Recently was held the latest version of the Lugu Farmers Association competition, the largest and most popular tea competition in Taiwan, and we subscribed 3 Dong Ding teas on it. 2 of these teas won prizes!
In this post we want to share with you everything we did to position these 2 teas among the top 34%, out of a total of more than 4,700! Along with details about the competition and the profile of Dong Ding teas.
On this post we will cover the following topics, you can click on any of them if you want to skip to that part.
Why is the Lugu Farmers Association Competition so important and famous?
To understand the importance of this competition, we must first understand the history of Dong Ding tea, which is one of the most famous teas in Taiwan, not only here but all over the world.
(Brief) History of Dong Ding tea and the beginning of the Lugu Farmers Association competition
Dong Ding tea originates from Lugu, a small village located in a semi-mountainous area of Nantou County, close to Zhushan City which is famous for the Sijichun and Jinxuan tea it produces. As you can guess, this is totally a tea-country!
The story goes back about 200 years ago, when Mr. Lin Feng Chi went to China to study and become a government official. At that time, Taiwan was under the rule of the Qing Dynasty. Upon his return from this trip, Mr. Lin brought back 36 seedlings of our beloved Camellia Sinensis, specifically from the Qingxin Wulong cultivar, from WuYi Mountains. 12 of these seedlings grew and adapted to the Lugu area, in fact they adapted to the climate of Dong Ding Mountain. Over time, this area became a benchmark for Wulong tea in Taiwan.
Today we know Dong Ding tea as a lightly oxidised Wulong tea with a fairly deep roasting (although not as deep as Muzha Tiekuanyin). Traditionally Lugu tea was a classic Wulong tea, perhaps a bit more oxidised than the high mountain Wulong we know today. Over time, and as a way of selling tea between seasons, traders would roast it and it gradually reached the level we know today. So much has been the acceptance of this roasted tea that it is the main factor in the Lugu Farmers Association competition.
Dong Ding Tea Competition of Lugu Farmers Association
Since 1976, Taiwan has had the Dong Ding Lugu Tea Competition, which is currently held twice a year for the spring and winter harvests.
Initially, the competition was established to lay the foundations for the quality of Dong Ding tea, and more recently clubs have even been formed to spread the tradition of this highly coveted tea in Taiwan.
To learn more about tea competitions in Taiwan, both in general and with examples of other competitions, we invite you to read the following article: Tea Competition and Competition Tea
What is the step-by-step process for registering a tea and competing?
In the following video (turn on CC) we show you in broad strokes how to enter the competition and below we tell you the details.
To enter the Lugu Farmers Association competition, a competitor must bring 22斤 (13.2kg) of Dong Ding tea, cleaned of stems and baked. To achieve this we start with 30斤 (18kg) of fresh Wulong tea, but it is not that simple... let's see the step by step to achieve it:
First, select the candidates for roasting
Perhaps the most difficult part of deciding whether or not to compete is finding a tea suitable for Dong Ding-style roasting. It has to be an aromatic, complex, nutrient-rich tea, without the "greenness" that Wulong teas sometimes have and which indicates flaws in the withering process.
Many times teas are baked to dry them and hide flaws that may have occurred during processing. In this case we don't want that, since a bad tea will not be able to become a good Dong Ding, we have to start with a good base. The judges are experts in detecting flaws in the tea.
So the first thing is to taste many Wulong teas from High Mountains to select the ones suitable for baking. This time we tasted 15-20 different Wulong teas just to select 3 candidates.
So, how are teas roasted?
To make the most of the aromatic profiles of the chosen teas, and to transform the teas without burning them, the process we followed was a gradual roasting which took a total of 30 to 40 hours (depending on the tea chosen at the beginning) spread over 2 weeks or so. Little by little we increased the temperature until we reached the profile we wanted.
Here are links to two of our competition Dong Dings where you can see their profile. These are teas from previous competitions, but just to give you an idea. We will upload the teas from the last competition soon and share them on our social media.
The roasting will be gradual so as not to burn the tea, and we will do it in stages. We start with relatively low temperatures in the first stage, 85 to 95 degrees Celsius, baking for 10 hours or so. Each subsequent stage will last 10+ hours, and the temperature will go up with each step we take.
It was our job and Iris's responsibility to decide what temperature to start with, whether to raise it or not during each stage and when to stop roasting. It is very important to make these decisions because while roasting the tea, it goes through stages where it releases vegetal aromas and transforms into fruity-nutty-sweet aromas.
During the process... we taste, taste and taste samples
The key during the roasting process is to taste the tea regularly. This is extremely necessary to detect the starting point. Then we will taste the tea every few hours to feel the change in its aromas and thus decide the procedure to follow (rise temperature or not, open vents or close them, how much longer to roast, etc).
It is also important to taste the tea to detect the moment in which we will finish each stage of roasting.
Preparing to deliver our teas
Once the tea has finished the roasting process, we have to weigh it to make sure we have the required amount (otherwise they won't accept the tea) and we will pack it in the typical large 3-layered vacuum sealed bags (those of 18kg).
To deliver our teas, there is a pre-established date. That day (in this case it was 2 days) we went to Lugu's Farmers Association, where we met several acquainted producers. There is also the staff that receives the teas and gives a unique code corresponding to each one of them.
The only thing left now is to eagerly await the day of the results!
How is a Dong Ding tea that managed to qualify for the competition?
Dong Ding Wulong tea is very famous all over the world and also very much sought after by the Taiwanese, but sometimes we find Wulong tea in other countries that does not have a profile like the one we drink in Taiwan. This is one reason why competitions are so important, to motivate producers to follow traditional manufacturing methods and thus preserve the culture of this very rich tea.
The judges during the competition will score the teas based on the following aspects:
Appearance of the dried leaves (before brewing)
Quality and purity of the aroma of the leaves (after brewing)
The aromatic profile of the tea
Color and purity of the tea
Appearance of dried leaves
In the Lugu Dong Ding tea competition, this item is worth 20% of the competitor's "final score".
The goal is for the leaves, before being brewed, to have a homogeneous appearance in shape and color. A "lively" tea, dark brown to gray in color, with no obvious stems or excess dust, and also a homogeneous size.
Quality and purity of leaves after infusion
The quality and purity of the leaves after infusion have a weight of 30% in the final score. They must be uniform and the judges evaluate how young the leaves are and also their texture.
Through the color, tenderness, texture, uniformity of the tea leaves, the tea variety, the cultivation environment, the fermentation, the roasting, the production process can be identified.
The aromatic profile of tea
This item weighs 40% in this competition, making it the main factor for qualifying and accessing prizes, but it is also the factor that generates the most doubts when competing.
Why? Well, because first of all not all of us have access to tasting Dong Ding teas that have won the first prizes, to have an idea of what the judges are really looking for (the guidelines in this article are just general ideas), but also because when roasting tea, an endless number of results can be obtained that will depend on the path taken during the process.
What is clear is that the aroma of tea cannot contain excess roasting, that is, you must be able to taste roasting aromas together with fruity, woody, spicy, pastry, floral, etc. In this sense, herbaceous aromas and some vegetables aromas should have been transformed during roasting into those mentioned above.
Color and purity of the tea
The color of the infusion and its appearance have a weight of 10% in the final score, although it is not that much, it can make a difference and is also a faithful reflection of the work done.
The color should be yellow-orange to reddish-orange, although the first is representative of a competition grade Dong Ding tea. It is curious, because despite being a tea roasted for many hours, the color of the infusion is not dark, but bright, transparent and lively.
In a good example of competitive tea we will be able to distinguish unctuousness in the appearance of the tea, similar to an "oily" feeling.
Of course the infusion the cleaner of particles, the better. Note that I am not referring to trichomes, but to particles of broken leaves.
What prizes are there and how are they distributed?
In this competition, teas are classified into 4 large groups:
Teas that do not qualify
2 and 3 Cherry Blossoms
The Top 10 along with 1st, 2nd and 3rd class
And the big winner
Of the +4,770 competing teas, almost half are left out! And this for various reasons such as flaws in the processing of the tea prior to baking or poorly done baking, among other reasons.
Then we have the "Cherry Blossom" classification divided into 2 and 3 flowers. This category implies that the classified teas have the correct profile of Dong Ding tea, with 2 Flowers being the low level and 3 Flowers being a higher level.
Iris won the 3 Cherry Blossoms award for 2 of the 3 teas she submitted to compete! We are very happy about this and have already taken note to apply certain adjustments in the next competitions.
Then come the 3rd, 2nd and 1st Class prizes, which correspond to a percentage ranking that separates them according to the factors we mentioned above. In total these 3 categories add up to approximately 15% to 16%.
Iris's father has been competing in this competition for more than 2 decades and this year one of his teas was awarded 2nd Class! That is, within the 8.12% of the best teas!
The Top 10 corresponds to the 10 best teas in the competition, as the name says, but above the No. 1 of these Top 10, comes the Grand Winner of the competition.
The Grand Winner can have a market value of even 70,000 Taiwanese dollars per 600g, equivalent to about 2,200USD as of today's exchange rate.
In the following table we show you all the prizes with the percentage of winners, click on it to enlarge it:
This competition was a great learning experience for us. Iris dared to select her own teas, roast them and take them to the competition. I helped her move all those kilos of tea (she was pregnant at the time) and taste them to get a second opinion.
We took away a lot of experience that we plan to use for future competitions.
Is there anything else you would like to know? Write us in the chat or leave us a comment!
Remember that you can try our competition teas, I will leave you the link to the "Wulong Teas" category so you can order yours.
Wulong Tea Category
See you on the next post!
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