identifying tea

[Brian Angell]

Hi,

I got this green tea from a friend (see picture). Could someone help me identify it and comment on its origin/quality.

Thanks

Brian

[jbradfor]

The three big characters in the middle are 碧螺春; this just specifies the type of tea, but says nothing about the quality. [see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bi_Luo_Chun_tea for information on this type of tea.]

The four red character to the left I think are 中国名茶, which just means "famous Chinese tea", which again provides no information.

The rest of the characters provide more information, but they are too small for me to read.

[rob07]

You can try to see if you can find 级别：written anywhere on the packet (often pretty small in a list of other attributes). The characters following will tell you what grade of tea it is.

[Don_Horhe]

It looks a bit like the 天福 (romanized as TenFu) brand to me, which if it is, is quite good. I used to drink loads of that stuff last year.

[Brian Angell]

Thanks a lot for the help. I brew it this morning after a night of "celebration" and it opened my eyes both with the fragrance and the taste.

I am quite useless in trying to identify chinese characters

So I got a friend to scan form me both of the front and the back of the bag (the other picture was from a digital camera)

[j.k.j.D.D.]

I have the same exact tea here...I brought a few bags of it with me when I came back to the US...I was told it was pretty good stuff, and it seems to be.

[jbradfor]

You can try to see if you can find 级别：written anywhere on the packet (often pretty small in a list of other attributes). The characters following will tell you what grade of tea it is.

In this case the grade is indicated by 等级 (first line of the text on the lower left of the back). However, in this case there is nothing after the ':', which is a bit weird. It's also a bit weird that there is no production date (生产日期). Any thoughts on what this means?

[rob07]

In this case the grade is indicated by 等级 (first line of the text on the lower left of the back). However, in this case there is nothing after the ':', which is a bit weird. It's also a bit weird that there is no production date (生产日期). Any thoughts on what this means?

It is common practice for the production date to not be printed and separately stamped in as this will differ between packets. It is not obvious where this has been done but maybe it is somewhere on the packet I can't see.

Grades of tea (and other things) start at 特级 （exceptional quality) and then go down to 一级，二级 (first grade, second grade etc). Looking more closely at the front of the packet, that seems to be a "特" just to the left of 茶泊 and therefore this should be 特级 tea. I guess that nothing has been written after the 等级 on the back because the grade of tea has already been disclosed on the front of the packet. So it is not surprising that it is good drinking!

In the Wikipedia article linked by jbradfor, it is stated:

Bi Luo Chun is divided into seven grades: Supreme, SupremeⅠ,GradeⅠ,Grade Ⅱ,Grade Ⅲ, Chao QingⅠ & Chao QingⅡ, and the quality vary from Supreme down to Chao Qing.

So this tea would either be Supreme or Supreme I, not sure which, I'm guessing the lower grade.

[Brian Angell]

The date is indeed stamped on the edge of the package. 28.12.2008. I guess this means that this tea is almost expired. Though it tastes and smells great.

[abcdefg]

The date is indeed stamped on the edge of the package. 28.12.2008. I guess this means that this tea is almost expired. Though it tastes and smells great.

That really doesn't matter. The tea doesn't become unhealthy. That date is probably more of a store shelf-life issue.（ 保质期）

If it still tastes good, just drink it up.

[Brian Angell]

I most certainly will drink it!

Thanks to all who helped.