The Harney & Sons Guide to Tea - Michael Harney [26]
Ti Guan Yin is one of the few teas said to be divinely inspired. Its creation myth holds that a farmer was renovating a temple to the Buddhist deity Guan Yin, a female bodhisattva of compassion, when her iron statue came to life. To thank him for cleaning her temple, she told him his fortune would be found in the fields right outside. There the farmer found a tea bush and named the tea he made with it after her.
Ti Guan Yin is typically harvested from middle to late May, when the leaves are more mature and fuller-sized than green tea leaves. After harvesting, the leaves are withered in the sun for thirty minutes, then gently agitated on a tarp in order to bruise them slightly. Then the tea is brought indoors to continue withering for an additional six hours. While originally a twisted oolong, these days Ti Guan Yin leaves are rolled into loose balls (though rolled less tightly than Taiwanese high-mountain oolongs, which is why when you steep the tea, the wet leaves unroll more quickly). Until recently, most Ti Guan Yins were finished in charcoal-heated baskets to give the tea a strong baked flavor. The tea makers of Fujian have learned from Taiwanese counterparts and adopted their lighter firings. Now the best Ti Guan Yins are fired in an electric oven; as a result, the teas are much lighter and more aromatic.
OSMANTHUS
Along our spectrum of oolongs, Osmanthus is the first without the floral aromas of the lighter, greener, and more “jasmonate” oolongs, the first to offer the apricot, peach, and roasted carrot flavors typical of more oxidized, darker teas. Unlike oolongs to follow, however, this one gets those flavors not from the tea, but from a flower.
A native to China, the osmanthus flower is apricot-scented with a fetching yellow orange hue. It blooms in bunches like little bouquets at the ends of its tree’s branches. For centuries, the Chinese have dried the pretty flowers and used them to improve the flavors of otherwise mediocre teas. Case in point: The oolong in this tea is a lesser variety from the same region in Fujian province that makes Ti Guan Yin. While some of the tea’s apricot flavors come from the tea leaves, most come from the slender strands of dried osmanthus blossoms. The pairing of the tea and blossoms is ingenious, not just as a flavor enhancer: Scientists have since shown that teas oxidized 40 percent or more, like this oolong, develop the same carotenoid aromatic compounds, called “ionones” and “damascones,” that form the classic apricot and cooked peach flavors in the fruits and in the osmanthus flowers. Osmanthus is a delightful, muted dark oolong, lovely for everyday drinking.
FENGHUANG SHUIXIAN Dragon Phoenix
Fenghuang ShuiXian (pronounced “Shooey-Shyan”; sometimes written as Dancong) is a worthwhile oolong to know if only because no other oolong will remind you of a Bellini. Unlike the preceding Osmanthus, which gleans much of its fruit flavors from a flower additive, Fenghuang ShuiXian bubbles with astonishing peach flavors all its own.
South of Fujian, in China’s Guangdong province, the small mountain town of Fenghuang has been making teas for the city of Chaozhou for centuries. The hotter weather in the rest of southern Guangdong province is not conducive to great teas, but Fenghuang enjoys a cool mountain climate. Just as the Buddhist temples of Kyoto developed a tea culture from the green teas of the neighboring Uji region, Chaozhou has a strong Buddhist presence and a corresponding tea culture. Three Buddhist temples still stand there, as do ancient tea shops built to supply them.
Fenghuang has been making tea for centuries,