What Oolong Are You Drinking

[Bok]

i guess a blended dongding with tea from lugu and mingjian townships. i feel like i've seen "tea scholar" shops in taiwan, but it sounds like it could a common name, and maybe i'm fooling myself.

dongding is great.

Seems it's some random shop from the greater Taipei area, so a retailer not producer of teas: https://store.teascholar.com/product/de ... Winter-Tea
From their website it would just mean that this is Dongding from either Lugu or Mingjian, both known for Dongding teas. Blending would make no sense. More like they source from different areas/farmers for their shop-Dongding. Hinting to a generic Dongding with predictable taste.

[Baiyun]

I've received my first 6x60g samples from Floating Leaves to get a feel for their oolongs.

Making a start with the November harvest Shan Lin Xi now.

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[matchayogi]

i guess a blended dongding with tea from lugu and mingjian townships. i feel like i've seen "tea scholar" shops in taiwan, but it sounds like it could a common name, and maybe i'm fooling myself.

dongding is great.

Thank you so much!! It was indeed delicious!!

[matchayogi]

i guess a blended dongding with tea from lugu and mingjian townships. i feel like i've seen "tea scholar" shops in taiwan, but it sounds like it could a common name, and maybe i'm fooling myself.

dongding is great.

Seems it's some random shop from the greater Taipei area, so a retailer not producer of teas: https://store.teascholar.com/product/de ... Winter-Tea
From their website it would just mean that this is Dongding from either Lugu or Mingjian, both known for Dongding teas. Blending would make no sense. More like they source from different areas/farmers for their shop-Dongding. Hinting to a generic Dongding with predictable taste.

Wow thank you for your deep insights!! I have a lot to learn!!

[Bok]

Wow thank you for your deep insights!! I have a lot to learn!!

Hahaha, not too deep, just a quick google search and some observations... happy to help

[Baiyun]

On day eight of comparing and learning two Shan Lin Xi from different sources.

Nobly trying to ignore nine other rolled oolongs samplers now waiting their turn

One of the two clearly outshines the other on all counts.

Looking good for Floating Leaves here!

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[LeoFox]

2017 zhuke high roast yancha from daxuejiadao.

[Andrew S]

Warm day, time for some high mountain tea: Late Winter 2020 qing xing from GuanYuan, HuaLien. More oxidised than typical.

Not an exuberant tea in terms of its upfront aroma, but rather a very elegant one, with a cool refreshing mouthfeel and flavour, and long, vibrant aftertaste. Very nice.

Andrew

[Victoria]

Some of the best oxidized Taiwan oolong I’ve had come from HuaLien, in particular I’ll never forget a highly oxidized mi xiang sourced by Origin Tea. @Andrew S your puffy leaves popping out of the bulging scalloped teapot is steamy. Can you share something about this duanny teapot?

[Andrew S]

Some of the best oxidized Taiwan oolong I’ve had come from HuaLien, in particular I’ll never forget a highly oxidized mi xiang sourced by Origin Tea. Andrew S your puffy leaves popping out of the bulging scalloped teapot is steamy. Can you share something about this duanny teapot?

Ah, that's the benshan lüni pot from TWL. At first I tried some wet-stored puer in it, and the pot objected, so I've been feeding it light styles of high mountain and similar teas instead and it seems quite happy.

I'll be sure to include some more steamy photos of it in the future. Warm temperatures are a good excuse for fresher and lighter styles of tea.

Andrew

[Victoria]

Some of the best oxidized Taiwan oolong I’ve had come from HuaLien, in particular I’ll never forget a highly oxidized mi xiang sourced by Origin Tea. Andrew S your puffy leaves popping out of the bulging scalloped teapot is steamy. Can you share something about this duanny teapot?

Ah, that's the benshan lüni pot from TWL. At first I tried some wet-stored puer in it, and the pot objected, so I've been feeding it light styles of high mountain and similar teas instead and it seems quite happy.

I'll be sure to include some more steamy photos of it in the future. Warm temperatures are a good excuse for fresher and lighter styles of tea.

Andrew

Ah, now I remember seeing it there. It really looks elegant and sizzling silky smooth

[Victoria]

Enjoying deep rich profiles of a few well roasted aged oolong that were stored in Taiwan; an ‘87 TGY, followed by an early 80s DongDing, and a ‘98 metal cask aged Dong Ding via Floating Leaves. All are so well balanced and multilayered, with no humidity degradation or sour plummy notes. I wish I’d purchase more of Floating Leaves offer since it’s no longer available, the other two were gifts never on the market, all were from small batches so supply was limited. Next time an excellent aged oolong makes it my way will be a good day

[Andrew S]

@Victoria: I remember putting a 250g bag of 1980s lightly-rolled Dong Ding into my bag for some casual drinking, perhaps a decade ago. It's a sad thought that I'd be more tempted to keep something like that in a little jar at home these days. Brewing that tea back then made me and some chosen others very happy.

On the topic of aged tea, I've opened and tried another pack of home-stored yancha today; 2011 zhulian dancong from EoT.

I no longer recall its details, but it has developed nicely. The overall character is as how I remember it, but the flavour and presentation have obviously changed. No need to store it any longer, though; time to enjoy it (and to try some of its friends). It's crossed over to the 'aged' side of things, rather than the 'rested' phase I think, but maybe that's just me. I'll try it a few more times before thinking too hard.

As I think I've mentioned here before, I wonder about ageing yancha and other teas. I guess that most of what gets onto the Western market is not the best stuff that was made back then, but rather the stuff that survived, even if it survived very well (and I don't know if there are many people who are bothering to 'lay down' the best stuff now, or who were doing so ten, twenty or more years ago). I understand that there's a market now for aged yancha and such, but I don't know much about that...

Perhaps there are some analogies to be drawn here between tea and wine.

Despite all of that, it seems to me that ageing wulong is much easier (and, I think, quicker) than ageing puer. Perhaps it is just less fashionable.

Of course, if I do manage to learn anything from storing something for ten, twenty or more years, that doesn't leave much time for me to improve upon those experiments... There must be a lot of knowledge that's lost in every generation. Hopefully someone out there is absorbing and recording it...

Andrew

[Bok]

@Andrew S there’s loads of oolong being aged for decades and actively in Taiwan. It’s the rich people’s game to put away huge jars per year and waiting until a batch is ready for drinking. > it only makes sense to put away high quality tea > hence it’s rare to see them exported as it’s private people’s stash. If aged by the merchant the prices are not interesting to make a reasonable margin for export markets… either no profit or a tea that won’t find a customer.

So mainly it stays local. I might be wrong, but that’s my observation.

[polezaivsani]

Of course, if I do manage to learn anything from storing something for ten, twenty or more years, that doesn't leave much time for me to improve upon those experiments... There must be a lot of knowledge that's lost in every generation. Hopefully someone out there is absorbing and recording it...

That's an interesting subject. It seem that in the face of increasing pace of human praxis, the realm of tradition is falling by the wayside. The part of the culture that's better fit to pass on this kind of knowledge and sustain it over longer time frames seem withering away, at least here in between proper West and East. Most I hear terms like traditional and heirloom are marketing boasts detached from the essence of what it means to be traditional.

On another hand, there are culture currents reassessing such contemporary trends, handwavy of post-modernist creed, which try to rope in some nifty practices of the past, including indigenous technology. E.g. permaculture and permacomputing. These areas feel like they might welcome the practices spanning generations, ageing, fermenting.

Sorry for thinking out loud in here, but I'd be happy to hear any pertinent or not comments on these matters. Or maybe bootstrap a tea ageing coop