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the teas do provide an exquisite example of the more traditional, darker style of oolong. After the leaves are harvested, they are twisted, not balled. Unlike other twisted oolongs like Wenshan BaoZhong (page 79), Da Hong Pao is allowed to oxidize much longer. The darker tea tastes of more heavily cooked sugars and fruits like molasses and roasted peaches. Last, the tea is fired quite heavily, just as all oolongs were until very recently. Though the heavy charcoal firing has lost its usefulness as a tea preservative, Da Hong Pao drinkers prefer its taste, so the practice continues. The best teas retain their fruit flavors through the smoke.

FORMOSA OOLONG

Brisk, nutty, and somewhat fruity, Formosa Oolong offers a history lesson as much as it helps cultivate your oolong palate. The tea was once considered the Champagne of teas and the standard for oolongs in the United States. In the last two decades, other lighter and more aromatic oolongs have outpaced it so that today it is made by only a handful of Taiwanese tea makers. My father included Formosa Oolong among the half dozen teas he sold when he first entered the tea business in 1970. Now we have to order it custom-made. We use it mostly as a base in our Earl Grey tea (page 171) and other blends that call for a mild, dark oolong.

In the fifteenth century when they first came upon the island, the Portuguese named Taiwan Formosa, or “Beautiful Island.” In the tea world, Formosa and Taiwan remain interchangeable, just like Ceylon and Sri Lanka (see “Ceylon Black Teas,” page 153). Formosa Oolong tea was invented in the mid-nineteenth century by a British entrepreneur named John Dodd. If they speak no other English, Taiwanese tea men can pronounce the name “John Dodd” flawlessly. They consider Dodd a national hero for first bringing the island’s teas to the world stage. In 1865, Dodd saw that the world tea market was about to change dramatically. China supplied almost all the tea in the world. What Dodd knew (and the Chinese did not) was that the British were preparing, on a mass scale, to grow their own Indian tea (see “British Legacy Black Teas,” page 121). Dodd shrewdly came up with a tea that he thought might compete with both the Chinese and Indian alternatives. Working in Taiwan, he developed and marketed a dark oolong under the name “Formosa Oolong.” The tea traveled well yet was lighter, fruitier, and more flavorful than the heavily fired black teas then on the market. Formosa became such a hit in both Europe and the United States that it remained one of the world’s favorite teas well into the twentieth century. Its popularity grew both in the United States and in Great Britain until the Japanese occupation of Taiwan all but ended production. After World War II, U.S. and British demand increased again, but after China reopened in the 1970s, demand fell off because of superior teas available from both China and Taiwan.

This tea is the only oolong in this chapter that is harvested mechanically—a process becoming increasingly common in tea as the cost of labor rises. The tea is bruised while withering to start the oxidation, twisted in a rolling machine, then left to brown to about 75 percent of the extent of pure black tea. Formosa Oolong is finished in an oven, not over charcoal, which accounts for its clean flavors. I recommend seeking this tea out, not only for its charming, gentle flavors, but also for a lesson in how quickly and thoroughly the tea world can change.

YELLOW TEAS

1. Jun Shan Yin Zhen

2. Meng Ding Huang Ya

3. Huo Shan Huang Ya

Yellow teas offer the best of four worlds: They have the big sweet buds of white teas, the gentle vegetal flavor of green teas, the bright and changing aromas of oolongs, and the mild sweetness and soft astringent bite of the finest Chinese black teas.

The only trouble is, they are exceedingly hard to find. Yellow teas are a small but growing subset of the tea world: Only a very small quantity is made, and only a tiny portion has been available in the West (and only for the last ten years