Mingmen Family

"I'll write a letter to Princess Yuning later, telling her that our Lin'an tea shop will hold a tea tasting conference soon." Ye Yaming said.

"Hahaha..." Ye Chongming finally felt happy, he laughed and nodded at Ye Yaming, "You narrow-minded ghost."

After laughing, he said: "I originally wanted to invite Lord Qi to be a tea judge, and then invite some famous people in Lin'an to be judges. If Consort Fan and the eldest princess participate, maybe we can invite Master Zhizhi. When the time comes No one can surpass the reputation of our tea."

……

Ten days later, the Lin'an First Tea Tasting Conference was held in a garden in Lin'an City.

Everyone in the tea shop looked at Master Zhizhi, Concubine Fan, Zhifu Qi and others who were slowly entering the scene with bitter expressions on their faces.

It is said to be a tea tasting meeting, but it is actually a tea evaluation meeting.They originally only planned to hold it inside the tea shop, and then in the name of "fairness" and "neutrality", they invited a few people who were close to them to participate.

If the Ye family's tea is not as good as theirs, or is similar to theirs, this matter can be publicized.In this way, although the Ye family took the lead this year and sold a large amount of tea a year in advance, they still have the opportunity to compete with the Ye family next year.

They can also be regarded as taking advantage of the reputation of Yejia tea.

If their tea is far inferior to the Ye family's, then this tea tasting meeting is pure tea tasting, everyone will leave after drinking, and will not say a word to the outside world.

But something went wrong, the news of the tea tasting conference was actually known by the prefect of Qi.

The prefect of Qi was very interested, and after sending Master Wu to the tea shop to inquire about the situation, he praised them a lot, and suggested that Master Zhizhi be the judge, and he himself planned to participate.

Everyone: "..."

Can they say no?
Who doesn't know that Master Zhizhi is particularly fond of the third girl from the Ye family who married into the Marquis of Xuanwu's mansion, and that he is also inseparable with Ye Chongming and Ye Hongsheng?Even the prefect of Qi himself is the uncle of Miss Ye San's son-in-law.With his participation, can everyone still step on the Ye family's position?
But one is a smart master from the royal family, and the other is a parent official, they really don't have the guts to refuse.

Before they could figure out a way, Consort Fan and others from Beijing somehow found out and came to Lin'an excitedly to be the judges of this tea tasting conference.

Everyone: "..." There is no other way to go except to put it badly.

Once the prefect of Qi intervened, it represented the intervention of the government, so this tea tasting conference was hosted by Master Wu.

Master Wu first introduced several judges, and then talked about the rules of tea evaluation.

"...For the sake of fairness, all the teas are in a random order. Master Zhang, the teacher of the prefecture school, casts the tea, and then the tea doctor in Jixiangyuan brews it uniformly. The judges rate the tea in the teacup according to the serial number .[-] out of [-].”

Master Zhizhi, Fan Yu, Qi Zhifu, Wang Kuan and others had invited three people before, and the six sat behind the table in a row.There are seven tea cups in front of everyone.

After a while, a tea doctor came over, lifted the justice cup in his hand, and poured tea into the first cup in front of everyone.

The judges pick up the tea and smell the aroma first, then look at the color of the soup, then taste it carefully, and finally pick up a pen and score on the paper.

After they rinsed their mouths with boiled water, the second tea doctor also made tea and went up to pour tea into the second cup.

The purpose of this is to let the reviewers drink every tea that has just been brewed, and try to be as fair as possible.

In addition to dozens of tea merchants in the tea shop, the audience present were Princess Yuning, Tan Xuan and his party, and several officials from the Yamen. .

The main reason is that apart from the Ye family, neither Wang Kuan nor the prefect of Qi are sure about the outcome.I always worry that the side I stand in will lose face if it loses.Especially when the Ye family still bears the name of tribute tea.

Wang Kuan, Zhou Qingsong, Shi Guilin, and Li Sheng had no status in the tea shop. At this time, because of their guilty conscience, their sense of existence was even lowered, and they stood in a corner some distance from the crowd.

"Brother Wang, do you think Qin Sixiang can win?" Zhou Qingsong asked in a low voice.

He was the most flustered one.After all, he was the one who sold the tea recipe to Wang Kuan.

Although the Ye family did not say at the time that they could not resell the tea recipe to others, the Ye family refused to sell the tea recipe to Wang Kuan.By doing this, he is going against the Ye family.

But he can't?
He didn't have enough funds at hand, so he spent tens of thousands of taels to buy tea recipes, and there was no way to book this year's spring tea.If Wang Kuan hadn't found him and said that it would be beneficial to him to buy tea together with him, he wouldn't even have the idea of ​​buying tea.

Now Zhou Qingsong hopes that the tea made by Qin Sixiang can overwhelm Ye's tea.Since he offended the Ye family, he certainly didn't want the Ye family to get better and stronger.

Wang Kuan looked indifferent: "Didn't you drink the tea he made? What do you think?"

"It's better than Ye's."

"That's it." Wang Kuan said complacently.

Shi Guilin and Li Sheng also nodded: "It's really good."

If it weren't for this, they wouldn't have gotten so close to Wang Kuan and Zhou Qingsong.

The other tea merchants who sat or stood in twos and threes did not dare to speak out like Wang Kuan and the others, but they also hoped that their tea would win and the Ye family's tea would lose.

It didn't take long to taste one tea, and it took only half an hour for seven teas to be judged.

The two clerks in the yamen, who are good at arithmetic, took away the critics' papers, made some statistics, and handed over the results to Master Wu.

Master Wu announced: "No.1, number five; No.2, number two; No.3, number one..."

When everyone heard these numbers, they were all expressionless.

Because no one knows which number represents whose tea.Not only the judges above and the participating tea merchants below do not know, even the tea doctor who makes the tea does not know.

After Master Wu made the announcement, an instruction to pour tea into the teapot came out from the back room, holding a piece of paper in his hand, and read to him: "The No. [-] pot contestant, Jin Baoshan; the No. [-] pot, Wang Kuan... ...No. [-] pot Ye Chongming..."

"Hahaha, let me just say, the tea leaves from the Ye Family are the best." Fan Yu laughed at Master Zhizhi when he heard that, "The tea from the No. [-] pot is obviously much higher than the other teas."

Master Zhizhi stroked his beard and nodded: "The Ye family's tea is much better than last year. It's not easy to surpass myself by so much."

He pointed to the No. [-] teacup: "This family's tea is pretty good. If the Ye family doesn't make progress, it will be evenly matched this year. It's hard to say who wins and who loses."

When Wang Kuan heard that he had lost, he felt a chill from head to toe.

He not only lost his reputation, but also gave Qin Sixiang's family to Ye Chongming.

This is unacceptable to him.

Anyway, he had already broken up with the Ye family, so he is not afraid of offending anyone now.

He asked loudly: "My lords, can we also have a taste of the Ye family's tea? At least let us be convinced."