On tea harvest dates...

[Fabien]

I've started a discussion on my blog, in english this time, http://chayiartoftea.blogspot.fr/ about what one should expect from the generalization of tea harvesting dates on chinese and japanese greens.

I'd be interested to know what you guys think of it. Pros/cons, etc... Don't hesitate to discuss it directly through blog comments, it will give the blog a pleasing international accent

The aim of this article's first part was to adress regular tea drinkers that feel that a tea harvest date as precise as possible is both sufficient and necessary to say a seller is fully honest and really knows his teas.

On one hand I've been personaly completely satisfied with undated fresh greens (both chinese and japanese) and on the other hand totally sure that certain vendors (even those in the high-end part of the scale) are easily "playing" with harvest dates without real explanations on why one is better than the other.

[John Delaney]

I think given the choice between more information rather than less information, most people would prefer more information. I think the knowledge of the harvest date information is helpful. It lets you know exactly how fresh the tea is and also lets you know which flush it comes from which can impact the taste one gets from the tea. Plus, it also has the benefit of training customers to learn about the different harvests and what to expect from them.

I think most customers want fresh tea and not to have tea that is far from its harvest date to be passed off on them without their knowledge. The use of harvest dates helps bring this out and the open and keeps the seller honest.

To give you a slightly similar example, yesterday I was at wine store that was selling various kinds of BBQ sauce but a number of the sauces were very close to their best by date. I would not normally feel I need to check for this date when making a purchase as I would think they would normally be nowhere near this date. However, when I saw that these products were close to expiring, it gave me a poorer impression of the seller as they did not make any attempt to bring it to my attention and made me think less of the retailer. I would think the same thing goes with tea. I don't want to have to feel like I need to check labels or read the fine print. I want to trust the seller and providing that information helps build that trust even if it creates more work and costs for the seller