Official Oolong thread!

Hmm… I have not tried this one. My three favorite milk oolongs are :
Golden Lily – Whispering Pines
Milk Oolong – American Tea Room
Milk Oolong – Mandala Tea
And the David’s Tea Quangzhou Milk Oolong and Teavivre Milk Oolong (flavored) are pretty good if you’re just looking for 1 or 2 steeps.

I just read this too:-). It was interesting.

Fun read! Thanks for sharing :)

I like the dan cong from JingTeaShop, Sebastien there told me that high fragrance/unbaked (ba xian, xing ren, zhi lan) the winter harvest is good, whereas lao cong & baked (song zhong, mi lan) are good in the spring.

Their Mi lan is really nice – so much lychee yumminess, light bake, no char, very top notch. In fact every one of their tea I have enjoyed apart from the DHP which wasnt to my taste, but would maybe age ok.

I havent tried their song zhong but will defo buy fresh milan & some song zhong when its ready.

I want to try Teahabitat this year, but I want to open a dialogue with the lady who runs it as she has a lot of stock!

Thanks for the recommendation, I was in fact looking for a dan cong. Yunnan Sourcing’s is good but the roast is a little strong for me. Jing Teashop has some pretty interesting teas.

The mi lan, Lao Cong Ba Xian and Lao Cong ya shi are really very nice. all the others rock but those are ones I never will run out of, a benchmark for me

seems a good opening to ramble on a bit, since wuyi yancha are my favorite type of tea. the name means rock oolong, and refers to darker roasted teas from Wuyishan, Fujian, China. Dahongpao (or Da Hong Pao) is the most well-known type, along with Rue Gui and Shui Xian, but there are others. the trick is finding a decent version, since lots of teas get sold with lots of claims that span a range of not just quality but also differences in what they actually are. that could be true of any tea type but the range seems that much broader for those. good versions have an interesting mineral background taste, along with dark wood, with more pronounced elements like cinnamon or fruit, but nothing like the range of other types. bad versions could taste a little like brewed cardboard or cork. better versions have unusual characteristics that are hard to describe, a different feel to them, or aromatic components. level of roast relates to an interesting twist for this type, with that effect perhaps not being so easy to differentiate from level of oxidation, which relates to a different processing step. at best the roasting process brings out complexity and flavor range unique to this tea type, at worst teas can taste a bit like brewing up charcoal. I write a blog about tea and end up talking about that type most but tea descriptions never really do the experience justice anyway.

thank you sir for that informative post. i didnt know da hong pao was a wuyi lol.. ive tried that kind.. or whatever version it claimed to be. where do you purchase your rock oolongs?

I live in Bangkok, and the best place here is a shop in Chinatown. An online friend is a tea farmer in Wuyishan and I’ve tried a lot of her teas. It’s a bit strange but a Thai monk I know gave me a good bit of reasonable Da Hong Pao not long ago because a supporter gave him a lot. Steepster doesn’t work out so well for me related to discussing common sourcing because only shops in China would make any sense for me to order from, not in the US or Europe, so most vendors people typically discuss I’d not buy tea from. Also I travel a good bit and end up stocking up when I’m in different countries. I’m drinking a white tea right now I bought in Indonesia in December, and will finish those teas I bought there some time in the next few weeks. I just ordered tea from a shop in Pattaya, and some from a supplier in Vietnam last year (Tea Village and Hatvala), but again that makes less sense for people elsewhere, although that Hatvala source is worth considering.

ok, you shop local mostly. hows thailand? i havnt really traveled and i think i would like to visit.

Thailand is ok, just different. after awhile the differences don’t seem that significant but it takes a couple of years to adjust to them. things look different, a bit rougher in some places but not in many of them, the malls are the same, and the office building I’m working in now isn’t any different. the foods are different, traffic patterns, of course the language and culture, etc. if you do get around to visiting and remember it coming up here you can ask me about more specifics, or other “local” countries since we get around a bit. I don’t really do the tea sourcing vacations one hears about though; we happened to visit a plantation in Indonesia, only the second time I’ve been to where tea is growing (not counting living in Hawaii—I wasn’t into tea then), but it just worked out that way, my wife isn’t up for tea theme travel, and it’s not really of interest to my kids either. I will get to Wuyishan eventually but that could take awhile.

right on. i know i’ll be there one day, sooner than later.

Thailand is nice enough but it would be a shame to not allow for plenty of time for local travel to see other countries too. The ancient temples in the Siem Reap area in Cambodia, Angkor Wat and such, are amazing, a bus over there takes 8 hours and costs somewhere around $15. Laos and Vietnam are also relatively local, and train travel is really inexpensive here, around $30 to get to one of the far edges of this country. The only catch is that the more one spends, up to a point, makes travel seem more familiar, so that a hotel room that costs $100 a night in Bangkok might seem the same as in the US but things can get strange in $15/night guest houses. Dragging the subject back to tea, there are tea plantations in the North here, and they grow tea in the Boulevan plateau in Laos, and lots of places in Vietnam. For really nice teas probably better to go to China though; better teas are produced in SE Asia but it’s harder to find them. For sourcing purposes for sales that might be a good thing, I guess, provided it did actually work out.

it would be nice to travel around the place. i’ll have to plan it out. i love how inexpensive things are there. i’d definitely go see the tea gardens.. in china as well. i’d better travel while im young and without even a goldfish to look after.

Definitely good to get out of ones comfort zone. Makes coming back home better as well. I really appreciate all the things I have here. (And also appreciate the nice things they have there)

noted, thanks

cool happy birth

Happy birthday!

ah thanks! missed this post having fun :)

No, but because the 5 for 5 sampler of theirs never showed up, they said they were going to resend with the selection from the TOTM…I hope it’s that one!!

It’s actually 11 different oolongs. I’m quite excited. I joined Verdant’s TOTM in January and have learned that I’m not ready for pu’reh but I’m enjoyed almost every oolong I’ve ad so am quite excited by these. I hope I’ll be able to tell differences in them.

“.. is the first time we have shared any varietals from Master Zhang besides the Tieguanyin cultivar. The wonderful thing about this assortment of 11 new teas is that all of them are processed with the same minimal roasting, like green modern style Tieguanyin, allowing the natural flavor of the varietal itself to shine through without being masked by the influencer of any roasting processes.”