Grain Rain is the last solar term in spring and the second peak of the spring tea offensive: green tea enters the second spring and oolong tea begins to enter the season.

What is "Grain Rain"? The so-called "rain gives birth to hundreds of valleys" is no longer "spring rain is as expensive as oil", but it is continuous and oblique. Abundant rainfall, coupled with rising temperatures, makes everything grow stronger and more vigorous, showing great vitality everywhere.

With regard to tea picking in Grain Rain, Xu Cishu, a tea man in the Ming Dynasty, said in his book Tea Sparse: "Qingming is too early, long summer is too late, and the time is moderate around Grain Rain ..."

Generally speaking, Grain Rain tea is mostly green tea, not the tea picked in Grain Rain that day, but the tea collected in the past ten days from Qingming to Grain Rain. In some places, it is also called "tea before rain" or "second spring tea".

Why is Grain Rain a good time to pick tea? In Yi's view, there are two main reasons:

First, compared with tea before Ming Dynasty, Grain Rain tea is listed in batches and is more popular. Tea people can not only enjoy the delicious spring tea, but also have more tea choices, which are more inexpensive and have a good market expectation and consumption base.

Second, crops are seasonal. As the saying goes, there is no shop after this village. In Grain Rain, tea grows rapidly. Although the green tea picked at this time is not as delicate as before Ming Dynasty, the buds and leaves are generally fuller and the finished tea is rich in form. Not only can you use tender buds, but you can also make one bud and one leaf, or one bud and two leaves, into a flag gun shape or a bird tongue shape, which is more artistic.

In addition, if it is not picked in time, the tea leaves are easy to over-age, while the old leaves are not delicious enough and extremely bitter. Especially for green tea, this is a serious injury.

Of course, there will be green tea, spring tea and spring tea after Grain Rain, but it is the final stage.

However, oolong tea was harvested after Grain Rain. That is to say, oolong tea and spring tea are in season in Grain Rain, and they are in season around the long summer.

This article was originally created by Yi, sharing dry tea every day.