Tie Guan Yin Lan Yun literally gives an orchid flower | HOJO Online Speciality Tea Shop

We launched Tie Guan Yin from Anxi, Fujian. The product name is Tie Guan Yin Lan Yun.

The leaf of Tie Guan Yin cultivar

Visting Anxi for quality Tie Guan Yin

Tie Guan Yin is a very popular tea in China. The high quality Tie Guan Yin has a huge demand in domestic market. Thus, it is very important for us to visit Anxi and purchase tea on the spot.

Tie Guan Yin is generally highly contaminated by the pesticide

One of the main concerns about Tie Guan Yin is the pesticide residues. As this tea is mainly consumed by domestic market, in many cases, the pesticide residues in the tea might only comply with domestic standards but not the international standard. Nevertheless, the pesticide inspection is not compulsory for domestic products. Since this tea is mainly supplied to the domestic market, the pesticide level are not being controlled according to the international standards. Moreover, the timing of harvesting Tie Guan Yin is late. The plucking is carried out only when the leaf grows up to the big size. It is much later in timing than that of ordinary teas. As such, more pesticides are often used to control insects in tea garden in order to maintain the production quantity to meet the high market demand. We have to care about not only the quality of tea, but also the pesticide residues in Tie Guan Yin.

Tea is harvested when it grown very big, as shown in the photo.

Spring is the best for quality Tie Guan Yin

In different seasons throughout the year, the Tie Guan Yin is plucked and produced several times. However, we only purchase spring tea. If this tea is plucked in other seasons, it gives a very uncomfortable sourness due to the specific type of polyphenol. For Tie Guan Yin, this kind of sourness is very obvious since this tea is produced from matured leaves and in big size. Only when the twig turns into brown colour and becomes very stiff, then the farmer will start the plucking of Tie Guan Yin.

Quality Tie Guan Yin is grown with less or no fertilizer

Usually, the more time the tea spends in growing, the better the quality. Unfortunately, in Anxi, so many Tie Guan Yin teas are grown with too much fertilizer. Farmer knows that Tie Guan Yin is very popular and could be sold at high price. Thus, they are keen to use a lot of fertilizers and accelerate the growing speed and output. Those teas give very strong up-lifting aroma, yet very flat in after taste. What I care the most is the tea that is grown without fertilizer and spent longer time in growing. It has to be the tea that gives strong after taste, long-lasting flavor and soft texture in taste. If you try this Tie Guan Yin Lan Yun, you may realize that its flavour could last over many brewings.