Meitan
A county in northern Guizhou that became a centre of Chinese tea science when the national tea research station relocated there during the Second Sino-Japanese War, and which has since been planted very heavily as part of a provincial expansion programme. Guizhou’s combination of altitude, low sunshine hours and persistent cloud gives a soft, sweet green tea, and Meitan is where that provincial style is most consciously developed.
Elevation
Recorded at 700–1400 metres.
How firm this is: Inferred from general knowledge of the district rather than measured or taken from a source that states it.
Climate
Cloudy, humid plateau conditions with limited direct sunlight and a narrow annual temperature range — the same combination credited for the softness of Guizhou greens generally.
How firm this is: Inferred from general knowledge of the district rather than measured or taken from a source that states it.
When it is picked
An early plateau spring supplying an unusually industrialised green-tea sector for China — large contiguous planted areas rather than scattered household plots, with the picking window managed at a scale that allows machine harvesting for the later grades.
How firm this is: Inferred from general knowledge of the district rather than measured or taken from a source that states it.
How production is organised
Among the most consolidated tea landscapes in China, developed as a provincial economic programme rather than accumulated village by village. Guizhou now carries one of the largest planted areas of any province and very little name recognition, and a great deal of its leaf is finished and sold under the names of older districts elsewhere.
How firm this is: Inferred from general knowledge of the district rather than measured or taken from a source that states it.
How the name is written
Also transliterated as mei tan, meitan. Romanisations of a district name vary by system and by vendor, and a packet spelling one way is not describing a different place.
Other growing regions in China
The neighbouring districts are the useful comparison: they share a country, a grading convention and often a cultivar, so what differs between them is closer to terroir than anything a cross-border comparison can isolate.
- Ailao Mountains
- Anhua
- Anji
- Anxi
- Bada Mountain
- Bailin
- Beiyuan
- Bingdao
- Bulang
- Changxing (Guzhu)
- Dongting Mountain
- Duyun
- Emei Mountain
- Enshi
- Fengqing
- Fu’an
- Fuding
- Fuzhou
- Gande
- Hekai
- Hengxian
- Huangshan
- Huoshan
- Jinggu
- Jingmai
- Jingyang
- Junshan Island
- Lao Ban Zhang
- Laoshan
- Lincang
- Lingtou
- Lu’an
- Lushan
- Manzhuan
- Meijiawu
- Mengding Mountain
- Menghai
- Mengku
- Mengsong
- Nanjing (Yuhua)
- Nannuo Mountain
- Phoenix Mountain
- Pingshui
- Pu’er (Simao)
- Qimen
- Rizhao
- Shengzhou
- Shifeng (Lion Peak)
- Songyang
- Taiping
- Tanyang
- Tianmu Mountain
- Tongmu Guan
- Tunxi
- Weishan
- Wenzhou
- Wudong Mountain
- Wuyi Mountains
- Wuyuan
- Wuzhou
- Xianghua
- Xigui
- Xihu (West Lake)
- Xinyang
- Xiping
- Xishuangbanna
- Xiushui
- Ya’an
- Yangloudong
- Yibang
- Yibin
- Yichang
- Yingde
- Yiwu
- Yixing
- Yongchun
- Youle
- Yuan’an
- Yueyang (Beigang)
- Yunnan
- Zhangping
- Zheng Yan (Wuyi core)
- Zhenghe
- Zhenjiang
- Ziyang
Sources
- TeaHQ editorial synthesis — TeaHQ
This page is TeaHQ’s own synthesis throughout. No external document stands behind the elevation band, the climate note or the character described above, which is why each carries its confidence in the open.
Written comparisons
Where TeaHQ has set this region against something it is routinely confused with, and argued the differences out in full.
- Meitan vs Duyun — Guizhou grows an enormous quantity of tea and exports most of it anonymously into other regions’ blends. These are its two named districts: one built around a research station, the other around a historic tea name, and neither has the reputation its output would justify.