The higher grades of TieGuanYin have been out for a little while now, so I'd thought I'd check in with a quick rundown of what I've seen at market.
The spring tea crop produced much less tea than last year due to the complete lack of rain during the late winter/spring months. I've been able to sample the low, stock grades up into the higher grades, and nearly all of the teas have a watery flavor. The characteristic astringency of most Spring TGY is also much more apparent than previous years' crops. I'm not sure if they tried to fry the tea differently this year to try and compensate for the lack of quality or what, but it just doesn't hold-up in my book comparatively. It also seems that most of the farms are only producing "qing xiang" or lightly cooked TGY now, and are not making the heavier cooked versions of the teas. This is indeed unfortunate because there is such a huge variety of different flavors that can become available from this very special wulong.
Anyway, I'll go back to the market again this weekend to discuss some information that I found about about some TGY classifications. He argued rather strongly that many people are selling "fake" TGY. He meant that there are some different varieties of TGY, that vary greatly in price and quality, that are being marketed as something that they are not. This is how business goes down at the tea market as a whole, so it will be interesting to get more info on this.
Anyway, I'll let ya'll know.