My Fondness For Traditional Hong Kong Oolong

I enjoy drinking Hong Kong traditional oolong.  This is an acquired taste.  Some of these oolong have some age in them and most of these tea are highly roasted.  

Here 'highly roasted' is literally super high roast.  The Tie Guan Yin in the 2nd pix sold by Fukien Tea is roasted close to 40 hours.  There is a delightful caramel aroma and taste in the tea.  Addictive......and  now there are many faithful followers of this tea from Japan, Korea and recently from Russia (I happened to be at the shop when 2 Russians walked in to ask and purchase this tea).  These tea drinkers, I was told, would turn up regularly (at least once a year) at the shop buying few packets to bring home   

The Tie Lo Han, in the 1st pix, sold by Cheung Hing is similarly high roasted.   There are old plum notes in the tea that lingers in the mouth throughout the tea session. Holding a sip of this tea in the mouth, breathing in through the mouth and out through the nose makes the aroma of the tea stays within you for a nice few minutes. I enjoy this tea and would brew it at least once a week.

The present prices for high mountain Taiwanese tea and Wuyi mountain oolong are pretty intimidating to many tea tea drinkers (myself included).   I prefer my oolong to have some age and a higher degree of roast.  These inexpensive high roast oolong from Hong Kong makes me happy every time I have a sip of the tea.

I am currently exploring more 'older' tea shops and trying and sampling more tea, which I look forward to introduce to my readers.  

I feel extremely thirsty.  

Vietnam Oolong

Happy New Year 2019.

Time literally flies.  I looked at my very 1st blog post 10 years ago and it was about my first trip to Taiwan, staying a few days in Alishan and living with a family that owned a few plots of land specially growing Alishan oolong.  It was an eye opener watching within 24 hours the tea process from harvesting the tea in the early morning, drying the tea in the afternoon and processing the tea late till the next morning.  

I also had the opportunity  to 'check out' the tea scene in Taipei visiting the tea shops there.  While sampling the local teas there, a teashop owner told me to be careful when I buy Taiwanese oolong as he was aware that some of the Taiwanese oolong tea sold had a mix of Vietnamese oolong.  Vietnam oolong was much cheaper and could 'passed off' as local oolong. I did not think much of this information.  

Wind forward to April 2108.  I am in Taipei again at the teashops drinking and sampling local oolongs.  A sales staff there told me their tea was '100%' Taiwanese oolong.  She mentioned that there were some Taiwanese oolong sold in the city that were not 'pure'.

I was in Vietnam last month and I managed to buy a packet of Vietnam oolong. I did not visit any tea shop there and I only manage to buy a 'top supermarket grade' oolong there.  I am sure there were better grades than the packet I bought.

To 'pass off' as Taiwanese oolong, a tea must, in terms of aroma and taste, have certain similarities to make the grade.  I took this tea to a my local tea drinking group and also had a few sessions of this tea by myself.  

This tea could last about 5 infusions.  There is good aroma and taste especially in the initial infusions.  Fragrant with the signature hint of 'egg white' taste in the tea.  This tea did not perform well later infusions weakening badly from the 4th infusion.  

In my opinion, a higher grade of Vietnamese oolong could be quite impressive.  That is an ideal excuse to make another trip to Vietnam and spend time looking at the oolong there.  I like the food.  And the egg coffee there is super yummy.