The Harney & Sons Guide to Tea - Michael Harney [12]
To give this tea its characteristic light, sweet flavors, Jin Shan producers expose the leaves to as little heat as possible. First they fix the leaves with a quick blast of hot air. To give the leaves their spindly, twisted shape, they manipulate the wilted leaves with their hands in a hot wok, but only very briefly to keep the tea from taking on excessive roasted flavors. Finally, they fire the tea for a short time in a poey long, a bamboo cylinder unique to China. Fired so quickly, the tea takes on just a hint of charcoal flavors, evocative of crisp roasted marshmallows.
BI LO CHUN Spring Snail Shell
Tightly wound like tiny snail shells, the leaves of Bi Lo Chun unfurl into tidy leafsets of two leaves and a bud when they’re brewed, yielding cloudy, pale green liquor full of sparkle. Fixed and fired over raging hot woks, Bi Lo Chun is not quite as classically vegetal as Lung Ching (page 40). Instead, the tea offers more pronounced roasted vegetal flavors of grilled endive, with that vegetable’s engaging, nearly bitter bite, along with charming floral and citrus flavors.
Unlike the relatively recent Pan Long Ying Hao or the obscure Jin Shan, Bi Lo Chun is a popular tea and an ancient one, enjoyed by emperors and mere mortals throughout China for several centuries. One of the most northern teas made in China, Bi Lo Chun comes from a tiny island called Dongting on the Tai Hu, or Tai Lake. The lake lies two hours north of the city of Hangzhou on the southern border of Jiangsu province. It is a lovely spot. Moisture off the lake moderates the otherwise cold and harsh climate, making tea cultivation possible. The island is also home to fruit orchards, and in an unusual arrangement, the tea bushes are interspersed among the trees. The tea is said to draw its aromas from the apricot and plum blossoms, but this claim is questionable. The tea does not taste much of flowers, and most of the trees bloom only after the Qing Ming spring festival, after Bi Lo Chun has been harvested. The fruit orchards do make for a lovely setting, though.
I visited Jiangsu province for the first time only recently, on a tea-buying trip with Marcus Wulf, a friend and my tea broker. We went at the tail end of Qing Ming season, in late April toward the end of the harvest. Through some surprising circumstances, we realized that the tea production is so small, most makers of Bi Lo Chun have to supplement their income with other work.
We started the trip in Hangzhou, a large metropolis that produces Lung Ching, another famous Chinese green tea. Though Hangzhou lies only two hours south of Dongting island, the two tea regions are worlds apart. Compared with the crowded, more southern city, Dongting island could not be more isolated or remote. We asked some Lung Ching brokers in Hangzhou if they could help us find our way there (they had sold Marcus Bi Lo Chun tea, so we assumed they knew the way). They happily agreed, but after several hours in their car meandering the empty back roads of Jiangsu province, we realized they had no idea where we were. We found a hotel that would take us for the night, figuring we’d find our way back to Hangzhou in the morning. Surprised to see Westerners, the hotel doorman asked us what we were doing there. Through our translator, I explained that we wanted to see Bi Lo Chun farms on Dongting island. He smiled and told us he owned one. He offered to take us there the next day.
The next morning, we pulled up to his operation. Though his was one of the larger factories, the facilities were still small and rudimentary. The tea making made for a mesmerizing sight: Workers fixed the freshly harvested leaves in big woks heated with pulsing coal fires. With their callused hands, the workers pushed the leaves against the hot metal in a sweeping motion that teased out the tip. At first, the tips grew big and fluffy. As the leaves curled up into their snail shell shape, the down spread out over the leaves in a fine golden dust.
Passing through the small factory to