Posted on January 22, 2012
Winter, of course, is a dormant period; weeding continues, but not much else happens in most tea gardens. Autumn’s harvest of Oolong (not so different from autumnal Darjeelings) produces fine teas. What a welcome surprise, therefore, to receive a small collection this time of year, including some limited winter production teas. It has become a [...]
Posted on December 11, 2011
Apologies for the late posting. The wind storm that hit southern California on Dec. 1st knocked out power for a couple of days. The previous post gave an overview of Oolong teas beyond the familiar Chinese restaurant tea. Here I turn to the more oxidized and roasted subgroup. These expensive, extravagantly long-leafed Oolongs may well [...]
Posted on November 20, 2011
As I was updating copy for a restaurant Oolong, I was reminded of how far this category has come. If you stop to read the product descriptions on boxes of Oolong teabags, you are likely to find some reference to Chinese restaurants. After all, Oolong became familiar to many tea drinkers as part of that [...]
Posted on October 30, 2011
I have devoted several posts to Ti Kuan Yin teas. They are good tasting teas and deserve to be better known; they are fussy teas to make, so there is a body of information there for those who want to be able to identify TKY from other Oolongs. This is the tea type, par excellence, [...]
Posted on October 23, 2011
In a post dated August 21, 2011 I wrote about a brownie-sized square of Oolong tea. Several weeks ago I received a small red foil packet containing Black tea, notable because it had been made from a Shui Hsien varietal, one customarily used to make an Oolong that bears this name. (Shui Hsien is sometimes [...]