The Harney & Sons Guide to Tea - Michael Harney [23]
Oolongs bridge the divide between green and black teas. The process that turns teas black is called “oxidation”; I’ve explained its particulars in an appendix on the manufacture of tea entitled “From Tree to Tea” (page 193). Suffice to say, if green teas are not oxidized at all, and black teas are 100 percent oxidized, oolongs range from 10 to 75 percent.
To carry you from the green teas of the previous chapter to the Chinese black teas to come, I have arranged these oolongs according to their oxidation levels. We’ll start with Wenshan BaoZhong, the lightest oolong, closest to a green tea. We’ll end with Formosa Oolong, the darkest and nearest to black tea. Of the nine teas in this chapter, the first four teas, with their lighter levels of oxidation, have primarily citrus and floral flavors like lemon and gardenia. The last and darker five taste of stone fruits such as apricot and peach.
Oolongs likely first appeared within the last three to four hundred years in China’s Fujian province, in the Wuyi Mountains. Presumably frustrated with the quality of their green teas, tea makers there found something to catch the attention of the emperor’s tribute board when they decided not to fix their green teas but to let them wither and darken to black tea. Later, they figured out how to halt the oxidation by degrees, making the teas ever lighter in color. As you will taste, the results were magical. As this new tea’s reputation spread, so too did its growing techniques. Oolong making spread south to the mountains in Guangdong province. Oolong makers from Fujian also began immigrating to Taiwan. (Taiwan lies directly across the Taiwan Strait from Fujian, and most of its residents speak the same Fujian dialect of Chinese.) Today, the best oolongs still come from China and Taiwan.
Oolongs have become truly exquisite in just the last twenty years. The same factors that have upturned the rest of the tea world have transformed these teas: vacuum packaging, air transport, and the reopening of the People’s Republic of China to international trade in the 1970s. When the Communist country was under embargo in the 1950s and 1960s, Taiwanese tea makers made their fortunes producing ersatz versions of Lung Ching, Gunpowder, Ti Guan Yin, and other Mainland Chinese tea classics. When the embargo was lifted, cheaper and better versions suddenly became available from China itself. The Taiwanese were forced to grow something else. Luckily for us, they chose to grow oolongs. Capitalizing on the benefits of vacuum packaging and air shipping, they did away with the heavy firings once required to preserve and transport teas, creating oolongs of terrific lightness and nuance. They achieved such success that in just the last several years, a growing number of private Mainland Chinese tea makers have copied them, lightening and improving their oolongs in turn. As a result, today we have some of the freshest, most remarkable oolongs ever available. Five of the oolongs in this chapter come from Taiwan, and four come from China.
Since their flavors can be so complex, I suggest you drink oolongs later in the day, when you are awake enough to observe them. Then keep drinking them: Unlike most teas, oolongs can actually improve with multiple brewings. Both the Chinese and the Taiwanese like to drink oolongs gong fu style, brewing the tea in several rounds, using a small clay pot, then pouring the tea out into tiny ceramic cups and sipping it with six or seven friends.
To brew an oolong gong fu style, fill a small teapot with about 1½ to 2 table-spoons of tea. Rinse the leaves with lukewarm water, then brew them for 1 minute. Pour out the tea into small cups, then start a fresh pot with the same leaves while you drink the first round. Brew each subsequent pot for an additional 30 seconds. The flavors and aromas will continue to evolve through five to seven rounds before fading. If you do not have a group of friends available, all of these oolongs still taste marvelous brewed even just once.
WENSHAN BAOZHONG Paper-Wrapped Oolong
As the