Wuyishan Judges Its Old-Bush Shui Xian Before the Roast
At Yangzhuang's first walked-water competition on June 27, judges graded old-bush Shui Xian in its lightly finished state, before the finishing roast that usually defines Wuyi rock tea, to read the raw craft and the mountain plot without the fire.
Wuyi rock tea is judged by its roast. On June 27, in Yangzhuang, it was judged without one.
The first Red Yangzhuang and Zhiji Old-Bush competition, held as part of the third Yangzhuang old-bush cultural event, graded its teas in the 走水茶 (zǒushuǐ chá, "walked-water") state: after the leaf has been oxidised, killed and rolled, and given only a light moisture-off firing, but before the finishing charcoal roast (足火) that fixes a yancha's character. It was, the organisers said, the first competition in Wuyishan to score rock tea in this state, China News Service and Xinhua reported.
The reasoning is a matter of information. A heavy roast can carry a weak leaf and can bury a fine one, so a tea's real material, its origin, its tree age, its plucking, and the quality of the shaking-and-oxidation (zuòqīng) work, is hardest to read once the fire has spoken. Nearly 300 samples were entered, all in the walked-water state, so the judges were reading the raw craft and the mountain plot directly.
The subject was old-bush Shui Xian (老枞水仙, lǎo cōng shuǐ xiān). Yangzhuang township, inside the Wuyishan National Park, carries some 12,000 mu of tea gardens, of which old-bush Shui Xian is a quarter to a third, including plants past a hundred years and some past two hundred. Jiangxi, a village in the township that Zhiji Tea Business has bought old-bush leaf from for years, calls itself the first village of old bush.
The organisers were plain about the aim. Where a heavy roast lets inferior tea pass, and where information barriers keep genuine quality from its price, judging the leaf before the fire is meant to put the raw material back at the centre of the grade, and to bring those growers and their buyers into the same room.
No tea king had been named. The point of the contest was less the winner than the state in which one would be chosen: the leaf before the roast, telling the judges what it was.
Sources: China News Service, Fujian, "武夷山六月摆擂'斗'茶：褪去火功'妆扮' 看见老枞水仙真功夫"; Great Wuyi News, "首届红色洋庄·芝己老枞斗茶赛收样即将结束"; Xinhua, Fujian, "武夷山：摆擂'斗'茶 赋能产业提质增效".