The first of the ten famous teas in China: Longjing tea

 Longjing tea is unique in the world for its green color, beautiful shape, fragrant and mellow taste. It ranks first among the top ten famous teas in China.

There are three major characteristics of Longjing tea picking: early morning, second tenderness, and third diligence. Tea farmers often say, "Tea is a time-grained herb. It is a treasure when picked three days early, and it becomes grass when picked three days later." Longjing tea is also known for its delicate picking, and the tenderness and evenness of fresh leaves constitute the basis for the quality of Longjing tea. Diligence refers to picking big and small in batches, and picking about 30 batches throughout the year.

There are ten traditional frying techniques in Longjing: tossing, shaking, tapping, fanning, expanding, throwing, grasping, pushing, deducting and pressing, and different quality teas have different frying techniques. Due to the differences in the ecological conditions of the production area and the frying technology, West Lake Longjing has five categories: "lion", "dragon", "cloud", "tiger" and "plum".

The premium Longjing tea is flat, smooth and straight, the color is green and smooth, the aroma is fresh and high, the taste is fresh and sweet, and the bottom of the leaves is delicate and blooming. [2] 

The super-grade West Lake Longjing and Zhejiang Longjing in the spring tea are flat and smooth in appearance, with sharpened Miao front, buds longer than leaves, bright green color, and no hairs on the body surface; the soup color is bright green (yellow); ; The taste is refreshing or mellow; the bottom of the leaves is green and still intact. As the grades of other Longjing teas decrease, the appearance and color change from light green to green to dark green, the tea body increases from small to large, and the tea sticks change from smooth to rough; the aroma changes from tender to thick, and the fourth-grade tea begins to have a rough taste; The bottom of the leaf turns from the bud to the clipped leaves, and the color changes from bright yellow to green to yellowish brown. Longjing tea in summer and autumn, dark green or dark green in color, large tea body, no hair on the body surface, yellow and bright soup color, fragrant but rough, strong and slightly astringent taste, yellow and bright leaf bottom, the overall quality is worse than that of spring tea of ​​the same grade many. Mechanism Longjing tea is currently fried with a multi-function machine, or with a combination of machine and manual assistance. The shape of machine-made Longjing tea is mostly flat stick-shaped, incomplete and dark green in color. Under the same conditions, the overall quality is worse than that of hand-fried tea.

Zhejiang Longjing tea is divided into super grade and grade 1 to grade 5, a total of 6 grades.