Yang'ai Small-leaf Bitter Tea

Yang'ai Small-leaf Bitter Tea

　　  Yang'ai Small-leaf Bitter Tea

　　   Yang'ai Small-leaf Bitter Tea is a newly developed specialty tea, created in 2000 and produced at Yang'ai Tea Farm in Guizhou Province.

　　   The processing of small-leaf bitter tea currently lacks a complete national system of technical standards. The typical processing procedure at Yang'ai Tea Farm is “picking – cooling – fixation – rolling – initial drying and shaping – drying – sorting – grading and evaluation – packaging.” The processing procedure for tea bags is “raw material inspection – sorting – crushing – evaluation – blending – bagging – boxing.”

　　    Guizhou Yang'ai Tea Farm was established in 1952 as a self-operated import-export tea enterprise of Guizhou Province. It is located in the southwestern suburbs of Guiyang City, only 40 kilometers from the city center. To the east lies Guiyang Leizhuang Airport, while Huchao and Machang railway stations are situated to the north and west of the farm respectively. The Yunnan-Guizhou Highway runs through the farm, providing very convenient transportation.

　　    The Yang'ai Tea Farm area belongs to the central Guizhou hilly tea region, which has a long history of tea plantation development and premium tea production. The farm covers an area of over 20,000 mu, including nearly 10,000 mu of tea gardens and around 12,650 mu of arable land, all distributed on gentle slopes and terraces in low hills. The altitude here is about 1,300 meters, with soil mostly consisting of Quaternary clayey acidic yellow soil. The area receives 1,200–1,300 mm of rainfall annually, has an average annual temperature of 14.2°C, a diurnal temperature variation of 3–13°C, and relatively humid air. Surrounded by undulating green mountains and often shrouded in mist, the environment provides excellent ecological conditions for tea tree growth.