Reading the Tea Leaves

Autumn is usually not the season one associates with tea plucking and production, but or those who are fond of one category, Oolong teas and TiKuanYin’s in particular, fall is a time of high expectations.  Spring harvests do bring forth fine Oolongs, but after pruning and tending through the summer, varietals that are made into teas such as Phoenix Single Trunk Oolong and TiKuanYin’s yield teas with exceptional fragrance and long finishes.

This piece and the one after it (about TiKuanYin processing) were written earlier but this seems an appropriate time to post them, and these will be followed by a couple of posts with some guidelines when you shop for TiKuanYin.  Here then is a mini-series of write-ups about Oolongs.

That many tea consumers in this country refer to Ti Kuan Yin by its Chinese name instead of its English rendering of “Iron Goddess of Mercy Oolong,” quite a mouthful, is a sign of how well known this tea has become.  The heft suggested in the name, the metal and a deity no less, befits what is perhaps the most celebrated Oolong tea.  (Personally, this is my go-to tea after dinner.)

Back in the 1990s a grower we knew from India asked if we happened to know of any manuals detailing Oolong production.  I remember this was a time when Oolongs in general, and TiKuanYin especially, were gaining popularity in Japan.

Several provinces in China produce Oolong, but Fujian and the Chao Zhou corner of Guangdong are the source of many varietals not found elsewhere and are where the craft has really been fine tuned. Many who emigrated from Fujian ended up in Southeast Asia, so this category of teas has a long tradition there.  But the surging demand in Japan was a newer development, and the craze for Oolong was on.

I think we did manage to obtain something in printed form from a Chinese grower in Fujian and had it translated into English.  I don’t know if the tea producer in India actually used the material we gave him, but even now, whenever I see an Oolong from India, I am always fascinated.

One Oolong producer in Fujian prefaced his remarks to us with the claim that Oolong is the fussiest tea to make.  While this may have seemed a bit self-congratulatory, I don’t think he was being overly boastful.

Here then is a general outline of how Oolong is made.

Unlike the best Green teas which are produced only in the spring, fine Oolongs come from both the spring and autumn harvests.  The plucked leaves are withered indoors or outdoors.  After the leaves have cooled a bit, they are shaken to begin the bruising process.  Whether in a mechanical tumbler or done by hand using bamboo baskets, as the leaves fall back on each other, their edges begin to bruise, releasing juices and initiating the critical oxidation process.

Oolong is often described as a semi-fermented tea; I prefer to use the term oxidized rather than fermented.  If the shaking is done by hand, the basket is lifted and rotated so the leaves are repeatedly tossed and fall back onto the basket tray, which measures about 30 inches across.  Motions may be vigorous or gentler, a call that the worker makes.  What stands out in my mind is the worker pausing frequently to take up bunches of the leaves which he examined, felt, and smelled.  It became obvious that the course he took was determined by these brief inspections rather than by clocks or timers.

Lightly oxidized Oolong

During this step the leaves are still a bright, fresh looking, and beautiful green, but as the shaking proceeds, the edges start to darken.  This alternating cycle of bruising to break the cell walls of the leaves and resting goes on for several hours, and at the end of this phase, the edges of the leaves start to show some red (more of a burgundy) while the center remains green.  The aroma in the processing room is pronounced and glorious.

Medium oxidized Oolong

When to call a halt to this bruising process is a crucial decision and a formidable one since there is no going back.  If only the edges of the leaves are bruised, the oxidation that follows will be fairly light, and the end product is an Oolong considered to be 20/80 or 30/70, or 30% red (what we call Black tea is known as Red tea in Chinese) and 70% green.  When you shop for Oolong, this style is easy to recognize; lightly oxidized Oolongs have a green cast in the finished leaves, perhaps even a bit of gold.  More prolonged bruising means oxidation will be heavier, as evidenced in Oolongs with very dark (elongated) leaves.

SeChung (Minnan or Southern Fujian) Oolong

After alternating periods of shaking and resting, the leaves then go into a dryer, in which wide blades tumble and separate the leaves as they dry.  Moisture exuding from the damaged leaves now makes them clump together.  At the end of this first round of drying about 50% of the moisture has been removed from the leaves, and they are ready for rolling.  Usually a simple machine is used for this — a rotating circular tray moves the leaves as the kneading and rolling proceed.  The leaves are now in small clumps, still held together by the moisture that remains.

These clumps are separated, either by hand or mechanically, and scattered over trays in very thin layers, and a final drying stage brings the tea to its first “finished” stage.  But the story doesn’t end here.

For high quality Oolongs, the brief summary given here will have taken 16-20 hours from the time the leaves were brought indoors.  But this series of steps, and the attendant constant monitoring, are not the only reasons by Oolong is a complicated tea to make.  What makes Oolong processing more daunting than for other varieties is the leeway the tea maker has.  But this leeway is not the forgiving type nor does it mean room for error.  On the contrary, the leaves cannot be returned to an earlier stage if bruising or oxdiation that has gone too far.  If the shaking of one batch has been too vigorous, if the leaves are left out too long while exposed to air, or if they are left too long in clumps where oxidation may intensify, there is no corrective for that batch of tea.  Moreover, the leaves from a valuable spring or autumn plucking are hard to replace; the window for plucking is of relatively short duration.  In fact, the flexibility the tea maker seems to enjoy is daunting precisely because he has to make the judgments for each batch of leaves; he cannot follow a standardized set of instructions or formula, nor can he rely on a timer to go off.  As for making adjustments there is but one ingredient.

A more heavily oxidized Oolong

A basic factor the tea maker must also take into account, and one over which he has no control, is weather — the climate conditions when the leaves were plucked, indeed, even during the days before the plucking (how much rain or sun), how warm or cool and how dry or humid the day happens to be when he begins working on the leaves.  From the beginning of his day and well into evening, therefore, he must constantly “feel” the ambient conditions around him.

Whenever we strolled through tea gardens, it was often pointed out to us that the same tea bush may give slightly different tea depending on mini-periods in the harvesting period — yet another complication for the tea maker, who is nevertheless obliged to render a finished product that adheres to certain standards in terms of leaf appearance, aroma, taste, and brew color.

Two teas come to mind that serve as a simple illustration as to why all this bother pays off.  At a tea factory in Fujian we were treated to two teas, one Green and the other Oolong, that had been made from the same strain, a recently developed one.  The Green was interesting and pretty; it was certainly worthy of purchase but nothing extraordinary.  However, when the same leaves were processed to make an Oolong resulted in a singular, exceptional and memorable tea.  The laborious steps of shaking the leaves, monitoring oxidation, and correct drying brought out aromatic elements in the leaves that were not evident in the Green version of the tea.

So maybe all this goes a little ways in explaining why a How-to-Make-Oolong manual was hard to find.