What is the value of boutique coffee when we can't drink it?

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I have a friend who makes tea. He is now committed to promoting Taiwan tea to Europe and Russia. In 1993, when I followed some colleagues in the coffee industry to visit the Food and Beverage equipment Exhibition in Tokyo, Japan, I met him because he lived in the same room. I called him [Master]. The master is the last disciple of Professor Wu Zhenduo, the father of Taiwan tea. That year, due to years of drinking tea and tasting tea, the master hurt his stomach and had a heart attack, so he planned to switch from Taiwan tea to decaffeinated herbal tea. I took the opportunity of visiting Japan to visit the Japanese branch of a famous French herbal tea trader. After that year, herbal tea began to become popular in Taiwan.

Recently, the master came to chat with me and talked about a very sensitive topic. He said: recently, in a Taiwan tea competition, the judges could not tell that the tea participating in the competition was mixed with Chinese tea, and this tea even won a prize.

Tea, which is not grown in Taiwan, can actually win a prize in the Taiwan tea competition!

The award-winning mixed tea was planted by Taiwan tea farmers who transplanted Taiwan tea to China, and then sent these tea sprouts back to Taiwan to find the old tea master to bake tea.

Of course most people can't drink it! However, a judge could not even tell the difference between climate and geological conditions, which made him feel that Taiwan tea would lose its future.

The master said, "once I followed master to take part in the Fine Tea Competition in Frozen Mountain. That competition impressed me deeply, because at that time, a well-known tea company in Taiwan actively participated in various competitions and wanted to use the competition to gain popularity and establish authority, so this company also participated in that competition. At the end of the competition, when the ranking was to be announced for comments, my master said at the beginning: "Today our competition is a Frozen Mountain competition, but some teas from other regions also take part in the competition. We excluded him from the evaluation of these teas. People from that company did not have any protest to touch their noses and leave, and then the company took part in several competitions one after another. I was picked out by master every time, and then I privately invited my master to go to class with them and tutor them. From a hostile attitude to a cooperative attitude.

The master said, "I am really too late to follow my master. I only learned that I can drink the tea of the two teas at a higher altitude. My master can drink the area of that mountain, the face of yin or yang, and the difference in how to harvest and bake tea. During the conversation, the master missed his master very much.

He told me another thing that shocked and surprised me. He said that Taiwan has a license for tea tasters. This license is a system set up by master, which has been in operation for decades and has trained countless judges. This license has always been assessed and issued by the tea-changing court where he works. But five years ago, the current government-- a senior official of the examination Yuan-- somehow discovered that the Tea Market was only a small unit under the Council of Agriculture of the Executive Yuan, and how could it issue a license for the national examination, so he withdrew the right to issue the examination license. There was no movement for five years after taking it back. Over the past five years, many senior judges do not dare and are unwilling to act as judges, because the current government thinks that the agency issuing the license is too low-level and illegal, which is tantamount to negating the system that has been established over the past few decades. But every year, tea competitions are still held everywhere. In the end, the judges could not tell the difference between Taiwanese tea and Chinese tea.

And it is the most fundamental difference-[climatic and geological conditions], that is, the so-called "soil conditions" in wine.

Local conditions are also the most fundamental basis for wine tasting. Without this foundation, the wine industry that has been established for hundreds of years will collapse.

The 1996 KONA incident in Hawaii was also a similar example. When coffee farmers in KONA, Hawaii, organized a group to participate in the annual coffee exhibition, a member of the delegation looked at the data given by the organizers at the exhibition site and found that the previous year's sales of Hawaiian KONA exceeded production, that is, more sales were sold than production. And it was nine years from 1987 to 1995, and what was even more surprising was that it was sold to the major boutique coffee industry. (more than a decade later, the same story was staged in Taiwan-Gukeng)

These boutique coffee makers are key members of the American Fine Coffee Association [SCAA], and SCAA is now a coveted pilgrimage place for many coffee people. Many coffee makers take the [SCAA] standard as the standard. It seems that coffee is not coffee without his set of coffee.

When we follow the boutique coffee industry that we worship can not drink fine coffee, when we make fake boutique coffee, what is the value of boutique coffee?