Tea cream began in the Southern Tang Dynasty, became in the Song Dynasty, flourished in the Qing Dynasty and flourished in the contemporary era. After long evolution, it has a long history. In the Qing dynasty, it became the exclusive product of royal health care and paid tribute to the royal family. There are related records about tea cream in Annals of the Ten Kingdoms in the Spring and Autumn Period in the Southern Tang Dynasty, Daguan Tea Theory by Song Huizong in the Qing Dynasty and Compendium of Materia Medica by Zhao Xuemin.
1, the embryonic form of tea cream began in the Tang Dynasty.
In the historical development of China, the Tang Dynasty is an important era in the history of tea industry and tea culture development in China, which is called "tea flourished in the Tang Dynasty". Lu Yu's Tea Classic, the establishment of tea tax collection, the exchange of tea and horses, and the appearance of folk tribute tea and official tribute tea products all marked the unprecedented prosperity of tea industry in Tang Dynasty.
During this period, tea cream also appeared quietly as a tribute, but the difference was only in the form of folk tribute.
Tribute tea in Tang Dynasty is divided into folk tribute tea and official baked tea. The so-called folk tribute is that local officials offer superior tea to the court on their own initiative, which belongs to the nature of local tribute. According to the Records of Geography of the New Tang Dynasty, Lujiang County (now Hefei and Lu 'an in Anhui Province) paid tribute to the imperial court in the third year of Wude (AD 620), which was the first time in the Tang Dynasty. The official baking is a tribute tea courtyard directly established by the imperial court, which is supervised by the official camp and specializes in making tribute tea. In the fifth year of Dali (AD 770), the ancient bamboo palace tea garden was established in Guzhu Mountain at the junction of Changxing in Huzhou and Yixing in Changzhou in the Tang Dynasty.
Tea cream surfaced along the coastline of Gong Min. According to Wu Renchen's Records of the Ten Kingdoms in the Spring and Autumn Period, as early as the second year of Nantang Tea Cream's reign (AD 937), there was a tribute, namely "Gongjianzhou Tea Cream, which was made of peculiar smell and stuck with gold thread, and was called' Resistant to Baryon, every eight pieces'". From this passage, we can easily find that: First, the word "tea cream" officially appeared; Second, the appearance is decorated with golden buds, which shows that it is valuable; Third, the number is very small, only eight, unlike other tribute teas, which are calculated by how many tons. Highlight the preciousness.
So when tea cream appeared, it had a prominent position, which was unmatched by other tribute teas. We can also think that it is precisely because of this special honor that it is in the top grade of tribute tea and recorded in the history books.
So, how was tea cream made in the Tang Dynasty?
A careful study of Lu Yu's Tea Classic and the tea-making technology in the Tang Dynasty shows that the appearance of tea cream is directly related to the cake-making technology in the Tang Dynasty.
The technology of steaming green cakes to make tea has been gradually improved in the Tang Dynasty, and this method of making aged tea is the mainstream of tea processing in the Tang Dynasty and even in the Song Dynasty. Lu Yu summed up this tea-making process into fourteen words in Tea Classic, namely "picking, steaming, pounding, patting, drying, wearing and sealing"; The three processes of "steaming, pounding and patting" here are very easy to separate some tea juice from fiber materials, and paste phenomenon occurs under the action of air oxidation. Mr. Lu Yu had already discovered this phenomenon in his time, and mentioned the word "cream" many times in the Book of Tea, such as "those who are afraid to spill their cream", "those who put cream on the surface" and "those who contain cream wrinkles".
Moreover, Lu Yu believes that the real good tea must be "frosty and wrinkled". The "wrinkle" here is the expression of frost, that is, there are wrinkles on the surface, less tea juice loss and strong tea flavor. The best tea beard boots in Tea Classic are the representatives of "those with cream wrinkles".
However, it should be pointed out that although Lu Yu found the phenomenon of "paste" after the tea juice for making cake tea overflowed, and thought this kind of "paste" was a good thing in tea, he did not completely separate the tea juice from the fibrous substances in tea, but only left the "paste" on the surface of tea cake, which was far from the real "tea cream". Even the "tea cream", which later appeared as a folk tribute, did not break away from the original form of tea, and all belonged to the nature of "containing paste". According to the Supplement to the National History of the Tang Dynasty, there are more than a dozen official tribute teas in the Tang Dynasty, among which "Yuezhou Tan Pot contains ointment" is impressively listed.
2. The real formation of tea cream was in the Song Dynasty.
Song Dynasty is an era of great reform and construction in the history of tea industry development in China. Many scholars believe that the tea industry flourished in Tang Dynasty and Song Dynasty. The reason for this is that tea drinking was quite popular in Song Dynasty, and "tea parties", "tea banquets" and "tea fights" prevailed in the ruling and opposition parties. The emperors of the Song Dynasty also liked tea best, and Song Huizong and Evonne were even more obsessed with tea, and wrote the Grand View on Tea. Perhaps it is this national enthusiasm for tea products that naturally led to the unprecedented prosperity of the tea industry in the Song Dynasty. Compared with the tea made on the next floor in the Tang Dynasty, the regulations are more detailed and the naming is very elegant in picking, baking, shaping, packaging, delivery and tribute.
Different from the Tang Dynasty, the tea makers in the Song Dynasty paid more attention to the paste phenomenon of tea. They think that the "paste" in tea is the treasure of tea. They used a pressing process, first steaming the tea, and then "washing it several times". tea cream was successfully separated from the tea and made into an independent product.
In the Song Dynasty, the tea cream obtained by this method had two purposes: First, as an independent tea, it was included in the tea list of the Song Dynasty. For example, Gu Tao (907-960 AD), the first tea writer in the Northern Song Dynasty, included two kinds of tea cream when he wrote A Record of the Ming Dynasty: one is "Jade Toad Cream" and the other is "Golden Deer is a Chong 'er". Although Lulu Ming mainly describes 18 anecdotes about tea, we can see the names of these two tea cream from these descriptions, which shows the existence of tea cream as an independent product. Second, in the process of making cake tea, tea cream is consciously coated on the surface of the cake tea to increase the brightness and color of the surface of the cake tea. This is obviously different from the "paste-containing" process in tea making in Tang Dynasty. Still a big step forward than the Tang Dynasty. Cai Xiang of Song Dynasty (A.D.1012-1067) once served as an envoy in Song Renzong (an official in charge of tea and tribute). In his book Tea Record, he has a special description of this: "Cake tea is mostly precious and oily, so there is a difference between green and yellow." The "precious ointment" here is tea cream.
Song Huizong Evonne, the eighth emperor of the Northern Song Dynasty (1082- 1 135), paid more attention to "Gao Zhen's excellent intelligence" and even regarded "Gao" as the standard for identifying tea. In his masterpiece "Daguan Tea Theory", he pointed out how to distinguish cake tea from its appearance: "Tea has different norms, such as a person has a face." If the cream is thin, the skin will have text wrinkles; When the paste thickens, it becomes solid. "it means: looking at tea noodles is like looking at people's faces. If the paste is thin, there are wrinkles on the surface of the cake tea; If the paste is thick, the surface texture of the cake tea is not obvious, bright and condensed, and the texture is solid. Obviously, thick paste is the representative of good tea in Song Dynasty.
Unfortunately, however, this tea-making process came to an abrupt end in the Ming Dynasty. Zhu Yuanzhang, the founding emperor of the Ming Dynasty, issued an imperial edict to stop making dragon group and phoenix cakes, and all of them were changed to "scattered tea". Let's not comment on this change-whether it is progress or retrogression. But one thing is indisputable, that is, this change has made the tea-making technology in Tang and Song Dynasties, which lasted for nearly a thousand years, disappear, including tea frost.
3. Pu 'er tea paste was formed in Qing Dynasty.
Although the Long Tuanfeng Cake was abolished in the Ming Dynasty, Yunnan, located in the border, continued to produce Tuancha and Cake Tea with the help of the "Tea-Horse Ancient Road" trade, perhaps because it was far from the capital. Although Yunnan's group tea and cake tea are not as exquisite as those in Song Dynasty, they can also be said to be simple imitations of Tang and Song tea, but this reservation laid a good foundation for the prosperity of Pu 'er tea in Qing Dynasty.
In the Qing Dynasty, with the prosperity of Yunnan Pu 'er tea, the production of tea cream appeared quietly. At first, Yunnan toast took the method of boiling in a big pot and began another paste-making process. This method obviously refers to the process of making cakes and tea in the Tang and Song Dynasties, and simply changes "steaming" into "boiling". Moreover, this method of boiling cream in a large pot soon spread to Tibet through the ancient tea-horse road and was quickly accepted by the upper class in Tibet.
Tea drinking in Tibetan areas is different from that in Han nationality. They prefer to cook tea or the method of cooking tea, so they have a special liking for boiling cream in large pots. Many big temples even build their own tea rooms, and the boiled tea cream is for people above the living Buddha level. This method has actually been preserved until now. This kind of boiled tea room and homemade tea cream can still be seen in many big monasteries in Tibet, which proves that the method of boiling tea paste in cauldron has been continuing.
Here, we also have a question, that is, why didn't Yunnan tea people directly adopt the paste-making process of the Song Dynasty, but adopted an unscientific cauldron?
Cooking method? -Is the paste-making process in the Song Dynasty too confidential for Yunnan tea people to understand? Or is the cauldron boiling process simpler, faster and more direct than the paste making process in Song Dynasty? This has become a mystery that we have never understood.
Because, from a scientific point of view, there are indeed many problems in cooking tea paste in a large pot: First, many biological enzymes of tea disappear in the process of repeated high-temperature cooking, which makes the subsequent transformation of tea cream lack "kinetic energy" and can only be transformed into mildew. It is impossible to store for a long time; Second, at high temperature, a lot of nutrients in tea will evaporate with water vapor. It will inevitably lead to the lack of a certain product. Perhaps it was the backwardness of science and technology at that time that people didn't understand it, and even mistakenly thought that this process was simple and feasible.
And ignore the inner quality. So until now, many people mistakenly thought that Pu 'er tea paste was made in a cauldron, because after all, in the early years of Qing Dynasty, Yong Zhengdi also transferred this kind of tea cream to the palace as a tribute. Therefore, we can also say that cauldron boiling paste belongs to the first stage of the development of Pu 'er tea paste, and can only be characterized as indigenous (indigenous law), which is very different from tea cream, where the palace was later "imperial".
During the Qianlong period of the Qing Dynasty, due to the quality problems in boiling tea cream in a cauldron, and the royal family's concern about drinking safety (because Yunnan was always unstable at that time and was afraid of poisoning), tea cream's production was directly moved to the Imperial Tea House in the Qing Palace (the original site was in the east cover of Gan Qing Palace). And the manufacturing process has also been greatly improved.
On the basis of drawing lessons from the Song Dynasty's "small pressing to kill green, large pressing to extract paste" process, the tea makers in the Royal Teahouse in Qing Dynasty adopted a set of low-temperature extraction and low-temperature drying processes similar to ours, which made their "Pu 'er tea paste" leap to a new level and enter the second development stage. "Pu 'er Tea Paste" was officially named.
Perhaps because of this, the then pharmacist Zhao Xuemin (A.D.1719-1805) included Pu 'er tea paste in the Supplement to Compendium of Materia Medica written in the thirty-third year of Qianlong (A.D. 1765). This is the first official title seen from official documents: Pu 'er tea paste.
The "Pu 'er Tea Paste" here refers to tea cream made by the Imperial Tea Room of the Qing Palace, not tea cream made by the folk cauldron. Because Compendium of Materia Medica is a very rigorous work and another masterpiece after Compendium of Materia Medica. Its author, Zhao Xuemin, is also a rigorous pharmacologist. From his description of Pu 'er tea paste, we can easily find that he has a very deep understanding of Pu 'er tea paste and even Pu 'er tea. It is impossible for him to put tea cream, a simple and ineffective item boiled in a cauldron, into the drug list.
1792 (57th year of Qianlong reign), Pu 'er tea paste was presented to the visiting British mission Marjory as a national gift for the first time and flowed overseas.
1925, the Qing dynasty royal family disintegrated, and the production of Pu 'er tea paste also terminated.
In the 1950s after the founding of the People's Republic of China, China Tea Company accepted the national task and asked several enterprises, such as Menghai and Xiaguan, to produce a batch of cadres supplied by tea cream to Tibet, about 3,000 kilograms. However, these enterprises only produced 1000 kilograms and stopped production. The reason is that this kind of inferior tea cream is not accepted by Tibetan aid cadres, so naturally there will be no following. Preliminary analysis, because the cauldron cooking method is still used.
Tea cream disappeared again.
4. tea cream is very popular in contemporary times.
Tea cream's production technology is in the same strain in China. Although it has gone through hundreds of years from the Ming Dynasty to the Republic of China, it has finally left important production skills. With the continuous progress of science and technology, the manufacturing technology in modern tea cream has also been greatly improved.
The bionic extraction technology at room temperature is a modern scientific tea cream technology developed on the basis of the palace technology in Qing Dynasty.
This technology imitates the climate, temperature and environment made by tea cream in Qing Dynasty. Under more complicated and meticulous procedures, according to the idea of using rosewood as charcoal in Qing dynasty, the extraction and concentration of tea soup are controlled at room temperature of 35~42 degrees Celsius. The room temperature mentioned here is different from that in the Song Dynasty. The room temperature in Song Dynasty refers to the daily temperature, while that in Qing Dynasty refers to the relatively constant temperature.
This technology takes advantage of the characteristic that aromatic substances and effective components must evaporate and precipitate at a certain temperature, and effectively dissolves the original substances of these tea leaves into tea soup to the maximum extent, and then gathers them into paste. In the middle, the problems of volatilization of aromatic substances, destruction of effective components and precipitation at low temperature caused by too high temperature are avoided, so that the prepared tea cream is rich in aroma and has a better taste after aging.
Tea cream is the highly concentrated essence of beneficial substances in Pu 'er tea, so the purpose of making Pu 'er tea paste is how to better preserve and refine the aroma, color and taste of Pu 'er tea. If the tea cream is not as good as Pu 'er tea itself, then tea cream is not as good as Pu 'er tea itself in drinking value. The three main processes made in modern tea cream meet the requirements of drinking value and original value of Pu 'er tea, which should be said to be bionic extraction at room temperature.