from 15 to 80 % oxidation · leaf shape · seven steepings
Built as a memo rather than a table: the thing worth hanging it up for reads across the room, with the full reference in smaller type below it.
Three sizes in one archive — from a sheet on the fridge to a poster on the wall.
Times are for a small pot, roughly 5 g to 100 ml. Before the first steeping the leaf is rinsed with boiling water, poured away at once.
Oriental Beauty is a tea whose flavour begins with a pest. A small green leafhopper pierces the young leaf and drinks its sap; the plant answers by producing volatile compounds, and those give the honeyed, almost grape-like aroma that nothing else reproduces.
Such a field therefore cannot be sprayed: no insects, no aroma. Leaf that has been bitten comes out small, curled and uneven — by ordinary standards a ruined crop, and the one that fetches the highest price.
The same mechanism is linked to the muscatel note of second-flush Darjeeling, where a relative of the same leafhopper is at work.
Why the numbers can be trusted. Every countable number here is computed from data rather than typed in, and the sheet must pass 7 independent checks before it is allowed to build — how many items there are, the order they come in, and the claim in the highlighted box itself. If one fails, there is no file.
