Reading the Tea Leaves

I have long admired our customers who ordered Pouchong, a lightly oxidized Oolong from Taiwan, also known as BaoZhong.  These were retailers who presumably had customers who were actually buying this costly tea; these tea merchants were fortunate and successful in creating a niche where knowledgeable customers sought out teas like Pouchong.

Recently my small stash at home had been depleted, and as I passed a tea store in Chinatown I picked

The 1st Pouchong, at $120/lb.

up the minimum, 2 ounces, which came to $15.  This shop is part of a chain with stores in major U. S. cities where there is a sizeable Chinese population.  As always, I balked at paying retail but it is always informative to keep up with retail prices, and they are very eye-opening sometimes.  Actually, at $120/lb, this Pouchong – the top grade offered at the shop – was in line with what I would have expected, given the export price range.

Other than offering the fact that the tea is lightly oxidized (15%), the two saleswomen there couldn’t tell me much more about the tea, both of them adding that they’d never been to Taiwan.  For a company whose name is virtually identified with tea in Taiwan, I found this interesting.  Turns out they both came from Guangdong.

I was eager to try the tea once I got home, but with the first sip I rued my $15 expenditure.  Puzzled, I made another fresh brew, this time with more care.  The familiar aura of flowers and sweetness was there but it was pretty elusive.  The tea sat in my fridge for a few days until I made another purchase and thought to compare the teas side by side.

Wet leaves from the first Pouchong tasted.

For a lightly oxidized Oolong, Pouchong looks markedly different from other teas in this sub-category.  A dry Pouchong looks as if someone had plucked the fresh leaves, rubbed them between the palms and let them dry. The leaves are long and a very dark green; in fact, the green is not obvious.  Most lightly

Most lightly oxidized Oolongs look like this.

oxidized Oolongs appear as crinkled-up nuggets; Pouchong comes in the form of somewhat uneven, brittle-looking, twisted strips.  Some stems are visible, and the overall lengths in my two small batches ranged from 1 cm all the way up to 4 cm.

Leaves of the 2nd Pouchong

Of the two, the second Pouchong had a finer overall appearance.  The leaves were pointed and spindly, less robust than those in my first purchase.  There are different grades of Pouchong, of course, and the first thing one might notice in shopping for this tea where the selection is good (less likely in this country) is that the bags are huge.  This tea takes up a lot of space; moreover, the packing requires careful handling.  I recall planning measures to protect the leaves during transit.

This leaf from the 1st Pouchong had unfurled to a full 6cm. (Note the slight tears around the edges, indicating light bruising to initiate oxidation.)

Differences in leaf quality were easier to spot with the wet leaves.  The second tea was less uneven, with the leaves averaging 3cm-4cm; in the batches I’d brewed, no leaf was over 5cm, and they were

1st Pouchong at left; 2nd Pouchong at right.

narrower than those in the other sample.  In the first tea, some of the thicker, longer leaves unfurled to a full 6cm in length, although most stayed in the 3cm-4cm range.  In addition, most of the leaves from my first purchase had opened fully, while the leaves from my later tea purchase retained more folds – the rolling seemed to have taken in a more lasting way.

A close-up shows how little the leaves had been bruised.  Leaves from the second tea, especially, showed edges that were quite intact rather than ragged from bruising — the step when leaves are tossed and shaken so that as they fall back on each other, the cell walls on the edges start to break down, releasing juices that begin the oxidation process.

1st infusion from the 2nd Pouchong

In the photo of the wet leaves from the first Pouchong, slight tears along the leaves’ edges can be seen, and this is more apparent because more of the leaves have opened fully.  Greater care taken in

Note the tighter roll retained in the leaves of the 2nd Pouchong.

creating a tighter roll in the second tea also suggests that this tea would be more flavorful in a second infusion, which was later confirmed.  At this stage, the leaves of the second Pouchong did open more.  I tried a third round with the second Pouchong but the flavor had faded, not too unexpected or disappointing given the minimal bit of oxidation.

For leaves so dark and extravagantly long, Pouchong brews up a surprisingly delicate, pale gold cup.  there are many Green (non-oxidized) teas that yield a more deeply colored liquor.  But I think this lightly hued cup goes hand-in-hand with the very soft, pleasing petal taste of Pouchong.  The best feature of Pouchong, to me, is its light sweetness combined with the fragrance of flowers — sensed from a distance, not up close.  My best approximation might be freesias.  Many early picked Green teas are enjoyable in that they rightly reflect something green and vegetal from spring, but Pouchong adds the bloom of floral notes to the taste.  If there were sweet edible flowers, minus any astringency or raw edge, this would be the taste, or that tiny droplet of nectar from honeysuckle.

Compared with a traditional Ti Kuan Yin, Pouchong is much less assertive in its aroma, which is more evanescent.  The wet leaves from the first Pouchong gave only a light smell — hardly any fragrance at all, as if the leaves had already been spent from the first infusion.  The wet leaves of the second tea offered a more noticeable bouquet, but it hardly compared with more oxidized Oolongs (at this price level).

The second tea was also over $100/lb.  Online I have seen Pouchong priced at $11.50 for 1.76 oz (about $104/lb) and at another site, it was selling for $12.50 for one ounce, which makes the tea $200/lb, too high in my view.  At these prices I can understand why some tea drinkers might opt for other Oolongs, such as some version of Jade Oolong or a Four Seasons Oolong — easy, charming teas that give a generous floral note up front and usually cheaper.

So why invest in a Pouchong at all? Why did I have a craving?  I was disappointed with my initial purchase because the taste was weak.  I had expected delicate and subtle; a watery tea lacking any distinctive flavor was not part of the bargain at $120/lb.  Inexpensive Pouchongs taste like generic Green teas, nothing objectionable to them, easy to drink all day long but not very flavorful.  I picture people at their desks with a mug that is refilled several times in the course of a workday.  A good Pouchong, on the other hand, imparts the sweetness and floral quality that one sometimes wishes more Green teas offer up.  To me, the fact that this character is fleeting and subtle does not diminish the tea’s likability.

And of course, the key to Pouchong’s attraction is that it possesses a strong sense of place, something that is true of other really good teas, be they Green or Black or Oolong.  The name of the area “Wen Shan” (Wen Mtn.) is often attached to “Pouchong” or “BaoZhong” as part of the tea’s proper name.  The hills where the gardens are situated are not far from Taipei, and with a new highway and tunnel, under an hour’s drive from the city.  There are hiking trails that draw visitors, and Ping Lin county is so identified with tea that there is a tea museum there.

Granted, one pays a premium for teas that are so imbued with a sense of place.  There are good tasting teas at affordable prices that are not famously connected to a specific locale.  But consider high-end flavored teas:  I have seen honeydew or mandarin orange White teas at $100/lb or more.   Based on price, these are luxe teas too, but there can be no meaningful comparison between such a flavored tea and a tea as subtle as Pouchong.  The delicate Pouchong simply can’t compete.  On the other hand, does the sense of place offered by the honeydew White partially rest in a lab?

There are other “green” Oolongs that offer a similar or comparable flavor profile that one might say are a better value.  But what is missing is a tea’s identification with a specific garden district.  Admittedly, this matters none to some people while others appreciate the association.  This identity is not something one can taste; it is an image held in mind as we sip.

(I find it curious that I have yet to come across something comparable to Pouchong from China.  I am not suggesting that any producer there would try to make a knock-off  “Wen Shan Pouchong.”  Rather, I wonder why this processing method has not been applied to certain varietals.  Granted, the origin cannot be altered, and the raw material would be different, but I find few lightly oxidized Oolongs from across the strait that have the look of Pouchong.)

Without much bruising and without prolonged oxidation, Pouchong does not have a particularly memorable finish.  Absent are the long lingering, faintly aromatic elements that, say, a TiKuanYin or exceptional Tung Ting would leave in the mouth.  Instead, Pouchong is a superb choice when one wants something that stands out more than a Green but is less intense than some other Oolongs.  It’s hard to even think of Pouchong as part of the Oolong family, just by dint of its having been oxidized.

In an early post I recommended that we should start thinking of teas less in terms of them falling into discrete categories (Green, Oolong, Black) and instead, to consider viewing them along a continuum based on the extent of oxidation.  Such a perspective provides a more accurate understanding of processing methods that account for the various types of finished teas, and equipped with this knowledge, tea drinkers would be in a better position to appreciate, judge, and enjoy the cup before them.

Pouchong happens to rest on one end of the range of partially oxidized teas, a range that spans a good part of the spectrum that I mentally picture.  This portion of the spectrum embraces – happily for tea drinkers – a wide variety of leaf forms and tastes.  Viewed in this contect, Pouchong is recognizably closer to a Green tea and shares less with most other Oolongs.  Pouchong’s taste and distinctive character, therefore, should not surprise; they are only perplexing if one holds to a traditional, narrower image of Oolongs.  Pouchong’s generously sized leaves brew up not the bold, robust taste remembered from our usual notion of Oolongs, but a gentle cup, comforting and uplifting at the same time with its whiff of sweet flowers.