Competition Oolong can taste funny as it ages

It can taste magical when it's fresh, with so many layers of flavor and aromas that a thesaurus may be needed to adequately describe its characteristics.  They can also be very expensive.  Depending on the tea, the top-prize oolongs can go for more than $1000 USD/pound – that’s if you even get the chance to buy them. 

Depending on the tea and the competition, there may be quite a number of winners – grand prize, first prizes, second places, 3rd places, honorable mentions….  If you’ve ever chanced to buy a competition oolong and have kept it around – especially the less-oxidized one – you may have noticed that its taste changes a lot as it ages.

I pulled out a 2nd-place Muzha TGY sample that I found while unpacking the other day and brewed it.  I remember how it tasted nearly 3 years ago – full bodied, fruity, truly alive.  I checked the tasting notes from my trip and it was something that I would have bought if there was any supply to buy.  I tasted the sample and it was expectedly stale.  Its roast had faded, but there was more clarity for me to taste the tea base.  It tasted off, unpleasant and unfulfilling. 

Why would such a well-roasted tea deteriorate so much?  It happens a lot with competition teas and I think that the original processing and oxidation of the tea is to blame.  This tea, and many like them, was not adequately oxidized before it was baked.  As the fire and roast fades, one can more easily compare the tea base to the tea’s roast, and there is a big gap.  Could such a problem be “fixed” so many years after?  Kinda yes, mostly no.  To re-roast the tea’s base, one must be able to heat the core of the tea and force out the extraneous flavors using increasing levels of heat; heating and rest must be alternated.  Finally, one must seal in the flavor with a correct finishing roast.  However, finished teas have already been touched by high heat and it’s difficult to produce a great result through re-roasting.  The best that one can hope for is to transform the tea into a more consistent taste, but it is very hard to make it excellent.  Oxidation happens before the tea is finished and first touched by fire, so it is not easy to alter the taste from the original oxidation process.  Can it be done?  Master roasters have given me mixed answers, but I have yet to have any of them successfully bring such a tea back to life for me.

Like a green or high mountain tea, the competition oolongs are meant to wow you when they’re fresh.  There may be value in holding on to the tea for a long while, but if we go by taste, they tend to taste best shortly after production.  I know that back in the old days, many competition teas were stored and aged (you can still buy some decades-old prize-winning oolongs; they’re not cheap) but changes to tea processing, oxidation levels and consumer tastes have altered the storability of these teas.  A quick spot roast right before drinking will make it more palatable.  I have several different spot roasting sets on order – stay tuned for results from my next round of experiments.

10 Bucks for 15 Years of Aged tea

Ten bucks an ounce, fifteen years old, real Dong Ding tea…and you can buy it right here in the US.

Shiuwen at Floating Leaves brought back a limited supply of aged Dong Ding from her recent tea-buying tour.  I tried it when it came in over a month ago, but I haven’t (and still haven’t) experimented too much with it or taken the time to understand the tea. 

It is aged and its musty/fruit tartness/mellowness is developing.  The tea base is stronger than many other aged teas at this price and beyond.  As nice as it is to drink now, it will very likely taste quite a bit better if it’s stored in stoneware for a few more years to pull out the lingering extraneous flavors, harshness and fire.  I’ve got some stored in porcelain, tin and clay to see how it turns out over the next few months.  Clay tends to pull too much life out of oolongs, so I’ll have to transfer it to a less porous material for aging.  For $10, it’s worth buying to keep around for a while; there is no more quantity of this product for her to purchase.  Her $7.50 aged Muzha TGY is still a great value, she’s almost sold out of it with only a limited supply left in Taiwan for her to bring in.

I’ve bought about 15 different aged oolongs over the past 4 months and most of them were substandard (most were reasonably priced, some were spendy).  I dipped into Taobao and received my first aged teas “straight from the producer,” but it was a huge let-down.  I sent some over to Gingko at Life in Teacup to try (she is a Taobao tea-buying expert) and  she was kind to not make me feel embarrassed by my first foray into the massive Taobao emporium of stuff.  I’ve got to admit that it was exciting to read about the products and await their arrival….

Oh Taiwan, when oh when will I return?  It’s been so long that I’m even missing the scent of the stinkiest stinky tofu (which, when fried, actually tastes pretty dang good).

Drink good tea and enrich your life.

Spring 2011 High Mountain Oolongs

I was worried that they wouldn’t be very good.  The variation in quality for Taiwan’s spring oolongs isn’t as big as for winter teas, but still, no one wants a relatively poor product.  Winter, though, typically has wetter and colder weather that can affect both the leaves and harvesting times.

The early reports for Taiwan’s spring weather showed more rain than usual.  Pickers cannot/should not harvest high mountain tea after heavy rains.  They normally wait some number of days after the heavy rains before picking.  The extra time on the bush can definitely affect how “good” the tea ends up being.  There was a tea season about 3 years ago when nearly every high mountain tea had a bitter base, something the farmers explained as being a by-product of an especially rainy and cold season that delayed picking (I still have several samples from that season, leaves were thicker and larger than normal).

I’ve been anxiously waiting for Floating Leaves tea to re-open after their spring tea tour and buying trip.  Shiuwen and Floating Leaves consistently have high-quality Taiwan oolongs and I respect that she will not buy a certain tea if it’s not to her standard (hence she did not have Dayuling for a number of seasons).  Although I’m not a huge fan of greener oolongs, it’s very hard for me to resist a good Lishan that she often carries.  I was relieved when she returned this past week with some solid high mountains.  The Dayuling in particular is good, the Lishan is pretty smooth (it needs a few weeks to settle down and blossom) and the Dinghu Alishan was surprisingly good (this Alishan does not have the typical flavor profile of Alishans, but it’s my favorite growing region for this tea because of its clean & clear characteristics).  Good stuff, relieved I am.

I am most anxiously awaiting the special-request teas that will arrive in 2 weeks.  A 15-year old Dong Ding for $10/oz and a limited-production charcoal-roasted Dong Ding.  I also got a sample of a 3-year old moderate roast/oxidation Muzha Tieguanyin that is very good – can’t wait for that to arrive, too.  More reports and tasting notes to come.

Drinking good tea and continuing to enrich my life.

“Spell it the Right Way!”

My Chinese handwriting is ugly, so bad that elementary school kids laugh at me.  It’s so bad that I don’t handwrite anything in Chinese anymore (typing is faster anyway) and because of that, I recently forgot how to write my Chinese name at a banquet I went to.  Sad….

When I visit Asia and buy a load of tea, I have to keep track of them with labels (many high mountain teas, for example, are packed in the same type of generic bag for oolongs).  The first time I went to Dong Ding and met one of my teachers, I brought back a significant amount of tea to practice my roasting with.  On each bag, I wrote “Dong Ding X1” so that I knew it was my practice tea.

My teacher doesn’t care what I write on the bag as long as I pay for it!  However, the guy down the street was more particular about my methods.

About a 15 minute drive from my teacher’s house, we met a fellow tea producer and old friend of his.  As I pulled one of the bags of tea from my backpack to share with him, Mr. 8 (I think he had about eight teeth, definitely less than 10) saw my writing on the bottom of the label, grabbed the bag from me and said “This is wrong, you wrote it wrong, spell it the right way!”

Huh?

Mr. 8 reached into his cabinet and pulled out a box with English words on it.  He pointed to the label, “Tung Ting.”  This was, he said, the correct way to write it.  He wasn’t mean or rude, he actually seemed pretty amused and looked as if he was excited to have the opportunity to share his knowledge.

Tung Ting is from the Wade-Giles system of romanizing Chinese and predates the wider-spread usage of contemporary Putonghua Pinyin.  If you visit Taiwan, you’ll find that there is a mix of several different types of romanization.  The usage of Putonghua Pinyin has increased, but there are many that don’t use it, not just because they don’t know how to, but for various political reasons.  Folks such as Mr. 8 are resistant to mainland Chinese influences and thus, they cling to systems that were in use before the Communists took over the mainland.  Fair enough, if I were to buy tea from him, I’d respect his preference.

Ahlisan wulong and Pingling Pouchong are just as good regardless of how it’s spelled.  Drink good tea and enrich your life.

Pu’er isn’t the only type of “ripe” tea – Aged Teas V

Pu’er tea comes mainly as green/raw, cooked/ripe, or a blend of those, but pu’er isn’t the only type of tea that can be considered cooked or ripe.  So can oolongs. 

Oolong teas that have received a healthy-dose of roasting can be called “shou” tea as well.  These teas often have a good level of oxidation to boot (a sufficiently-oxidized tea makes for a more complete and stable roasted tea).  While “shou” can be interpreted as ripe (such as with a banana), shou also connotes something that is ready to eat (such as steamed fish, prepared meats, etc) or “cooked.”  The cooked class of oolongs can include such teas as roasted Wuyi Yancha or traditional Tieguanyin. 

I like all kinds of good-tasting tea.  Lighter oolongs, such as Taiwan high mountain oolongs, contemporary mainland Tieguanyin and Baozhong can taste very good when fresh.  They can have a plethora of flavor notes and scents that show up beautifully in both gaiwan or pot.  The problem for me and many tea drinkers who down pot after pot of tea is that green and green-oolong teas hurt our stomachs.  Ten+ pots of a roasted tea wouldn’t faze us whereas 3 or 4 pots of greener tea wouldn’t feel so nice. 

Aged oolongs tend to have been oxidized and roasted.  If you go on Taobao and search for aged oolongs, the vast majority of the teas (that are at least 10 years old) will have been roasted (be prepared, you will get an enormous number of hits).  These cooked teas are easier on the stomach.  I’ve mentioned before that some people call aged teas “laoren cha” or old folks’ tea.  The fact that aged oolongs tend to be cooked also makes them more appropriate for tea drinkers that have sensitive stomachs.   

Why not just drink cooked pu’er?  It’s cheaper, tastes good, is easier to find, and each pot goes quite a long way.  All true and valid points, but an aged oolong can be enchanting in a multitude of different and additional ways.  It’s really just a matter of personal taste, since a good ginger or chamomile tea might beat both pu’er and oolong for soothing a stomach.

Drink good tea and enrich your life.

The Greening of Traditionally Oxidized Oolongs

There has been a continuing trend of oolongs going greener (less oxidization, less roasting) over the past decade or two.  Jason Chen’s latest book about his experiences with Phoenix and Tieguanyin oolongs finishes off with a similar assessment.  He writes that at one point, Anxi Tieguanyin was so popular that tourists and wholesalers clamored up to the tea mountains, clogging the narrow roads and driving up prices with their bidding wars.  The popularity of Taiwan’s lower-oxidized teas caused some tea buyers to request a similar product be made with Anxi’s famous Tieguanyin.  Thus, Anxi Tieguanyin – according to Jason - dropped down to an oxidation level of 15% or less to meet the demand for a light-tasting and fragrant product.

Less work and less roasting goes into the contemporary versions of the tea, which also allows farmers to produce more of it.  One may also reasonably surmise that the level of oolong production and roasting skills have declined over time.  I find it ironic that of all of China’s teas to go green in order to mimic Taiwan’s high mountain oolongs, it was Anxi Tieguanyin, a tea known for the high oxidation and roast that is needed to achieve its full body.  There are surely several other oolong varietals that would suffice in making a high-fragrance, light-tasting oolong, but few have the allure of an Anxi product with the famous Tieguanyin name.

Phoenix Dancong is another tea that is traditionally highly-oxidized and roasted, but has also changed in the last decade or two.  Nowadays, you can find an increasing number of variations of this tea (osmanthus, almond, apricot…) and even some that taste like a green oolong.  The very characteristics that make the tea a “Phoenix oolong” can be said to be missing in some contemporary interpretations of the tea.  Still, contemporary Phoenix oolong remains more similar to its traditional form than Anxi Tieguanyin.

What does that mean for a tea when its characteristic scents and tastes have changed?  For Tieguanyin, we have what’s called the 觀音韻 (guan yin yun), the characteristic notes that are unique to the tea; 岩韻 (yan yun) similarly applies to cliff teas.  If we compare a tea that is produced on Alishan but has no high-mountain qi, for example, with one that is produced on the lower Meishan (a production mountain for Alishan) but has the full bouquet of an Alishan-type tea, which one is truly the “real” Alishan?  Do we define by taste or origin?  What essential components qualifies a Dong Ding tea to be a Dong Ding tea?  The producers/retailers/market will continue to call a green Anxi oolong a Tieguanyin while traditionalists, like my Tieguanyin teacher, lament the fact that contemporary versions of the tea are nothing like what is supposed to be a Tieguanyin tea. 

If a tea tastes good, then it’s good to you, even if it’s not really what it claims to be.  I received a sample of an aged cliff tea from a tea friend that knows I like tasty, old leaves.  The sample came labeled “Big Red Robe” but it didn’t taste like it, more like a Shui Xian.  I tried it a few days ago and it had clear and strong cliff tea yun; quite a nice tea.  I asked about the origin of the tea and she said it’s a Wuyi tea with no specific, identifiable varietal; the label was a misnomer.  Because of this, the tea sells for quite a bit less than it could if it was actually a Da Hong Pao or Shui Jin Gui.  Consumers, we believe, pay more for the fame of the tea type than the taste (but naturally, they pay more for a tasty, well-known tea than a less tasty one).

If you enjoy drinking a brew, then have another cup.  I have seen too many people prevent themselves from enjoying another cup of tea because it didn’t taste/look/smell like an oolong/Darjeeling/aged pu’er/Longjing should…even though it tasted good.  I have also seen too many people try to enjoy a bad tea because it was famous/rare/expensive.  Two years ago, I encountered a gentleman that was trying to sell his private collection of pu’er.  He had a factory-floor, nugget-style pu’er that he claimed was from the 60s and worth thousands a pound; he was willing to part with it for 1/2 of its supposed “market value.”  It honestly smelled and tasted like urine; I was trying to figure out how he kept his face straight while drinking it.  Last year, I saw dogs and birds running around tea that was undergoing solar withering and I wondered if animals were running around and doing business on the floor of the factory that this old nugget pu’er was produced in.  It’s more likely that the tea had been poorly fermented and poorly stored, though the pungent aroma was quite unique.  Poo-er?  Truly.

Drink good tea and enrich your life.