Unsolved Mystery Oolong

Last November, I introduced a new fresh winter Oolong and launched a tasting contest to have you find out where it comes from. The prize for the right answer would be 25 grams of Oolong from Da Yu Ling.

This is the kind of test that we often get in tea class with Teaparker or that tea farmers subject you to when you taste a tea with them. They ask your opinion of the tea they have just shared to assess how good your tasting skills are. This will often determine what type of tea they will offer you.

Most of the time, they'll see you are right and will praise your tasting skills, no matter what you answer. They are polite and there's no reason to make their customer unhappy...

A tea master, however, likes to have fun with his students and show them Socrates' paradox: know that you don't know and you already know something! Tea is tricky and never finishes to amaze me. This was again the case with this Oolong and I wanted to share this amazement.

The answers I received for the origin of this winter Oolong are: Da Yu Ling, Fushou Shan, Lishan, Alishan and Shan Lin Xi. And they are all wrong!! Nobody found from which place these leaves are from.

The right answer was a little bit tricky: the Feng Huang village in the Dong Ding area! This plantation is one of the highest there, but its elevation is nevertheless still slightly below 1000 meters and shouldn't be technically called High Mountain. However, the light oxidation of these big leaves and their fresh light scents make them very similar to High mountain Oolong. It's so good that you are all forgiven for thinking they came from higher elevations! It's a very well made Oolong, but it still lacked a little bit the fresh component of higher mountain Oolong.  

Since there were no right answers, the 5 winners are the first 5 people who submitted their answers. Congratulations! I'll contact you soon to send you your Da Yu Ling Oolong prize. Thank you for your participation. I hope this type of exercise will help you to taste the character of your Oolongs with more attention in the future. I also hope this will help raise awareness about how simple it is to misrepresent the origin of high mountain Oolongs.

The best way not to be fooled is to educate yourself with teas from a trusted and knowledgeable source!

Enjoy and learn about amazing Oolongs!

Tea lesson: brewing mid aged Oolong and puerh

Cold temperatures call for warm, sweet and rich teas. For this lesson, I wanted to show that we can find such nice combination in mid aged teas that are 10 to 15 years old. Good tea can be enjoyed at any age. The point should never be to brew an old tea for its age's sake, but for the pleasure it brings.

Brewing with a gaiwan is a challenge when it's cold, but it remains the best tool for learning how to brew well. Preheating is essential. 
We started with my 2001 spring Concubine Oolong and the three of us brewed it alternatively on 2 Chaxi.

The first brew of Serena and Israel were very different and then mine was also unlike these 2 brews. This was the first take away from this class: the same tea, brewed with the same water will taste notably different when prepared by different people. The reason is that we pour the boiling water in the gaiwan with different speeds and different level of control (some are more steady, while others pour at uneven speeds). Another reason is the length of the brew.

For the first 2 pours, it's best to pour slowly, because aged Oolong has unfurled a bit and doesn't require much energy to open up. The other detail that helps improve the flavors is a good preheating of the cups. We preheated them again for each brew and then it's best not to empty them too early, but wait until a few moments until you're about to pour from the gaiwan in the cups.

Good leaves are forgiving when they are not brewed perfectly, but when you do they give an incredible crisp, sweet and delicious taste that lasts comfortably for over ten minutes.

I was happy that Serena got her third brew right after following my instructions. "This is the best cup of tea I every brewed!", she said.

Then we switched to my beautiful 2003 wild Yiwu puerh qizi bing. It already smelt fabulous dry. It also delivered a powerful aftertaste that lingered well beyond the end of the class. Its energy was pleasantly felt in the body. And like the Concubine Oolong, each brew turned out a little bit different, depending how the water was poured in the gaiwan. The rewards of getting it right make learning and practicing tea brewing so interesting!

These 2 mid aged teas still had a lot of power and freshness, while already feeling more rounded and deeper. They also showed that it's not so much the age that matters, but the initial quality of the leaves and good storage conditions. 

Thank you Israel, my longtime tea blogger friend, and Serena for sharing and supporting my tea passion.

Cours d'infusion du Hong Shui en gaiwan

Israel est un ami blogueur avec lequel je correspond depuis 2007. Ce fut donc une joie de le rencontrer pour ce cours d'infusion de ses thés préférés, les Oolongs torréfiés. Nous utilisons mon gaiwan en porcelaine pour infuser ce Hung Shui Oolong de Dong Ding d'hiver 2013 à forte torréfaction. Après ma démonstration de ma méthode (expliquée dans mon guide), je cède ma place à Israel afin qu'il la pratique. En effet, même s'il lit mon blog depuis près de 10 ans, il n'infuse pas tout à fait comme moi, avec peu de feuilles et des infusions plutôt longues et versées en douceur.

A ce propos, cette semaine, un lecteur (George) m'écrit: "Ca y est, j'ai goûté chaque Oolong. Ils sont tout simplement délicieux. Alors, un grand MERCI pour la qualité de tes sélections.(...) Tes astuces sur la façon de verser l'eau (dans ton guide, ndlr) m'ont fait redécouvrir certains thés. Bluffant !​"

Le thé de qualité ne s'apprécie pleinement que si l'on sait bien l'infuser.

Class 10: What Yixing teapot is suited for aged Oolong?

Before the tea class, I took the Penn State's Tea Institute members to hot springs in Wulai. The view on the green mountain behind the river was just stunning. It was like staring at a Chinese Shan Shui painting while soaking in hot water.

We brewed 3 teas while we were there. The winter 2015 Da Yu Ling felt fresh and pure. For Ryan and me, this was the perfect match with the hot spring experience. Teddy and Sam loved the thicker and fruitier Alishan Tie Guan Yin, while Andres preferred the warm and sweet winter 2014 Concubine Oolong.

The teas added to the hot spring experience. Their pure aromas seemed to clean us from the inside, while the hot water was cleaning us from the outside. It gave us a feeling of complete satisfaction.

For their last class in Taiwan, we brewed the same spring 2003 Hung Shui Oolong from Yong Lung using 3 teapots made from different Yixing clays to experience how each teapot impacts the tea. We didn't just use the same water and kettle, I also instructed that we use a medium strength pour for all the teapots for the first brew. So, Teddy, started with a zhuni teapot. It had a certain sharpness, powerful scents and depth.

I continued with my antique zisha.

The brew was the most balanced between the roasting and the freshness.

Then we tasted the mellowing transformation of the duanni. This one was the smoothest and sweetest.

As a bonus to this comparison, Sam also brewed with my golden silver teapot. The scents were particularly bright and the taste light, almost superficial! (Note: we used fewer leaves for this teapot, because its high heat conductivity provides the most flavor extraction).

This teapot isn't very suited to the character of a Hung Shui Oolong, but it's interesting to see how few leaves can release so many wonderful aromas! Like a neutral porcelain gaiwan, the silver doesn't hide any defects and actually magnifies the good and the bad from the tea. So this was a good way to appreciate the quality of this tea and then compare how the Yixing teapots underline the scents, the sweetness, the harmony and/or the freshness from the tea.

We were able to achieve very good results with all 4 teapots. The zisha and the duanni felt the most suited to express the complex character of this aged roasted Oolong. However, we also noted that a careful brewing also mattered to get the best results from the teapot. Once you know how your teapot performs, you can adapt your brewing in accordance. For instance, since the duanni is good at making the tea harmonious and mellow, I poured the hot water with more strength than for the other teapots on the second brew.

Tasting this aged 2003 Hung Shui Oolong left us completely relaxed with a warm and sweet feeling leaping from the mouth to the rest of our body. This felt again like a hot spring shower, one that relaxes and calms you from the inside!

Wenshan in winter with Tea Institute students

 "If we have nice weather, we'll go to Pinglin.", I said last week. Faced with pouring rain and just 2 days before the PSU students from the Tea Institute fly back to the US, we did what any unreasonable tea lover would do: we went anyway! The only difference is that instead of brewing tea outside, we brewed ours inside the 140 years old Nanshan temple!

 Surrounded by fields dedicated to Baozhong, Sam brewed my spring 2014 'subtropical forest' Baozhong. We could link the forest scents to those present in these mountains. It felt very smooth and calm.

 Andres then brewed the winter 2014 concubine Oolong using my silver teapot. It brought even more warmth and sweetness to our day.

 The Buddhist monk present in the temple kindly let us use this table and seemed interested to see these young students brew with so much calm and attention.

She brought us some Taiwanese snacks and a very fresh winter Baozhong. It was interesting to compare it with the spring 2014 Baozhong: more flowery and fresh, because lighter oxidized, but with a bitter lingering feeling that wasn't very pleasant.

So we had a last cup of the winter concubine Oolong in order to finish with a good aftertaste and we left after brewing a big cup for our generous hostess.

We made a couple of stops at several tea plantations to enjoy the sights and so that they can understand in what kind of natural habitat Wenshan Baozhong grows. Mountains, a river, mist, green mountains. It's also breathing the soft and fragrant air from these subtropical forests and remembering to find these scents in the next cup of Wenshan Baozhong...

It stopped raining!

A happy day for all of us.

And if the above hasn't made you smiled, then the following pictures taken at Pinglin's tea museum probably will:

Tea is Elegance.

Tea is Culture.

Tea is not always serious!

Old and aged Oolong. What's the difference?

For last week's tea class, we had special guests from the Tea Institute at Penn State: Ryan, Andres, Sam and Teddy who have a busy 2 weeks tea schedule in Taiwan. This last day of 2015 was a fitting time to look at the past and see what makes that a Oolong is old or aged. And since high mountain Oolongs are now the most popular style in Taiwan, I dedicated this class to the aging of these high mountain Oolongs.

Before they became popular, most Oolongs used to be roasted like Dong Ding's Hung Shui Oolongs. These teas were very stable in terms of aromas. They were not considered old before at least 20 years of age. Nowadays, with fresh Oolongs, consumers consider these teas old after 1 year, once the new season is available. Everybody in the class has had the experience of a high mountain Oolong that turned sour and uninteresting within a year. But is this always true? Is it possible to age High Mountain Oolongs so that they improve with time?

In our first experience, I made a blind tasting of my winter 2014 and my winter 2015 Da Yu Ling Oolong. Both are kept in vacuum sealed packages. Everybody thought that the winter 2014 was the freshest and better one, because it felt smoother and more refined than the 2015, which still had too much energy from its recent production!

This shows that vacuum sealed Oolong can retain its freshness and improve when it's not exposed to air. There will be more change if the leaves are allowed to age in a jar. But is this change necessarily for the worse? Let's find out with a tasting of my spring 2013 Qilai shan Oolong. (It's a tea that Ryan has tasted in the past as you can see if you click on the previous link!) I have kept it for over a year in the qinghua jar seen in these pictures. The result was simply delicious. The freshness was still there, but not in aggressive, powerful way like in new Oolong. The aromas had matured a little bit, but didn't turn sour, because the sweetness was still dominating.

There are 2 reasons this High Mountain Oolong could be aged (instead of turned old). First, the quality and energy of the leaves was strong enough when young. Secondly, it was well processed: sufficient oxidation level and thorough drying of the leaves. 'Nuclear green' Oolongs are not suited for aging. They will simply turn old and are best drunk ASAP!

One of the safest approach for long term storing is to purchase high mountain Oolong with some roasting. It's not easy to find such tea, because farmers are often able to sell all their tea without bothering to roast them, but you can sometimes find some here! The question is then how to store the tea? To find out, we brewed the same roasted twinter 2007 Lishan Oolong stored in a porcelain jar and stored in a plastic foil (not vacuum sealed). We could first taste the stability of the aromas. At 8 years of age, it didn't yet have significant aged scents. The leaves from the jar tasted more complex, harmonious and aged. The leaves from the foil tasted a little bit fresher, but also less refined and not as interesting.

These 3 experiences already used up all our time, but I wanted to let everybody experience something amazing and so we went into overtime with a spring 1990 Qingxing Oolong from Cingjing (2000 meters, near Tsui Feng). Ryan performed the third brew and, since we used very few leaves, he must have brewed them for 10 minutes!

The taste was honey sweet, silky and coating the palate. It also left a cooling feeling in the mouth and a very relaxing aftertaste. Tea heaven! An incredible High Mountain Oolong, 25 years of age and not a bit old!!

Conclusion: High mountain Oolongs also have wonderful aging potential, but the quality of their process is essential. Currently, if you are looking to age high mountain Oolong, I would particularly recommend this Oolong from Fenqihu (Alishan) for its very light roast.