Dian Hong production methods?
I’m curious how Dianhong black teas are processes. The Wikipedia article claims that Dianhong teas are fermented with lychee, rose, and longan. I haven’t read this anywhere else. Does anyone have any information related to this?
Thanks!
A Dianhong tea is a black tea. The word fermented is an inaccurate word to use about black tea. The correct word in my understanding is oxidized. Puerh tea is fermented not black tea. And only some Dianhong teas will be flavored some will have no flavorings at all.
Thanks, I’m familiar with the difference between “prefermentation” oxidation and post fermentation. My question was about the fruit being present during the processing, and whether all dianhong teas neccesitate fruit in the process to be called dianhong. I’m guessing by your reply that is not the case. That is, if I pick up a dianhong from Yunnan sourcing i can assume no fruit was present during processing unless explicitly stated.
I have never even heard of fruit in a Dianhong. If you buy from Yunnan Sourcing it would be listed in the tea’s description if there is a fruit involved.
Yeah, any flavouring or additional ingredients like lychee or rose is not part of the standard process for Dian Hong. I’ve never come across any in China that have fruit being used in the process. Some producers of Dian Hong are starting to experiment with using different material (ancient/old tree) and adjusting oxidation levels to achieve different results – not necessarily the kind of variation in oxidation you’d encounter with oolong though.
Whoever edited that wiki article was pretty inaccurate.
My understanding is that Dian Hong in its traditional sense is a black tea (Hong Cha) from Yunnan Province, as Dian is an archaic name referring to parts of Yunnan. I’ve never heard of it being used in a fruit blend, as it is generally of a quality and grade to be consumed straight. It is generally too expensive to use in blends; lower cost/quality tea is typically used for blends.
I’ve updated the Wikipedia entry to remove the misleading information.
The very fact that anyone can update Wikipedia is why there is so much bogus information on there.
Yep, but that’s also its major advantage (crowd-sourced knowledge). For relatively niche topics, it can certainly be a downfall as pages will go unedited with misleading information for long periods of time. But for popular subject matter, there are typically many contributors, and many hawk-eyed editors that will quickly correct misinformation.
By the way. I have had tea infused with lychee fruit, a black tea. And tea infused with longan fruit, a puerh. They can both be very good. They do infuse teas with those fruits I have just never seen Dian Hong infused with them.
The Longan flavored puerh was sold by Fang’s Gourmet Tea but I doubt they still have it. Lychee flavored black tea is available from a variety of sources including www.svtea.com.
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