I like what you said “if you give a robot the two teas it’s may not taste the difference between machine made and handmade tea but we are people tasting the tea”
William please don't stop making handmade tea because if everybody stops making handmade tea than where can we buy it? and than the tea will be very expensive and besides that you and many others are trustworthy with this handmade process. But i understand your worries and it is us the customer/buyer who should keep buying from you and your honest fellow tea makers. Machine made tea is absolute not the same as handmade processing. Is there anything we can do to support you and your fellow traditional tea makers? Please don't give up stand strong and keep the traditional tea making you learned from your father in law alive.
Iam a chef , and in my view handmade items are almost always better when made automated. A example would be bread. Automated bread may look more consistent and may provide a more consistent yield however an artisan loaf of bread is a prize to be relished. There are many more examples but your hand crafted tea is the prize just like that artisanal bread.
We pay for the skill, very well said, William! I don't care if the robot makes better tea, I'd still go for the hand-made. I'm paying for generations of people who dedicated their attention into perfecting a craft. As long as we stay humans this is going to stay a value. If we put our hope into someone like Musk who wants to fly us to the Mars then we better blow up the planet alltogether.
Thank you William for bringing us along! I enjoy the conversations and watching you work. We are planting and growing a new tea farm in South Carolina, USA and would love to visit you sometime! Jim
I totally agree on all you said. In my opinion, there must be the automated mass produced tea, for those people who don't care that much and just want to drink tea. But those people (and I count myself to those) who really care about what they drink and who want to enjoy not just the flavor but the whole history and journey of the tea they are drinking, hand crafted tea matters. And you as a producer can now decide if you want to provide tea for people who care or if you want to provide tea for people who don't care that much.
Very interesting video Willian, thanks. I agree on the additional value that comes from handmaking something. I make a lot of bread and mostly use my own sourdough culture, recently I've made a few sweeter, enriched breads which need less sourness or the flavours conflict. The easy option would be commercial yeast but I enjoy the extra effort required to control my culture and get the result I want from it. My family enjoy my baking regardless, but my mother-in-law, who bakes a lot herself, does see a difference with the extra effort I put into my baking. I also make my bread by hand more than using a mixer so I can learn the feel of different breads, much harder to learn when a machine is doing the work.
This is a simple question for me. I value many things bout Farmer Leaf Tea. I like the quality of the tea you produce and source. I like content such as this video, I like the value of the tea I purchase from Farmer Leaf. I like how I’ve seen and heard of you interacting in your community and the larger tea community. I also value the artistry you deliver through the tea. All these things come together for me to select tea from Farmer Leaf. If the argument for more mechanical, automated or semi automated production is that it’ll produce higher “quality” tea then my comments will be lost to history. However, I don’t think that is the case. I can buy tea from many sources I choose Farmer Leaf, faster, more or cheaper tea isn’t what compels me. Understanding how a farmer or producer interacts with the product and me as a consumer does compel me. We’ve never met, but I have a relationship to you as a producer and seller of tea. That relationship is more important than speed, efficiency or volume of production.
I drink a lot of Xishuanbanna Puerh every year and I like that you teach the traditional method of making Puerh for if the economy is disrupted your tea will still be made because you have the wood fire kettle where they depend upon natural gas... and when in the History of China was Puerh ever not valued as a trade good anywhere it's merchants could get it to... TRADE will always be a part of the human way, and your teaching is the legacy of the entire History of China...
I just started getting into working with wild clays and building mud kilns. I was contemplating making gaiwans but almost talked myself out of it after looking at all the mass manufactured ones. Not to mention I live in Ohio and few people here get into this end of tea. But watching this video has changed my mind. I will make handmade gaiwans. The manufactured ones lack that artistic quality that only a hand can do.
As a tea lover and amateur potter, I will always prefer handmade products over mass produced. I do believe that there will always be a market for both. Like you said people who prefer handmade products often pursue the artist’s personal touches over functionality. Behind every handmade product there is a story, hard work and sweat, and years of experience and passion.
Agreed, William. I am willing to pay more for tea processed by hand specifically because of the charm of the variation. Same reason single malt scotch is more expensive (by and large) than blends. The appeal is the variation. Too much of life is about consistency. A little inconsistency is appealing. 🌱🥃🌱
I personally find japanese tea to not have alot of the charm that chinese tea does, or be as interesting. There is so much automation and homogeneity. I wonder how much of the price is to do with japanese being a wealthy country. If I could choose I'd much rather try japanese tea that's hand picked and handmade, but the ones that are out there are soooo much more expensive than the chinese counterparts.
Keep making hand made tea! As you say there is something mystical about anything hand made with care, love and mastery. Or perhaps its more a matter of the spiritual, the tea master pours their qi into the tea through their hands, heart and mind as they make it. Then if you are careful and attentive (and you will be if you paid a lot for the tea) while you brew and drink the tea, you absorb that Cha Qi.
nope not as good ~ this is essentially the question of all questions that is not a question to people who know that there is an energy to life not just a physical blatant reality with no soul...for instance exactly what you say ~ it is not the same hand made anything is hand made period .....even if a machine makes the tea taste and look the same it will not feel the same ....which might be so subtle it could be missed by the majority of people but let's face it the majority of people cannot tell the difference between types of tea let alone energy of the tea.....handmade is handmade it is much better in my opinion every time it is less efficient too but that is also what makes things good what makes food taste good is most certainly the time it takes to make it and the attention and love in it ~~~~so i could go on and on but those who know just know and will always love handmade tea
For me this conversation is pretty much the same in case of plantation tea vs sheng tai or natural teagardens. Of course, semantically you can call the puer made by plantation material...as puer, but in my eyes, it lacks the whole point compared to all other teas where leaves are not harvested from a natural environment, so it loses the connection to nature. ....and you are just paying a fortune for another monocultural economical product. Biodynamic wine is great example too, but if we just call all these arguments and viewpoints "esoteric", then eventually we all gona lose tradition and connection with nature.
Isn't creativity the magic? The interaction with the tea. React to what the tea leaves do when processed. Machines usually aren't that good at that and do the same and the same every time. Maybe with more sensors a machine could replicate that more precisely in a way, artificial intelligence.
1:24 why his knowledge is valuable, but not so valuable is man doing the processing, machine is better for mechanistic processes requiring sterile health standards and high levels of repetition
They are being heated anyway and if you've ever eaten out anywhere at any point in your life you've had worse. Definitely don't try ripe puer either if that irks you lmao
