We flew to Guji planning to taste eleven lots in two days. We tasted four, and spent the rest of the time sitting on plastic chairs watching cherries get turned by hand. It was the most useful trip we have taken.

You cannot judge a drying protocol from a sample bag. You can judge it by whether someone gets up at four in the morning to rake beds before the sun hits them. That is not a score on a sheet, but it predicts cup quality better than almost anything else we measure.

We watched three separate stations that week, and the difference wasn't in equipment or even elevation, it was in who showed up before dawn and who showed up after. One producer walked us through his raking schedule bed by bed, explaining why the beds closest to the treeline get turned first because they hold moisture longer. That kind of detail doesn't show up in a spec sheet, and it doesn't show up in a sample bag either, but it's the difference between a lot we buy and one we pass on.

We came home with two lots and a much shorter list of questions for next season, because most of what we thought we needed to ask, we'd already watched answered.