Tea Talk on Paper VII: Is Frying Tea the Same as Making Tea?

Someone boasts about their tea-frying skills, challenging others to tea duels everywhere, claiming their tea has high aroma, fine water, and great throat appeal. Whether newcomers or veterans, none meet their standards; only their tea is good. Such people are common on tea mountains, wandering around, liking crowds, and when seated, they often pull out their own tea for tasting, asking you to guess the tea region or whether it's from big or small trees. If you guess the expensive ones, they say that's skill—turning cheap tea into expensive. If you guess big trees, they're even more pleased, saying it's even greater skill to make small trees taste like big trees, and no one can tell... and so on, networking everywhere, showing off their frying skills. Why? To take orders and sell tea.

Tea-picking women on Nannuo Mountain

I've encountered quite a few such people and have tasted some of their works. At first sip, they're really not bad—strong flavor and high aroma. But upon careful tasting, the liquor is harsh and thin, truly the kind of so-called "good tea" that harms if overconsumed. I've watched some of them make tea, and there's a common trait: fresh leaves go onto the withering trough, sit quietly for hours, nothing much happens, then they start pan-firing. In the wok, they alternate low temperature, quick turning, and steaming. They proudly claim to adjust based on the tea, each face radiating an artist's confidence and brilliance. Some fry right next to pigsties; some dry directly on rooftops, with the "fragrance" of nearby livestock wafting over. I look down on such tea, but there's a big market for it. Many people like it—it stimulates salivation and returns sweetness. These people still have a market; they sit at the head of the table at meals, and everyone listens attentively when they speak, proud to be their friends.

Today I'm not here to criticize them, but to raise today's question. This phenomenon now seems to be the industry mainstream.

Is frying tea the same as making tea?

I think not! Frying tea is just one step in the initial processing of tea; many other steps are equally important. Let's use cooking as an analogy. To make a good dish, the ingredients are crucial. A bought chicken can't replicate the taste of a free-range one. You need to select good vegetables and seasonings, wash and prepare them properly before you start cooking; cooking is just one step. Making tea is even more complex. The management of fresh leaves before frying is very important. In my article on the formula for good tea, I believe fresh leaf management accounts for 30 points, frying (i.e., kill-green) and rolling together account for 30 points, and the initial processing environment accounts for 40 points.

Frying tea (kill-green) is only one step. Everything from fresh leaf management onward is crucial. If fresh leaf management is poor—insufficient or uneven water loss—then handling it in a high-temperature wok is risky and requires greater precision. If not handled well, the liquor becomes harsh and thin. Many people imitate superficially; they've watched some experts fry tea, memorized the process and key steps, and then claim to be experts themselves. They know the how but not the why, so they can't learn or adjust, and they'll never advance to expert level. Showing off and teaching others to fry tea is misleading to others and harmful to themselves.

Precise recording and management are as important as experience

The environment for initial processing, including sun-drying, is very important. If you only focus on frying tea, requiring someone to deliver firewood, and paying attention to the thickness and tilt of the wok, but ignoring the environment, that's even more dangerous. The initial processing is also a process of expelling impurities; if it expels, it also absorbs. A bad environment—smells from cooking, pig manure, cow dung, chicken droppings—can cause immense damage to the tea.

Drying ground in the forest

If you don't know how to taste tea, you can't make good tea. Without tasting skills, you won't know how to adjust, won't know where fresh leaf management should be, won't catch problems in kill-green, and won't discover environmental issues. For me, good tea should first make the body feel very comfortable when drunk—like pouring a bowl of water into a pile of sand, disappearing instantly, without the body having to resist and then absorb, and certainly not causing stomach pain. Then consider the mouthfeel: fullness of the liquor, charm, salivation, and returning sweetness. You can't reverse that order. If it tastes good but makes the body uncomfortable, it's not good. But the most fatal thing is that too many people treat such tea as treasure, selling, drinking, and collecting it.

Making tea is a lifelong endeavor. For me, I only stay true to my body's sensations!

All articles and images are original. Author: Lü Jianfeng, WeChat: ynwuse, working at 51 Pu-erh Net, initiator of the Houyue crowdfunding tea.