Black tea naturally becomes more mellow and fragrant the longer it’s stored. But since she used good ingredients and excellent processing techniques, this black tea tasted quite good.

By now, Ye Yaming had poured the tea into everyone’s cups.

Seeing the bright red amber-colored tea, both Qi Ji and Ye Chongming found it quite fascinating.

“Why is this tea red? Is… is this even drinkable?” Qi Ji asked in surprise.

Ye Yaming answered him by taking a small sip.

As the tea entered her mouth, Ye Yaming contentedly narrowed her eyes, her face showing an expression of enjoyment.

It went down smoothly like silk, with a sweet and mellow flavor.

This was exactly the taste she wanted.

Seeing this, Qi Ji quickly picked up his teacup and drank.

When Ye Yaming designed teacups, she would create two styles: one with a wide opening, and another slightly narrower, taller cup.

Drinking scalding tea could damage the outer mucous membrane of the esophagus, making it easy to develop esophageal cancer. The ideal drinking temperature for tea should be between forty-five to fifty-five degrees Celsius.

But many people were impatient and couldn’t resist drinking as soon as the tea was poured, so she generally used wide-mouthed cups for tea sets. Due to the large opening, the tea would cool down quickly.

The narrower, taller cups were more suitable for winter use. This design prevented the tea from cooling too quickly. The red plum-themed tea set she had designed and sold to Prince Consort Fan used these narrower, taller cups.

People of this era weren’t as health-conscious as modern people, and without the internet, paper media spread information too slowly. Books were also expensive, so even if she wrote a book about this issue, it wouldn’t influence too many people.

Therefore, when designing tea sets, she had previously discussed this concept with Qi Ji and Lu Guanyi, asking them to remind the design artists to create more wide-mouthed cups.

Drinking slightly cool tea was fine, but scalding tea was harmful. Health was the most important thing.

When Ye Yaming had just brewed the tea, the boiling water poured into the gaiwan to steep the tea leaves, then poured into the fair cup, had already gone through one cooling process. Pouring it again from the fair cup into the wide-mouthed teacups meant the temperature was no longer scalding, but just right when it entered the mouth.

Unlike green tea, black tea had a weaker aroma, and because it required piling during production, it would produce some pile odor. If stored improperly, it would also develop a warehouse smell.

This was the hardest thing for new tea drinkers to accept. People of this era encountering black tea for the first time would surely feel the same.

Therefore, she paid special attention to these issues during production and storage. Because she craved black tea, she had successively taken out black tea to drink, so the tea cake she had just opened was already dry-awakened by her. The pile odor was nearly undetectable after washing the tea and wet-awakening it, and because of proper storage, there was no warehouse smell at all.

So when Qi Ji and Ye Chongming tasted the tea, they only felt its mellow thickness and exceptional smoothness, with a sweet entrance. It was a completely different taste from the fresh, light, and crisp new tea.

As a lifelong tea drinker with somewhat diminished taste due to age, Ye Chongming preferred the taste of this black tea compared to green tea.

Ye Chongming widened his eyes: “When did you make this tea?”

Ye Yaming smiled: “The late summer and early autumn the year before last, when I fell ill and insisted on going with you to the tea garden in Baifeng County for some fresh air, do you remember? At that time, I had servants pick some coarse tea materials, and I tinkered with it in the courtyard.”

“Was that when your eldest cousin fell from his horse and met Meng Chengwei?” Ye Chongming asked.

“Yes.”

Ye Chongming looked at the bright red tea in his cup, then at Ye Yaming, his eyes full of disbelief.

“As I recall, you asked for old leaves meant for coarse tea production, didn’t you?”

Despite his age, Ye Chongming had an excellent memory.

He clearly remembered that at that time, Ye Yaming hadn’t yet revealed her talents and was just the unremarkable third daughter of the second branch of the Ye family. If she had asked for tender leaves from the tea garden, Ye Chongming would never have agreed, after all, even the late summer and early autumn tea buds could be made into loose tea for profit. How could they let a child waste them?

But Ye Yaming only wanted the old leaves and stems left after picking the tender buds, which were the raw materials for the Ye family’s coarse tea and practically worthless. Plus, Ye Yaming had been ill, and his little granddaughter with her pale face looked so pitiful that Ye Chongming’s heart softened, and he immediately ordered the garden workers to pick tea according to her instructions.

“That’s right,” Ye Yaming smiled, “This tea is made from those old leaves and stems.”

Ye Chongming’s hand trembled: “How is that possible?”

His family’s coarse tea was truly bitter and astringent, completely different from the tea he was drinking now.

Compared to the original loose tea, although Dragon Well tea tasted much better with a stronger aroma, it was still the same tea, just with improved flavor. But this tea before him, compared to coarse tea or even Dragon Well tea, was fundamentally different.

These were completely different types of tea.

“When making this tea, there’s a fermentation process. The bitter and astringent substances in the tea leaves are transformed during fermentation. That’s why black tea isn’t bitter or astringent, but primarily sweet and smooth,” Ye Yaming explained.

Though Ye Chongming and Qi Ji didn’t fully understand, they felt it seemed impressive.

Of course, they found it impressive because they had been conquered by the taste of the tea they had just tried.

Qi Ji’s eyes sparkled, looking at Ye Yaming as if she were a golden child: “So, can this tea be produced in large quantities to send to the Great Jin?”

Ye Yaming nodded: “Yes, it’s made from leftover old leaves and stems. Think about it—we don’t just have tea mountains near Lin’an, but also in Huizhou and Minzhou. How much coarse tea material could we produce in a year?”

Thinking about the tea mountains he had personally purchased, Qi Ji’s eyes suddenly brightened.

Coarse tea materials were nothing like premium tea materials. Spring tea only uses tea buds, and even a hundred mu of tea gardens couldn’t produce much spring tea material. But coarse tea was made from old leaves and stems, with high yield and weight. A hundred mu of tea gardens could produce a significant amount.

The materials were easy to obtain, yet the taste was so good. Even if not sold to the border regions, there would be a huge market within the Great Jin.

It was worth noting that in Huizhou and Minzhou, they bought entire mountains with tens of thousands of mu of tea plantations at once, purchasing several mountains at a time. The tea production volume was imaginable.

If all these tea materials were made into black tea, the profit…

Both Qi Ji and Ye Chongming felt a fire burning in their hearts.

“What about the price?” Qi Ji asked again. He was still concerned about the negotiations with the Great Jin.

“The price isn’t expensive,” Ye Yaming picked up an unopened tea brick, “This tea brick weighs one jin, costs one hundred wen to produce, and sells for half a silver qian.”

Tea pickers earned fifty wen per day, and in summer and autumn, one person could pick more than forty kilograms of tea in a day.

Over four jin of fresh leaves could be processed into one jin of dry tea bricks, so the labor cost for picking enough leaves for one jin of dry tea was about five wen.

Adding the wages of the tea processing workers and the cost of the inexpensive raw materials, the actual cost per jin of tea was less than twenty wen. She calculated it at one hundred Wen because she included transportation costs.