A new type of dark red tea...
We visit a friend I made in 2008, a brother from a tea farming family near Jinggu who runs the family shop in Simao. When we walk in, three older women from Tsingdao are drinking a new local Oolong tea that tastes remarkably like a tieguanyin. Its aroma may not be as bright but the texture of the liquor is smoother and deep. This tea is the product of a young woman, who has learned how to make oolong tea from a Taiwanese teacher who recently held a seminar in Kunming. So not only have we found decent Yunnan White and Bud and Leaf white tea, but now Yunnan is also making oolong. She tells me that the tea tree that makes this Yunnan oolong they have been importing from Thailand for the last ten years. He mentions that the Fujianese have refused to teach how to make their tea because they claim it requires the tieguanyin tea tree, which is expensive and upon transplanting usually dies in Yunnan. The Taiwanese themselves copied oolong tea making from Fujian, so they readily agree that any tea tree can be cured into any type of tea. He gave me enough of his oolong to include two bags in each of our investors' shipments as a curiosity. I suspect he steeped his tea in much cooler water than one would generally use for a tieguanyin.
The Chinese tea economy is certainly headed for upheaval as knowledge that all types of tea can be made from all types of tea trees spreads. My friend hears us mention the minty Zi3Juan1 tea, which we had not tried before, either, and after a lecture on its genesis at a local tea studies institute, we got to see terraced hills circling low buildings or green houses. Each step of the way on flagstone paths, with unique tea trees collected from Yunnan, a bright yellow tree and a dark leaved, red and spicey one the internet claims is from the Nannuo Mountains, but we are told it is the result of a hybrid experiment. There are the white tea trees, the controversial zijuan, and some we have not heard of. It is a beautiful set of hills, the top of is a plateau park which locals stroll up the mountain to look off of. One isn't allowed to drive up and along the ridge where areas experiment with computerized watering systems that measure rainfall and UV bug catchers. Organic experiments are everywhere, one of which uses new species created and propagated and then sold to farms for their virtues, like big buds for growing white tea, sweeter, harrier leaves for bai mu dan. Dividing bragging from fact is often not easy, and there are competing theories as to the origins of Yunnan's new White and Oolong teas. My friend shows us a yellow-leaf tea variety, Huang2Guan4, which the institute is still testing. He says this tea should come to market in a year or two. See if it doesn't appear in Beijing by 2015, he says.
What would you be most interested in knowing when you tried this tea?
