Drones Now Carry Wuyi's Rock Tea Off the Cliffs It Grows On
More than 70 drones are flying over 600 trips a day out of Wuyi Mountain's steepest gardens this spring, lifting freshly picked leaf out of the cliff-and-gorge terrain where the region's prized zhengyan tea grows.
Wuyi Mountain's Sankeng Liangjian, the "three gullies and two streams" core zone that grows the region's most prized zhengyan rock tea, is being worked this spring by more than 70 drones, flying upward of 600 trips a day between the cliff-face gardens and the processing houses below, China Daily and Guangming Daily reported.
The routes run through the same narrow ravines and rock crevices that give zhengyan tea its mineral character, terrain too steep and broken for a cart or even a motorbike. Growers have traditionally carried freshly picked leaf out by hand, a slow climb down that can leave the leaf sitting for hours before it reaches withering, the first step in turning green leaf into rock tea. Wuyishan Xiaomaque Technology, the company operating the fleet, said the drones cut that gap sharply, moving leaf out of the gorges within minutes of picking so it reaches the processing line while it is still fresh.
The reports frame the drones as part of a broader push to bring technology into the Sankeng Liangjian gardens without disturbing them: alongside the transport fleet, growers this season are using temperature-controlled, automated leaf-rolling machinery. Wuyi's terrain has long limited how much a single garden can produce, since a crew can only carry down what it can climb down with; a faster lift out of the gorge does not change how much tea a cliff can grow, but it changes how much of what grows there survives the trip down in good condition.
Sources: China Daily, "福建武夷山：无人机助力悬崖峭壁挑茶难题" (Fujian Wuyi Mountain: drones ease the challenge of picking tea on sheer cliffs); Guangming Daily, "福建武夷山迎来制茶繁忙季" (Fujian's Wuyi Mountain enters its busy tea-making season).