A Taste of Taiwan Oolong

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I went to Taiwan last week to get an idea of how they produced their famous Oolong tea. China has its fair share of excellent Oolong, but Taiwan is renowned for it and makes more different Oolongs than China.

 

The trip was not a total success, but I still learned a few things and thought a report might serve as a starting point for a general discussion of Oolong.  

 

The south part of Taiwan was in the grip of a Dengue Fever epidemic (13,000 cases since May at last count) so I didn’t go there. Started in the middle, Taichung 台中 and Nantou 南投, and worked my way north, visiting representative tea plantations and factories. Was told it was the wrong season for certain areas which have their main harvest in winter, such as Alishan 阿里山。

 

 

Every tea owes its unique taste to a combination of factors: mainly consisting of the type of tea bush (varietal/品种,) where it is grown (terroir,) climate and processing. We found four kinds of tea bushes/varieties during the week.

 

Stop. Digression Alert. I must humbly apologize for not being proficient with Traditional Chinese Hanzi. If you spot mistakes, please call them to my attention and I’ll go back and fix them. I’ve used a mix of Traditional and Simplified forms in this post.

 

Back to those four kinds of tea bushes: Ruan Zhi 軟質, Jin Xuan 金萱, Dong Ding 凍頂, and cui yu 翠玉。The best harvests of Ruanzhi are in the colder months and Cuiyu was mainly a summer tea. Many of the tea bushes we found were in full flower (middle September.)

 

 

These fields were irrigated and fertilized with organic substances such as composted peanut hulls. But they were not sprayed with insecticides. In places we found a little leaf damage by what they called “red spiders.”

 

 

These bushes were small, about knee high. They didn’t have deep root systems and could not be terraced too steeply. Best leaf was after the plant had reached about 4 years of age; before and after that, quality was not prime and yield was also less.

 

Each place had a couple types of tea planted so that they could continue production of some sort all year round. This is different from China where many (perhaps most) tea plants go dormant in winter and awaken in early spring (just before Qingming Festival 明前。) In China, summer harvest tea is not very good; it mainly goes into blends or is exported to countries which are less discriminating, like the Middle East.

 

Many of the lower altitude fields were picked by machine. Looked like an industrial hedge clipper, operated by two people. It vacuumed the cut tea into a large cloth bag. In the high mountains however, it was usually picked by hand. The high cost of labor in Taiwan meant that they often hired foreign crews to come in seasonally from Vietnam, Indonesia or Cambodia.

 

 

We visited several factories, each one with subtle differences. I’ll take you through one as an example to give you a rough idea of how it works.  

 

The freshly harvested leaves are first spread out to “wither” 萎凋 weidiao  for one or two hours. The amount of sunlight can be adjusted by a system of overhead shades and the leaves are turned often so that the process will be even. If the day is not too hot, this can even be done under full sun, and then it is called shai qing 晒青。

 

 

Then the fresh leaves are moved indoors to wither some more in racks under a lower temperature for eight or ten additional hours. In one factory this phase was actually cool, in the low 20’s (Celsius.) In others it was warmer. Small variables like that affect the finished product and are adjusted on the fly by an experienced factory boss to bring out the best in the leaves.

 

 

This withering allows partial oxidation, which is a primary characteristic of Oolong tea. Oolong does not undergo the high-temperature wok frying sha qing 杀青 step that stops the process in green teas. Nor is it fully oxidized like black tea 红茶。Sometimes the oxidation can be as high as 40, 50 or even 60 percent, and other times it can only be 15 or 20 percent. This understandably alters the taste a lot. Oolong tea is quite varied; a broad spectrum of flavors.

 

After withering, the leaves are tumbled in large slow-moving basket-weave drums 浪青.   This aerates them. Some of the tea factory bosses were frank and forthcoming, while others were reticent and didn’t much like being bothered. After all, some of these processes are proprietary.

 

 

The next step involves gently crushing the now-softened tea leaves to break down some of the internal cell membranes and make flavor and nutritional components available for brewing. This is called it rou cha 揉茶 or rou nian 揉捻, which literally means “rubbing and twisting.”

 

It can be done between circular ribbed plates to transform the leaves into recognizable and fairly standard loose leaf shapes. Other shapes are “longer and thinner” such as mao feng 毛峰 and even mao jian 毛尖。

 

 

But quite a few factories turn the leaves into small compact “pearls” by an interesting method involving muslin bags. This is referred to as jie kuai 解块, “dividing into pieces.”

 

 

The leaves are compressed and twisted in a double cloth bag and then tossed into a heated stainless steel drum-like machine where they are rotated briefly. Then back into the bag, and twist them again. The boss checks the tea as this goes along, determines how many times are required. I was told it was usually 15 to 18 complete circuits at this particular factory.

 

Then the tea leaves, now round pearls, go through a forced-air drying oven 烘干 on a conveyor belt. It moves along quickly and the boss determines how many times it must pass through. Usually four times, the day we visited.

 

 

After all that, the tea is roasted, a little or a lot depending on the style desired. Sometimes this roasting is done with steam 蒸, sometimes over charcoal 木炭 made from the hardwood of lychee fruit trees 荔枝木, and sometimes over an infrared electric coil 红外线。

 

 

This is a complicated process, which usually takes about 48 hours from start to finish. Many variations exist. It involves so many steps, each one requiring experience and judgement. It is sometimes said that Oolong teas might be the most difficult of all teas to produce because so much skill is required.

 

We went to lots of tastings, some more professional than others. At some stops these were just shop clerks wanting to give us a casual sip and then sell us some tea. In other places it was a real production, and used the technique employed in tea competitions. A precise amount of tea was measured out and a precise amount of water was added. It had to be the correct temperature. Then after exactly one minute, it was decanted. We sampled it using spoons, ladling some into tiny tasting cups 品茗杯。

 

 

One place produced an aged tea and the boss there had jokingly nicknamed it “his Pu’er.” It had been aged 5 years, but still had nowhere near the body of a premium “real Pu’er.” Nonetheless, it was interesting to compare it (left) with a mao feng 毛峰 style Oolong from this year. Deeper and richer color; less green.

 

 

We went to some places featuring Dongfang Meiren 东方美人 (aka “Oriental Beauty”) tea where the tea had an unusual taste, almost sweet. I learned that the tea bushes had a symbiosis with a type of “leaf hopper” insect that secreted a substance from its mouth parts as it fed. The farmers had learned to use this to their advantage.

 

 

Most of the tea was many times more expensive than what I usually buy in China. I did not find it to be a good value. We had to wade through lots and lots of mediocre tea to find a very few winners, and even then they were teas I would rate a 6 or 7 out of a possible ten.

 

In all fairness, we didn’t get to taste the winter teas, which are some of Taiwan’s best. We also missed several well-respected tea growing areas. In years past I’ve had other Taiwan Oolong teas that were much better, so I know they exist. But this one-week whirlwind trip still provided a look into how Taiwan Oolongs are made.

 

Hope to get you thinking about Oolongs. We can talk about them more later: How to select; how to brew.

[Shelley]

Thank you once again for sharing with us your tea experiences.

 

As someone who suffers from a peanut allergy the idea of peanut husk fertilisation has given me cause for thought. Wonder if it makes any impact on the tea?

[Milkybar_Kid]

Thank you for posting this great write-up. I'm always amazed with the amount of workers who work topless in Taiwan's food and drink industry.

 

I'd just like to point out that it's not the whole of southern Taiwan that's currently affected by dengue fever. It's mostly just in Tainan. However, I don't think there's much Tea production going on down here anyway.

[abcdefg]

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As someone who suffers from a peanut allergy the idea of peanut husk fertilisation has given me cause for thought. Wonder if it makes any impact on the tea?

 

I doubt it, Shelly. I would think that whatever is taken in by the plant is changed as it helps the plant grow. But, as a used-to-be scientist, I cannot say for 100% sure. They also used ground up and composted bean hulls.

 

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I'd just like to point out that it's not the whole of southern Taiwan that's currently affected by dengue fever. It's mostly just in Tainan.

 

Right, Milkybar. Seems that this year has been unusually hot and wet. Today's news gave the count as 15,280 documented cases. And it isn't only Taiwan. Thailand and Malaysia have been hard hit as well.

 

Glad that you both enjoyed the article.

[abcdefg]

Milkybar's comment about working topless got me to thinking. Here's a diagnostic quiz for you Old China Hands out there. （中国通)

 

What happened to this young man's back?

 

[Shelley]

He has had little hot bowls put on his back, can't remember what its called, its a form of acupuncture I think.

[abcdefg]

Right, Shelley. Bahuoguan  拔火罐。 You get the prize! Roddy has generously agreed to give the lucky winner a one-year free subscription to Chinese Forums.

 

[Shelley]

Hehe gee thanks roddy

[roddy]

There's a $35 prize-claiming fee though. 

 

Excellent tea-posts!

[abcdefg]

Roddy doesn't miss a trick.

[Kamille]

Very interesting!

The south part of Taiwan was in the grip of a Dengue Fever epidemic (13,000 cases since May at last count) so I didn’t go there

 

I've gotten a bad cold twice this past month but still no dengue in sight. Mosquitoes like me a lot, though. There was a huge outburst last year too, according to the news but I again I was left safe, same for all my friends. I really don't know anyone who got dengue. I don't think it's something that should scare people away from coming to the south, especially if it's only for a few days/weeks but if you think of it as safer...

[Geiko]

@abcdefg, great post, as usual. I prefer green teas over oolongs (especially 太平猴魁 and 黃山毛峰),  but there is one type of oolong that I'm very fond of, and it's 金萱 jin xuan tea, also known as milky oolong (nothing to do with milk tea). It's very sweet, almost "creamy", but I can't find it in my country. I discovered it by chance, a friend of mine sent me a pack of it, she was from Fujian but chose to send me a Taiwanese tea, and it was a great discovery. Other oolongs like tieguanyin are easily found in my country, but I find them too strong to drink them on a regular basis.

[abcdefg]

Kamille -- To be frank, I only had a total of ten days (8 full days on the ground) to spend and decided it would be more productive to concentrate on the upper half of the island. Plus the people showing me around had more contacts there. Maybe next time I can go to the south part. I've read that Kaohsiung 高雄 has really good eats and I love fresh seafood.

 

Geiko -- Thanks for your comments. Yes, I tried 金萱 for the first time on this trip and found it very tasty. Not sure I've had anything like it before.

 

What I understood from reading before the trip is that lots of Taiwan's teas were originally brought over from Fujian and then subtly changed and adapted to better suit the land and the climate. I didn't run into anything similar to 太平猴魁。It has such a distinctive leaf shape. Agree with you about the 黄山毛峰。It is one of my favorites too.

 

I did come across a very nice green tea that was made in the style of 西湖龙井  Xihu Longjing, with the same flat leaves. But it cost more than a good grade of original Longjing and I didn't buy any. Guess I might if I lived there.

[Kamille]

I've read that Kaohsiung has really good food.

 

That would be Tainan. But that's provided you like sweet food. That's like the only reason that would make me regret leaving Taipei: Southerners eat very sweet 

[abcdefg]

Then Tainan and Kaohsiung are both on my short list for next time!

 

Kunming food is pretty spicy and I found some of the Taiwan flavors kind of bland. Maybe the sweet southern style will be nice change.

[Balthazar]

Great post as usual! Looks like a wonderful trip. I've only visited Taiwan once, and only Taipei, so save for Maokong I wasn't able to explore the amazing tea producing areas of the island.. Hopefully next time.

[realmayo]

Nice photos & write-up! To my surprise I'm starting to prefer oolong over puerh. And in fact 30-year old oolong does resemble puerh in lots of ways. But of course I'm not normally drinking very old stuff. Came back with a couple of kilos of oolong from Taiwan this summer and that's basically all I've been drinking since I came back.

 

Edit: funnily enough it happens to be puerh today though!

[Chris Two Times]

Nice work, abcdefg!

 

I like that picture, realmayo.

 

Now I want to go drink some tea. I'll be in my office all day today with a cuppa.

 

Warm regards,

Chris Two Times

[abcdefg]

Realmayo -- I'm impressed. Looks like a righteous set up for making a good cup of Pu'er tea.

 

Wish I had pushed harder and had a chance to try some 30-year old Oolong. Maybe that 5-year old tea I tried would be better after a couple more decades. What kinds of Oolong did you mostly bring back from your trip?

 

Balthazar -- Isn't Maokong where the Gondola is? Pretty sure that area is where 文山包种 originates. I saw the traditional brown paper wrapping process in a tea museum. If I understood right, that's where that tea gets its name, "the wrapped kind."

 

One of the problems with a compressed trip like this with lots of quick stops is that after a while things kind of run together in my mind despite snapshots and a notebook.

[abcdefg]

Thanks, Chris. Just now saw your post.

 

In your office do you use the "Grandpa method?"

 

http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/48661-dian-hong-%E6%BB%87%E7%BA%A2%E8%8C%B6-yunnans-simplest-tea/

(Posts #3 and #7)