Tea Knowledge - Why is Yashixiang called Yashixiang!

Phoenix Dancong is the most finely classified and complex tea in Chinese tea varieties.

For tea lovers who are new to Dancong, they will inevitably be confused by strange names such as Laoxianweng, Aofuhou, Brothers, Sawdo, Yashixiang, etc.

• One tree, one fragrance, thousands of teas, thousands of flavors

These seemingly random names actually represent the personality of each tea tree. They are named by tea farmers in the simplest language after generations of observation and accumulation.

Some are based on the morphology of the tea tree (for example, Sawdo is named because the leaves are covered with fine serrations), some are derived from historical allusions (such as Brothers are two tea trees from the same root), and more are derived from the characteristics of the tea aroma.

When tea farmers found good tea trees on Fenghuang Mountain, they planted them one by one, picked them separately, and made tea separately. This "one-to-one" tea-making method allows each tea tree to form a unique aroma.

After hundreds of years of cultivation, there are now more than 160 types of aromas recorded in Fenghuang Dancong, and dozens of delicate flavors can be divided into major categories such as fruity, floral, and medicinal.

• Why is a good cup of fragrant tea called "Duck Shit"?

The most popular of these aromas is "Duck Shit Fragrance". People who hear this name for the first time will probably frown: How can tea be called such a "flavorful" name?

But as long as you have tasted it, you will be impressed by its aroma.

Because this tea is not only not smelly, but after brewing, it blooms with the elegant honeysuckle fragrance. The tea soup is smooth in the mouth, and the floral fragrance will continue to precipitate after seven brews.

This extremely contrasting naming interest, coupled with the "seven brews to keep the fragrance", naturally became the best-selling one. In the tea shop, six or seven out of ten new customers who try Dancong for the first time will ask for this "odd name but really fragrant" oolong tea.

• Duck Shit Fragrance

This famous tea bush located in Fengxi Pingkengtou was originally just an ordinary tea tree, which was used to be picked and processed together with other Phoenix Narcissus tea trees, and no one took a second look at it.

One spring in 1972, the production team leader Wei Chunse led the team to pick tea in the mountains. Near dusk, after picking tea, Wei Chunse suddenly found a tea tree with large black leaves on the way down the mountain. There were many new buds hanging on the branches. Seeing that the sun was about to set, he thought: "If I don't pick it today, the buds and leaves will be old tomorrow!" So he quickly picked the tender buds of this tree separately.

What is unexpected is that when the tea leaves are withered, they actually emit a strange fragrance! After the tea was roasted and dried, the tea master poured it into the tea bowl, drank it, smacked his lips and praised: "This tea is so fragrant, it should be sold separately, qualified as a Dancong."

Because the tea is black in color, everyone named it "Wuye Dancong", which became a new fragrance in Fenghuang Dancong.

When good tea becomes famous, troubles follow. At that time, it was still a collective production era, and the old Wei family contracted this "Wuye Dancong" mother tree and its offspring. Because this fragrance is so good, it has attracted many people, and people from all over the country come to ask for tea branches to grow seedlings. There are too many people, today you cut a branch, tomorrow he breaks a branch, and in less than two months the mother tree is plucked out and becomes a "bare commander".

Wei Chunse was so anxious that he stamped his feet: If you keep pulling like this, the tea tree will die! But they were from the same village, and a direct refusal would hurt the relationship…

So, Wei Chunse thought of a “dirty trick”:

Later, whenever someone asked about this tea, he pretended to be mysterious: “This tea of ​​ours is grown on ‘duck shit soil’ (actually nutrient-rich yellow mud), the leaves are as black as duck shit, and they smell like duck shit!”

Unexpectedly, this “self-deprecating” joke spread from one person to another, and the originally elegant “Black Leaf Single Cong” was forcibly called the down-to-earth “Duck Shit Fragrance”.

• The weirder the name, the more fragrant the tea?

In 2012, tea experts felt that calling such an elegant tea ‘Duck Shit Fragrance’ was cheap. Indeed, for those who don’t know this story, hearing the three words “Duck Shit Fragrance”, no one would think it has anything to do with the high-fragrant Single Cong tea.