Tea has been starting to produce in most regions in China

by S. C.

The weather forcast and the impact to the Chinese Tea harvest in China:

Yunnan: just starting to rain. Last year's weather was too wet and it affected the tea (too much moisture produces tea with low aromatics), so last year's Yunnan tea in general was not as good. This year's weather is a bit too dry, which will affect total yield and production, but if the weather pattern continues and maybe there's a bit more rainfall, we should enjoy good production. Also, the economic situation and the pu er tea "crash" mean more choices and farmers are ready to do better work in order to attract customers. We are in contact with our farmers and are expecting a good year from Yunnan. Our production is expected to start around March 15 or so.

Hangzhou and Eastern China: raining with cold weather. This is good: rain nurtures the tea and the quality of the harvest should be good unless it gets excessively rainy. Last year there was a last-minute frost that was devastating to the harvest; it killed off the freshly sprouted leaves and caused both yield and quality issues. Barring the same conditions we hope to have a good dragonwell harvest again this year (we lucked out last year: while neighboring farms were devastated, we had a very good harvest of Lotus Heart, in fact, one of the best of the last few years). Good green tea yields from the Fujian and Eastern China area mean good base material for our jasmine teas. Fujian and oolong tea harvest starts in another 2-3 weeks and is not expected to reach full production until mid-April.

Tea farmers select tea leaves at Jintingdong town of Suzhou in east China's Jiangsu Province on March 8, 2009. The baking process of famous tea variety of Biluochun began recently, a little behind latest years due to the low temparature this spring. Biluochun, the specialty of Suzhou, is listed one of the top tea varieties in China.

Tea farmers in Hangzhou, capital of east China's Zhejiang Province, begun last week to pick Longjing tea (Dragon Well Tea), the most renowned among the variety of green tea produced in the country, due to the early advent of warm weather.

Full-scale picking will start these days if no disastrous weather nor cold temperatures hit the region.

Tea picked before early April is much dearer and better in taste compared with those picked later.

The West Lake Longjing tea boasts a history of over 1,000 years and is often called the "Empress of Green tea," and those picked earlier are reputed as "gold buds" and can cost up to 6,000 yuan a kilogram.

Also in Anhui, Yunnan,Fujian, Henan, Jiangsu, Sichuan, Hunan, Hubei and some other regions, Green teas production is being on. This early Spring teas normally are very expensive as of limited offering to the market and customers would like to try new taste and flavors of new teas. Also most of tea marchents try to catch this business chance to sell the new harvest teas. White teas including white peony, white silver needle production also finished, Panyong black teas, zhenghe black teas, keemun black teas and yunnan golden black teas will start to have production in the coming weeks.