TeaChat

Long Jing and a few others a showing up on Taobao:

http://s.taobao.com/search?q=%C2%CC%B2% ... z_20120401

2012 new tea market Mingqian a West Lake Longjing green tea leaf spring and special buy two 包邮 http://item.taobao.com/item.htm?id=12965111079

# buy two get Figure a classic gift bags (limited number, while supplies last, you need to!)

etorix wrote:2012 new tea market Mingqian a West Lake Longjing green tea leaf spring and special buy two 包邮 http://item.taobao.com/item.htm?id=12965111079

# buy two get Figure a classic gift bags (limited number, while supplies last, you need to!)

This one's webpage says production region is Xinchang, which is not the region for West Lake Longjing. The long jing cultivars in Xinchang have barely been harvested by now. Some other green tea cultivars have been harvested there.

Today im enjoying a Xu Fu Long Ya from http://www.teaspring.com/Xu-Fu-Long-Ya.asp
Harvest Period:
Spring 2012 (First Flush)

and they currently list loads more

Spring 2012 teas:
Lion Xi Hu Long Jing.
Cha Wang Huang Shan Mao Feng.
Meng Ding Huang Ya.
Emperor Long Jing.
Xu Fu Long Ya.
Meng Ding Gan Lu.

"A harvest from 60 acres farm land can only produce 500 grams of Xu Fu Long Ya."

This claim on Teaspring's website seems totally absurd.

Poohblah wrote:"A harvest from 60 acres farm land can only produce 500 grams of Xu Fu Long Ya."

This claim on Teaspring's website seems totally absurd.

I think it's mainly a wording problem. They could modify the description a little bit and make it look better. Typically a bud-style early spring green tea takes 80,000-10,000 leaf-buds to make 500g, and the first harvest of Long Ya or some other bud teas happen when the budding rate is 5% in the plantation (5% of all new buds are big enough for harvest). So I guess they are talking about the first harvest of the tea, and the ball-park figure sounds right to me (but I have yet to look up how much is 1 acre, I'm a metric person )

nor can i speak to the alleged Miao Minority maidens fair hands a'picking bit
and i do also get put off by marketing hyperbolics .. but this is unmistakeably pretty fresh tea, freshest IVE ever had, its jolly nice too

i got 25gm, so i can have this all week if i like, and i just may do that

looks just like its pic on the site, its DEFINITELY not made from recycled shoppingbags, ive not tried it before, nor have i bought from Teaspring before .. i do have to confess i cant remember noticing its 2012 provenance when i ordered it tho

and next week im ordering some of the other 2012s