Anji White Tea, Zhejiang Famous Tea, "Low Temperature Sensitive" Tea, Geographical Indication Certification Trademark, Designated Tea for the 11th Shanghai International Tea Culture Festival, is a famous green tea made from white young leaves according to the preparation method of green tea in a special white leaf tea variety
Anji White Tea is a tea made from the fresh leaves of the "Baiye No. 1" tea tree within the protection scope of Anji Geographical Indications, which are processed and meet the requirements of the "Anji White Tea Mandatory Standards".
Anji White Tea (White Leaf Tea) is a rare variant of tea that belongs to the "low temperature sensitive" tea with a threshold of about 23°C. Tea plants produce "white tea" for a short period of time, usually only about a month. In spring, due to the lack of chlorophyll, the shoots that germinate before Qingming are white. Before the valley rain, the color fades, and most of them are jade white. After the rain and before the summer solstice, the flowers and leaves gradually turn to white and green. In summer, the buds and leaves return to full green, which is no different from ordinary green tea. Because the miraculous Anji White Tea is picked, processed and made during a specific albino period, the bottom of the leaves is also jade-white after the tea is brewed, which is a unique trait of Anji White Tea. According to biochemical determination, its amino acid content is 6.269%, which is more than 2 times higher than that of ordinary green tea, and the content of tea polyphenols is only about half of that of ordinary green tea.
The origin of Anji white tea
In the middle of the twentieth century, a regenerated ancient white-leaved tea tree with an age of more than 100 years was found in the deep mountains and dense forests of Anji County, Zhejiang Province, where the source of the Huangpu River is located in Zhuxiang, China. In the early eighties, under the guidance of tea breeding experts from the China Institute of Tea Sciences, the Department of Tea Science of Zhejiang University, and the Department of Agriculture of Zhejiang Province, through the joint research and development of tea science and technology personnel in Huzhou City and Anji County, the "White Tea No. 1" variety was bred through the method of asexual propagation. Today, "Baiye No. 1" has been recognized as a rare tea tree variety by the state. The successful development of "Baiye No. 1" has filled the vacancy of this tea species in China and added a precious tea variety to the world.
Zhao Ji of Song Huizong has a detailed description of white tea in his "Daguan Tea Treatise", believing that "white tea is a kind of its own, different from ordinary tea, its strips are expounded, its leaves are thin, between the cliffs and forests, and it is born by chance." It's not human. There are only four or five families, and there are only one or two ...... of the living. And pointed out that "once the soup is lost, it has become a regular product," and if the processing method is obtained, then "the surface is clear, such as jade in Pu, he is incomparable." Song Zhi'an's "Dongxi Tea Trial Record" divides the tea trees into seven groups, one is called white leaf tea...... The land is not far and near to the mountains and rivers, the hair is not in the order of the society, the buds and leaves are as white as paper, and the folk think that the tea is ....... This kind of white tea in the real sense is different from the "white tea" made by drying method without frying or kneading tea in the current tea classification in the tea academic circles. Why white leaf tea has been lost for nearly a thousand years needs to be further investigated.
Quality characteristics and physiological mechanism of Anji white tea
Anji white tea from a single plant when it was discovered in 1980, quickly cultivated into a variety group, and has more than 20,000 acres of cultivation area, thousands of acres of tea gardens put into production, over 100 million yuan output value, "Anji white tea" has become a leader in China's famous and excellent tea category in one fell swoop. The speed of its variety promotion, the high price of the product, the sound of the market brand, and the good overall benefit are rare in the history of tea cultivation in China. To sum up, the main reason is that he has a special albino phenomenon, excellent natural varieties and unique tea rhyme, all of which other varieties do not have.
The "Anji White Tea" made of one bud and one or two leaves of spring shoots has the color of emerald green and yellow, the fresh and lasting aroma, the fresh and mellow taste, the bright soup color of goose yellow, and the green leaf bottom of jade (meat) white veins. When brewing, it looks like pieces of jade dancing, and white jade is undercover; After the meal, the lips and teeth are fragrant, sweet and mellow, and you can't stop. This kind of evaluation aptly expresses the characteristics and connotations of "Anji White Tea", "clear on the outside, like jade in Pu, he is incomparable".
The current "Anji White Tea" is made of fresh buds and leaves by spreading, finishing, arranging, re-frying, and baking, and there is no uniqueness from the perspective of tea-making technology, so the formation of quality should depend on its natural quality, and this seems to be related to the following two aspects.
First of all, the natural element of superiority. Anji white tea originally grew in the mountainous area of 800 meters above sea level in the northwest of Zhejiang, which belongs to the Tianmu mountain system. The mountains in the territory are stacked, the clouds cover the mist, the forest composed of bamboo and wood is green all the year round, and the soil weathered by the granite parent rock contains more trace elements such as potassium and magnesium; The frost-free period is short throughout the year, the low temperature time in winter is long, the absolute low temperature is generally below -10 °C, the relative humidity is large, and the direct blue violet light is less. The mutants that occur under such ecological conditions form unique genetic characteristics, such as regular albino and green return and metabolic characteristics of high ammonia and low phenol. According to the measurement, the amino acid content of one bud and two leaves of spring shoots is about 6%, tea polyphenols are 10%-14%, and the phenol-ammonia ratio is only 1.6-2.3, which is extremely rare among many varieties of high ammonia and low phenol in China. This is the biochemical basis of "Anji White Tea" with high fragrance and fresh taste.
According to the research, the dependence of Anji white tea on natural conditions is strong, such as the overwintering buds do not pass the low temperature period in winter, and the whitening phenomenon of the spring shoots of the following year is not significant, indicating that low temperature is an important condition for inducing albinism. After the introduction of some low-altitude areas in the south, the albino phenomenon is not obvious, and the quality is inferior to that of Anji, which may be caused by the large difference in ecological conditions and the lack of low temperature during the wintering period, so the introduction of Anji white tea should first consider the similarity of natural conditions.
Second, special physiological mechanisms. According to research, Anji white tea is a temperature-sensitive mutant with a phased albino phenomenon, that is, the overwintering buds grow when the average daily temperature is below 23 °C. We have done such an experiment, the two-year-old tea seedlings were first pretreated in an artificial climate chamber at 10°C for two weeks, and then divided into three groups, respectively placed in three climate chambers of 15°C, 19°C and 23°C. After 6 days, the first bud and one leaf in the 15°C and 19°C groups were white, and the one bud and two leaves in the 23°C group were green. After 12 days, the seedlings at 23 °C grew to one bud and three leaves, which were still green, that is, the seedlings at 23 °C did not appear in the albino phenomenon, and the seedlings at 15 °C and 19 °C were the same as the seedlings in the field, and the leaves were white and green. We then put the treated 15°C seedlings into 23°C, and found that they began to turn green after 4-7 days, and completely regreened after 16 days; When the seedlings that had not been albino at 23 °C were placed at a temperature of 15 °C, the leaves did not show bleaching. This shows that the key to whether Anji white tea is whitened is the temperature range in which the first round of buds grows, and it will not turn white if it exceeds 23 °C.
During the albinism period, due to the disorder of the structural development of the chloroplast membrane, the chloroplast degenerates and disintegrates, the chlorophyll synthesis is blocked, and the various pigment protein complexes on the plastid membrane are missing, resulting in the whitening of buds and leaves. Physiologically, due to the decrease in the content of the size subunit and the enzyme activity of RUBPcase-1,5-bisphosphate ribulose carboxylase, accompanied by the increase of proteolytic enzyme activity, a large amount of hydrolysis of soluble proteins leads to an increase in the content of free amino acids, and the average content reaches more than twice that of general varieties (only a few more than 6% of the more than 600 germplasm resources in China that have been systematically identified), this special change is the basis for the formation of the excellent quality of "Anji White Tea".
