Although you have probably seen Spring Tea appended to the name of one of your favorite Chinese green teas, a lot of people don't know what the phrase actually describes. Spring Tea is translated from “Chun Cha” which is a traditional Chinese tea season name. The Chinese have a festival called “Qing Ming” that occurs on the first day of the fifth period of the lunar calendar, which is usually April 5th(April 4th on leap years). It is a day to grieve for lost relatives by sweeping and weeding graves and tombs as well as leaving offerings. This period is called the spring season.

Tao is in the tea mountains in Yunnan, China right now for the Spring Tea 2012 and new teas will be coming soon.

On the night of April 16th, we arrived at the hotel that is part of the Jiangnan Tea Culture Museum on the east mountain of Dong Ting, Jiangsu Province, where we would stay for one night. The Bi Luo Chun from Dong Shan ("East Mountain") is considered the best, probably due to the optimum amounts of sunshine and humidity. The hotel itself was very majestic and the outdoor property was vast and elaborately adorned with exotic trees, stone pathways, and bridges over small rivers.