The trap to know
The most common trap with green tea is buying last year’s leaf sold as this year’s. Green tea is the category where freshness matters most, and the difference between the two is large.
A spring picking loses most of its aroma within about 12 months, even stored well. What is left is still drinkable and still green tea, but the top note is gone.
The trap works because the leaf looks the same. Colour changes slowly, and a vacuum pack hides most of what you would otherwise notice.
It is also the easiest trap to avoid, because the one question that matters has a date attached to it.
Ask for the picking month. If a seller cannot tell you, they either do not know or do not want you to know.
Everything else here is secondary to that. Grade, origin and price all matter less than whether the tea is from this spring.
Japan and China handle this differently, which confuses buyers. Japanese shincha is sold within weeks of picking, while Chinese greens are often sold across a longer window.
A useful rule of thumb: a Chinese green discounted in autumn is last spring’s leaf, and that is exactly what you are paying for.
Check the grade claim
Green tea grades are real, but the naming is not standardised outside China, which is where the confusion starts.
For Longjing, the useful markers are the picking date and the origin zone. Pre-Qingming is the expensive window, and it is also the most commonly faked claim on the market.
Pre-Qingming means picked before roughly 5 April. The picking window runs from late March to about 5 April. A tea picked after that is still good tea, and it is not what the label claims.
For Biluochun, look at the down. The buds should be covered in fine white hair, and a smooth, shiny leaf means either a later picking or a different tea entirely.
For Japanese greens, the line between sencha and gyokuro is real and priced accordingly. Gyokuro is shade grown for about three weeks, and it costs more for a reason.
Treat grade names as a claim to check rather than a fact. A seller who explains why a tea costs what it does is worth more than the label is.
Origin zones are the other half of the claim. Longjing has a protected core area around West Lake, and leaf from outside it is legally still Longjing but is not the same tea.
Prices make this easier to spot than it sounds. Pre-Qingming core-zone Longjing costs several hundred pounds a kilo, and anything near a tenth of that is from somewhere else.
Smell before you pay
Smell is the fastest test you have, and it works on dry leaf as well as wet.
Good fresh green tea smells sweet and slightly grassy, with something close to chestnut or seaweed depending on the style.
Old leaf smells flat, or faintly of cardboard. If it smells of nothing, it will taste of nothing.
A roasted or smoky smell in a tea sold as delicate is a warning, because roasting is the standard way to mask age.
Ask for a taste if you can. A shop that will not brew a green tea before you buy is telling you something.
Online, buy the smallest size first. 25 grams is enough to know whether the seller is honest, and it costs less than one mistake at a larger size.
Taste is the real test where you can get it. A fresh green tastes sweet with a clean finish, and an old one tastes flat and slightly watery in the middle.
Watch the spent leaf too. Fresh leaf is bright green and pliable, and old leaf is dull olive and snaps rather than bends.
Trust storage over label
Storage tells you more about what you are buying than any description on the packet.
Green tea should be sealed, opaque and cold. If it is sitting in a clear jar under a shop light, it is ageing in front of you.
Ask whether it has been refrigerated. A good seller keeps green tea at 0 to 5 degrees and says so without being asked.
Check the packing date as well as the shelf date. Tea packed eighteen months ago and kept cold beats tea packed last month and kept warm.
Buy in small quantities. 100 grams drunk fresh beats 200 grams that goes flat before you reach the bottom.
The rule that saves the most money here: the freshest tea at a fair price beats the fanciest grade at the wrong age, every time.
Vacuum packs are good for shipping and bad for long storage. Once opened, move the tea into a sealed tin and keep it cold.
One practical check: press a leaf between your fingers. Fresh green tea is still slightly flexible, and old leaf breaks.