Is Dahongpao a black tea, and when are the picking seasons for the two?

Is Dahongpao a black tea? Surely many people are not clear about this, so let's find out below, and by the way take a look at when the picking seasons for Dahongpao and black tea are.

►Is Dahongpao a black tea?

Many tea lovers who have just started getting into tea must have made a mistake, which is thinking that Dahongpao belongs to black tea. Actually, that is not the case. Although Dahongpao and black tea both grow in the same place in the Wuyi Mountains, Dahongpao belongs to oolong tea, and is the green tea category among the six major tea types.

The growing area of Dahongpao is limited to Wuyishan City in northern Fujian, and it belongs to semi-fermented tea.

While black tea belongs to fully fermented tea, it is made by using suitable fresh tea buds and leaves as raw materials, and is refined through a series of processes such as withering, rolling (cutting), fermentation, and drying. Black tea has a wide production area, and representative ones also include “Qimen black tea” and Yunnan “Dianhong”.

►The picking season of Dahongpao

The best quality Dahongpao tea leaves are picked around the Beginning of Summer, followed by second spring, third spring, and winter tea, with quality going from high to low. Specifically:

Spring tea: generally best picked after Grain Rain and before the Beginning of Summer;

Summer tea: generally before the Summer Solstice;

Autumn tea: generally after the Beginning of Autumn.

Experienced tea farmers all pick tea from 9-11 in the morning. All of this is to be able to pick tea leaves with moderate tenderness, because only in this way will the aroma of the tea after processing be rich and the tea color proper. Generally speaking, if the weather on the day of picking is clear and fine, then the quality of the tea leaves is high.

►The picking season of black tea

Black tea is picked around Qingming, among which pre-Qingming tea is the best, but the yield is small and there are many limiting factors. After Qingming, quality declines as time goes on.

The main Chinese black tea varieties include: Rizhao black tea, Qihong, Zhaopinghong, Huohong, Dianhong, Yuehong, Quanchenghong, Quanchenglv, Suhong, Chuanhong, Yinghong, Dongjiang Chuyunxian black tea, etc., with Qimen black tea being the most famous.

The spring tea picking time of Qimen black tea is from around Qingming to before Grain Rain each year; the summer tea picking time of Qimen black tea is from June to August, and when picking, attention needs to be paid to the climate before and after. Rainy weather will affect the quality of the tea leaves, and after one night the tea leaves grow rapidly.