[1] [link redacted] Edit: both the site and the rambling about this tea and its ChaQi are mine (it's the best example I could think of from the top of my head)
What I would like to know is why contrary to Japan, there are Tea farms of all sizes everywhere. There are dozens of tea shops opening, and if you walk through Taipei you will see plenty of tea shops, tea places in every corner of the city.
Why is that? Is it just the result of marketing and consumerism?
S. Koreans also tend to drink coffee way more than tea, but this might have to do with the extreme poverty coming out of korean war, and coffee being less expensive.
Wild ones are often too sour, or too bitter, or don't produce much, or are impossible to experience because they don't travel well.
Wild strawberries sound great but they are tiny, ripen very unevenly and don't even taste that exciting.
The breeding of grapes clearly continues, in a stall not far from me I can see grapes for sale that are literally the size of small plums. (edit: cultivated plums that is. Wild plums, you're welcome to them, small and sour https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullace https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sloe)
Whilst food tends to be much smaller, bitter or sour, tougher to chew, lower in sugar and would not sell in a supermarket.
https://www.theceomagazine.com/business/management-leadershi...
They are often interesting and much more "rough" teas with varying but generally mellow flavors and often processed to contain more hard materials like stems and veins as they would have been when it was still hand rolled. It definitely helps one imagine how tea must have been in those eras, though they still simmered the leaves with the water until the 1700s
