1% of 1.6 to 2 subtotals (39 pieces). This measurement showed that the Biluochun tea made from the traditional Dongting group small-leaf tea plant raw materials on that day contained 65,000 buds per kilogram, which was consistent with the measurement results in the 1980s. The Biluo spring tea produced by early planting tea trees in other places, because of its large bud leaves, the bud leaf content in each kilogram of dry tea is about 40,000-50,000 depending on the variety, which cannot reach the standard of 60,000-70,000 buds per kilogram of dried tea of the traditional variety of Biluochun tea. The number of buds and leaves contained in each kilogram of dried tea can be used to some extent as a criterion for identifying whether Biluochun tea is an authentic Suzhou tea.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="25" > five, fried green and biluochun</h1>
In Suzhou, there are not many people in old Suzhou who drink Biluochun tea, and the old tea customers drink the most is the local fried green tea. Fried green, because of the drying method of using fried drying and so named. Fried Green and Biluochun are fried using the same tea tree raw materials, but the harvesting time is about 7-10 days later than Biluochun tea.
Suzhou Biluochun tea is harvested from mid-March to mid-April every year, of which the "Mingqian Biluochun" before the Qingming Dynasty is of the best quality and the highest price. Stir-fried green tea is generally picked around the time of the annual valley rains. Fried green tea buds are thick leaves, bitterness is strong, the taste is strong, the foam resistance is far better than that of Biluochun, the price is low, only about one-fifth to one-tenth of the Biluochun in the same year, and it is cost-effective and loved by the public. Tea lovers who are interested in Suzhou stir-fried green tea can try it and have a different flavor.
Author: Yang Shengkun
Editor: Ah Jun