Abstract

Block tea(餠茶) and cake tea(團茶) are both the typical Chinese tea in Tang and Song dynasty. Block tea was may be the Chinese original tea, and was very popular in Tang dynasty. Cake tea is more elaborated tea and was very popular in Song dynasty. Both teas are 固形茶, but similarity stops at that point. Block tea uses relatively young leaves and they sometimes uses young branches also. Comparing to the Block tea, Cake tea uses very young leaves and sometimes they uses the thread like leaves which even come out from the wrapping leaves. They also different in boiling method, cooling method and even different in adding water when grinding. Cake tea uses so young leaves and pressing and grinding so many times the surface of cake tea is so smooth that very delicate figures can be decorated, but not the block tea. Block tea does not press much after grinding that the original taste and flavor can be remained within the tea. However cake tea was so much pressed that original tea flavor may be lost. So to compensate this loss cake tea added fragrance in it. Both tea were long gone and hard to find, but studying the old tea methods could be very important way to widen the variety and preparing the modern tea culture.

Full Text
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