Because I had read the beginning of two legendary novels and could not see the follow-up, Doulu Huairang felt languid and listless.
Even the Liangzhou lyrics performed by the singers could not lift the spirits.
"Have you planted all those crops?"
"We are still rushing to plant. It is all dry land, so we have been planting extensively and harvesting little. It is estimated that there will not be much harvest this year."
Huaiyu poured him a cup of tea, "Try my tea, but it's a new tea specially made this year, Mengding tea from Jiannan."
Doulu Huairang still had that story in his mind, "Jiannan Mengding Stone Flower Tea isn't that new, right? My house gets a lot of new tea cakes every year. If you like it, I'll have two boxes sent to you later."
Not two slices, not two boxes, but two boxes, each box containing at least dozens of cakes.
Prince Consort Doulu is always so bold and bold.
"This is different from the Mengdingshi flower tea you usually drink,"
"What's the difference? The dragon dumpling and phoenix cake served in the palace is the best."
He is the consort, and he is given a lot of cakes with stone flowers, dragons, balls, and phoenixes in the palace every year.
"This is loose tea, and the tea making process is also different."
Cheng Yaojin went to Luzhou, Sichuan this year to serve as the governor, and Wu Huaiyu also sent some stewards and servants to accompany him. Not only did they go to contact the order of five hundred house slaves, but they also had the task of buying tea.
In fact, although there are many classifications of tea, the main reason is the difference in tea making technology. Different teas are processed according to the characteristics of tea in different places.
Tea in the Tang Dynasty was mainly shaped tea, which was made into tea cakes. The tea cake technology in the Tang Dynasty mainly involved steaming green tea, mashing the fresh leaves and pressing them into cakes. The specific process was to steam the picked fresh leaves until they were soft.
Steam it, mash it, put it into a cake mold to shape it, bake it, and finally tie it into skewers, wrap it and store it.
After the Song Dynasty, tea pressing and tea grinding processes were added after steaming tea, which was relatively complicated.
Although there are tea cakes in modern times, the process is completely different. Basically, some kind of loose tea in the prepared Maocha is pressed into cakes, instead of directly using fresh tea leaves to make tea cakes. For example, white tea cakes are made from
Good loose tea is steamed into soft pressed cakes.
Another difference is that people in the Tang Dynasty often had a process of squeezing the juice after steaming and pressing the tea leaves. To remove the juice, the more high-end the tea, the more essential it is, such as the tribute dragon dumpling and phoenix cake.
Different tea-making processes produce different teas. In addition, different ways of drinking tea, ordering tea, sencha, etc. are even different from making tea.
People who like to drink tea often only like a certain kind of tea.
Modern teas include green tea, black tea, oolong tea, white tea, etc., and they are all mainly different in the tea making process. Black tea is fermented, green tea is not fermented, and white tea is slightly fermented.
Green tea pays attention to freshness. The main processes are fixing, rolling and drying. It is commonly known as fried tea. Drinking tea mainly involves brewing, adding water and letting it sit for a while before drinking. What you drink is that fresh and refreshing taste.
Black tea needs to go through a fermentation process and is brewed, but it takes longer to brew than green tea.
As for dark tea, it is a post-fermented tea, mainly from southwestern tea trees. The basic technological process of dark tea is greening, initial kneading, layering, re-kneading, and baking. Dark tea generally has relatively coarse raw materials, and the manufacturing process often involves
The accumulation and fermentation takes a long time, so the leaves are oily black or dark brown, so it is called dark tea. During the Ming and Qing Dynasties, this kind of tea was mainly sold to the Qinghai-Tibet grasslands and was very popular among nomads.
When Wu Huaiyu drinks tea, he still prefers green tea.
There are many varieties of green tea, but most of them are roasted loose tea, which uses bud slices, so it is relatively fresh and refreshing, and there is no need to add anything to give it a unique taste.
In the Tang Dynasty, tea cakes with various seasonings were added to make tea. He was really not used to it. It was okay to drink it as milk tea or oil tea.
This time, we specially arranged for someone to go to Jiannan with Cheng Yaojin, purchase fresh tea leaves directly from the local tea gardens, and make a batch of new tea according to his processing method.
Among them, the Mengding Huangya green tea is made by hiring local girls during the Qingming Festival to pick only single buds and one bud and one leaf. There are at least 50,000 tea buds in one kilogram of prepared tea. These tea top green teas are spread out with fresh leaves and finished.
, spread to cool, first knead, stir-fry, two greens and other thirteen processes, finally baked to enhance flavor, quantitatively packed into boxes, and then shipped back to Chang'an.
The one with a single bud is the special grade, and the one with one bud and one leaf is the top grade.
In addition, a batch of Jiannan black tea, Jiannan black tea, a batch of jasmine tea, and even oolong tea processed from Mengding tea are also produced and processed in Jiannan. These teas are all loose tea.
Compared with the very small amount of loose tea available in the Tang Dynasty at this time, these teas have their own characteristics and are quite good with their unique tea brewing and drinking methods.
Anyway, Wu Huaiyu was very satisfied after receiving the tea. Although the quality was still a bit different from the good teas he had tasted before, the main reason was that the craftsmanship was not skilled enough.
The more you cook it, the better it will get.
For this reason, he wrote a special letter to ask the steward to directly purchase some tea gardens there, build his own tea house, prepare to expand production, and even sign more tea collection contracts with local people.
Although this kind of tea is very different from the traditional Tang tea cake tea, Wu Huaiyu feels that there will still be a market for this kind of tea. The Wu family is not the first to try it. It is still a niche for the time being, but the Wu family will be in this niche in the future.
It is still very promising to occupy a leading position in the market.
Doulu Huairang became a little interested when he saw that Huaiyu's words were clear and logical.
Huaiyu deliberately took out a beautiful box, which was still sealed with wax, and opened it. There were fine porcelain inside. When he opened the lid again, a strong aroma of tea suddenly hit his face.
This may be the big difference between green tea and Tuancha at this time.
The umami flavor is so strong.
Pinch some green tea out of the tea can.
Dou Lu Huairang stretched out his hand to pick up the little sprouts one by one and looked at them carefully.
"Aren't these tree leaves?"
"Tea leaves are just leaves, but don't underestimate these little buds. Did you know that before the Qingming Festival, we hired local girls to pick them? They are all virgins. Those young Jiannan girls, they are all virgins.
Walking through the tea gardens on the mountain with a tea basket,
Tea will not be harvested after rain or dew, nor will it be harvested from diseased or insect buds. Each bud is broken off from the tea tree by the girls with their thumbs and index fingers, and they must not be pinched with nails.
The best ones are all young single buds, and the second ones only have one bud and one leaf in full bloom."
A good product must have a good story.
Although Wu Huaiyu has never been to Jiannan Tea Garden, he is very good at telling stories. Fortunately, he is also a decent person and did not say that this is Ruqian Longjing or something like that.
Anyway, there used to be something called Ruqian Longjing. It was said that to make this kind of tea, you must first select young virgins and pick the tea leaves before Grain Rain. The picked tea leaves should be placed on the chest and moistened with body temperature, so that the tea leaves can absorb the virgin girls.
Only by scenting your body can you make this precious Ruqian Longjing tea, and only then can your tea be of higher quality.
Huaiyu cannot make up such words.
A pound of tea requires 50,000 buds. If you put each piece on your chest to moisten it, how many tea leaves can be moistened in a day, even if a girl picks flowers with a drying machine.
Even the girl he talked about picking tea was actually not entirely true.
After all, you have to grab the right time to pick tea. As soon as the buds and leaves appear, you have to pick them as soon as possible. There are also unmarried virgin girls in their 28th and 80s who can pick tea at the age of eighty and three or five years old. It doesn’t matter whether they are men, women, old or young. Anyone who can go to battle should pick it quickly.
.
Even if you can't pinch your fingers with your fingernails, that's all telling a story.
It is even impossible to truly say that even if there is a little rain or dew, we cannot collect it.
It can only be said that the picked tea leaves will go through a re-selection process. The higher the grade and the more expensive the tea, the better the selection. However, after the tea leaves are roasted, there will still be a lot of broken leaves, etc. These are cheaply processed broken teas.
, the larger ones can be broken into pieces, and the finer ones can be made into tea bags or pressed cakes.
It will never be wasted.
The jar that Wu Huaiyu opened was indeed of the highest quality. Each single sprout was specially provided to him. It was produced at home, so how could it be inferior to the one given to the owner of the family.
In order to match the tea, Huaiyu even made two crystal cups. Originally, drinking green tea with a glass ring would be good and beautiful, but Wu Huaiyu did not have the energy and skills to make the glass. The glass at this time was ordinary, but
The crystal cup is not bad, except that it is expensive, there is nothing wrong with it.
Boil the water, let it sit for a while, then brew.
Pour one-third of the water into the cup, pick up the cup and shake it.
When I held it up to my face and smelled it, the fresh fragrance of the tea came straight to me.
Doulu Huairang is following suit, and it smells really good.
Fill it with water until it's seven-tenths full.
Let it sit for two minutes, then pour the tea into the tea sea and divide it into cups.
Pick up the teacup and take a few sips, it's refreshing.
Doulu Huairang imitated Huaiyu's example and also picked up a small crystal cup to sip. The tea was very hot but not scalding to the mouth. You could feel the direct sensation in your mouth.
Compared with the boiled tea and sencha he often drank before, the biggest difference is that the taste is very light and simple at first, without any complicated flavors.
Savor it carefully and it will be sweet.
“It’s a bit bitter at first, but it gradually becomes sweeter, which is pretty good.”
"Continued Cup."
After another cup of careful tasting, Doulu Huairang has already accepted this different kind of brewed tea.
"It's quite elegant to make green tea with crystal tea."
Huaiyu chuckled, "Elegance never goes out of style."
Although Doulu Huairang used to drink tea every day, after all, drinking tea in the early Tang Dynasty was still a stylish lifestyle among nobles and nobles, which was beyond the reach of ordinary people.
But he really didn’t know that there were so many ways to make tea.
When Huaiyu made him another pot of black tea, he was even more stunned when he saw the red tea soup poured out.
After tasting it, I was amazed.
"I didn't expect that Brother Wu, who is a master of medicine, calligraphy, painting and poetry, would have this unique skill of making tea."
"It's all passed down from masters. Tea is also medicine. It can prolong life and even cure diseases."
Drinking tea and chatting about various Zhuangzi.
Doulu's family is also busy replanting. His family mainly grows buckwheat, millet, millet, oats, oats, sorghum, etc., mainly drought-resistant grains.
"I'll give you some corn and potato seeds,"
Two corns can sow an acre of land, so Huaiyu gave Douluo Huairang ten corns, two bags of potatoes as seed cubes, and some sweet potatoes.
Seeing these auspicious signs, Doulu Huairang likes them very much. These things are just miscellaneous grains, but now they still have an auspicious name.
When he left, he not only happily took twenty corns and two bags of potatoes and sweet potatoes, but also happily accepted several cans of tea given to him by Huaiyu.
However, Doulu Huairang was a nobleman who paid great attention to etiquette. When he got home, he picked twenty maids, twenty Fan Ding slaves, and two good horses to deliver to Huaiyu. He also gave Huaiyu a box of dragons, balls, and phoenixes.
cake.
"Twenty corns will be given back to my twenty maids, two bags of potatoes will be given back to twenty tin slaves, and a little sweet potato will be given back to two horses. Doulu's Prince Consort is always so polite."
No matter how auspicious it is, it is just miscellaneous grains. One corn cob can only produce a few taels of dry corn kernels. Three corn cobs may not be able to produce a pound. Now one stone of grain in Shuofang only costs a thousand handfuls. So in total, one corn
If the stick was only calculated in terms of grains, it would be worth a few cents at most.
And a maid is worth seven to eight thousand coins.
What surprised him even more was that among the twenty maids, he actually found the daughter of General Long Xiang who was the first to be auctioned at the auction table in Kouma City that day.
The steward of the Doulu family who came to repay the gift said that the maidservant was still in perfect condition and was specially given as a gift by Doulu Huairang. During this period, she had been receiving etiquette training at the Doulu family. She was originally going to take her back to Chang'an, but now she has given it to Huaiyu.
That girl was bought by the Doulu family at a bidding price of 230,000 yuan.
Two or three cents a piece of corn, exchanged for two hundred and thirty thousand cents for the daughter of General Long Xiang?
This Doulu Huairang, no matter what people say about him, it reminds me that when they were in Longyou, when he was still under the ninth rank, Doulu Prince Consort took good care of him.
Huaiyu smiled and did not say anything polite about not accepting the gift in return. There was no need to be too polite with Doulu Huairang, as long as everyone knew what he was doing.
Huaiyu went back to the house and brewed another pot of Mongolian bud tea. Maybe he could get Doulu Huairang to do this loose tea business together. He was the prince-in-law, and Doulu was from a famous family in Guanlong. His grandmother was a princess of the Sui Dynasty, and his wife was a princess of the Tang Dynasty.
, he also has quite a status in the aristocratic circle of Chang'an. If he is asked to stand up and endorse this new tea and lead a new trend, this new tea will probably become popular by then.
