Tie Guan Yin

Some of our wonderful regulars came into the restaurant for lunch today and got into the duck shit tea (it was in the building for less than an hour, and not even on the menu yet!) I was showing them our new selection straight from the cardboard shipping parcel and talking a bit about each one. They chose to go with Ya Shi Xiang, and I feel one reason could have been that out of all the tea on our list now (except Asahina Gyokuro) I know the most about it. Knowledge helps, here is a write up on our new TGY.

To be fair to Hojo Tea, nearly all of the information you are about to read is from their website. A much more in-depth write up on this tea can be found there. http://hojotea.com/item_e/o26e.htm

The Tea name translated to English is ‘Iron Goddess of Mercy’, Tie means Iron, Guan Yin is the name of the Goddess which represents mercy and compassion. The origin is legendary, but there are 2 versions of it. Here is the “Wei” version, straight from Wikipedia.

Deep in the heart of Fujian’s Anxi County, there was a rundown temple which held an iron statue of Guanyin, the Bodhisattva of Compassion. Every day on the walk to his tea fields, a poor farmer named Wei would pass by and reflect on the temple’s worsening condition. “Something has to be done,” he thought.

Being poor, Wei did not have the means to repair the temple. Instead, he brought a broom and some incense from his home. He swept the temple clean and lit the incense as an offering to Guanyin. “It’s the least I can do,” he thought to himself. Twice a month for many months, he repeated the same tasks.

One night, Guanyin appeared to him in a dream, telling him of a cave behind the temple where treasure awaited. He was to take the treasure and share it with others. In the cave, the farmer found a single tea shoot. He planted it in his field and nurtured it into a large bush, from which the finest tea was produced. He gave cuttings of this rare plant to all his neighbors and began selling the tea under the name Tieguanyin, Iron Bodhisattva of Compassion.

Over time, Wei and all his neighbors prospered; the rundown temple of Guanyin was repaired and became a beacon for the region. Mr. Wei took joy in the daily trip to his tea fields, never failing to stop in appreciation of the beautiful temple.

It doesn’t matter what the product is, supply for anything will find a way to meet demand. TGY is one of China’s most sought after teas, and to keep up with the demand for it, they have to turn to fertilizers and pesticides. From my experience staying with my in-laws, and my wife’s general attitude towards Chinese produce, I will say Japan is scared of what China gets away with. Japan’s legal limits on pesticides and chemicals present in foodstuffs are very strict compared to the rest of the world. Hojo’s criteria was to find a high quality TGY that tastes great, uses the original cultivar, and falls within these Japanese safety limits.

The cultivar [cultivated variety of the tea plant] used to make Tie Guan Yin is called… Tie Guan Yin. It has a specific production method, which is also somewhat unique to TGY. If we jump back to supply and demand, people can use newer cultivars that grow faster, produce more, have better resistance to disease, etc. These other cultivars can be processed in the TGY method and be called TGY (buyer beware, buying Chinese tea is hard.) This TGY is made of the proper Tie Guan Yin cultivar, from the spring harvest, within Anxi county, in Fujian Province (S.E China). Most of China’s famous teas are picked in March/April (early spring), but TGY is usually picked around May. This gives the leaf a lot of time to grow and fill itself with amino acids, aromatic compounds, and minerals; all of which oxidize and transform to become the flavor of the tea.

This TGY can be referred to as “Jade style”. In the teas final processing stages it hasn’t been thoroughly baked as tradition would dictate, and will give a light floral aroma like orchids in the infusion. Despite the green color of the leaf, it has actually gone through a lot of oxidation, a quality often found in Taiwanese oolongs. Once the tea has finished the solar withering and cooling process, it will be tossed around in bamboo mats to bruise the edges of the leaf. Once the edges turn red, they are meticulously trimmed off so that only green remains. This makes the leaf look kind of shitty once you steep it, but this step really dials in on TGYs famous flavor. Once the tea has gone through its preliminary drying stage, the stems are all removed. One by one, probably with little pain in the ass scissors. These kind of factors will certainly contribute to the price and fame of this tea type.