I'm going to say the stem in the three types of Taiwan Tea from Good
Young is no more than 15% by weight. Lots of leaf weight versus stem
weight. I'm wondering in this case of leaf on stem is a result of some
mechanical harvesting which AFAIK is still only produced by labor.
Even if produced by labor I'd say still cheaper than plucking each leaf
by hand. I've seen other posts in this thread mentioning stem being a
problem in oolong. I've never seen an oolong where I thought broken
loose stem was a problem perse. Traditional methods involve plucking
and not pruning. I mention these teas as a wonderful example of leaf
on stem for your viewing pleasure. I also think an excellent example
of price and taste in a commercial tin.

Jim

Michael Plant wrote:
> 1/29/05
>
>
> > I've read that the reason there is stem in these oolongs is because
> > they often use the entire leaf shoot. The only problem I can think
of
> > is that the stems add to the overall weight of the tea. This has
got me
> > wondering what 100g of stemmy oolong would weigh if all of the
stems
> > were removed.
> >
>
> Some vendors do sell the same tea stemmed and de-stemmed. The price
of the
> later is of course considerably more.
>
> Michael