2009 Spring TKY Competition (Pt 1)
I recently (actually, several months ago – hey, I’ve been busy!) helped Aliang get his TKYs ready for the Spring Competition. I had stopped by for an after-tutorial cup of the world’s favorite brew, and ended up bagging tea samples until 2:00 in the morning (which is one of the things I do love about living in Taiwan – it’s perfectly normal to be up at all hours of the night doing stuff).
While the Taiwan tea crops in general were quite good this spring (we had a 
wet winter), Aliang only had 12 samples to submit for this year’s competition. For each submission, we have to provide 22kg of tea, and the entry fee for each one isn’t cheap. If any of our teas ‘place’, the 22kg will be bagged up and certified by the Farmer’s Association, and we can then sell it at higher prices (the prices are also set by the Association, and depend on the general quality of the harvest for each year – this prevents the winners from overcharging on the tea or inciting bidding wars).
Our job at this point was pretty straight forward: measure out 22kg of tea into the plastic bags provided by the Association, label them, and put them into the Landrover so that Aliang could drop them off in the morning. If you are wondering why Aliang has a Landrover, by the way, you can read Mystic Grove or Landrover Camping Trip and it shouldn’t be too hard to figure out!
We also had to remix a couple of our samples to boost the quality. It seems pretty simple, but it actually takes a bit of time to get it right. You have to make sure the tea is well-blended so that the sample taken by the
judges is representative. You also have to keep your hands clean and dry so you don’t add any ‘soapy’ or ‘sweaty’ smells to the tea (which means – you guessed it dear reader – that I couldn’t even pick my nose ONCE during the whole process!).
Fortunately I was able to control my more ‘primal urges’ and we successfully completed our bag-up and made it home before sunrise. Another job well done!
