04 November 2008

A complete set - looking at unfurled oolong tea leaves

When people say that a proper oolong should have 2 or 3 leaves and a bud, what do they mean and what should it look like?

For an oolong tea, specifically a high mountain ooong tea, the tea bud is basically the baby leaf.  In Chinese, it's called the "xin" or heart.  For white teas, the bud is very light/white colored, often with "fuzz" on it.  Green tea buds may or may not have the fuzz; Bi Luo Chun's buds do.

Below is an example of an oolong that has what I refer to as the complete set.  In the picture below, the leaves are from a Taiwanese Lishan high mountain tea.


Due to the delicate nature of the bud, it sometimes gets torn off or falls off during the drying, rolling or roasting process.  It may also come off during the brewing process. 

The picture below shows an open leaf set from an Alishan high mountain oolong that is missing its bud leaf.  It otherwise has the 2 or 3 leaves, nice color, good leaf shape & texture and the characteristics of a quality high mountain oolong. 
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Below is a picture of a lower-grade high-mountain Chin Shin (or Qingxin) oolong varietal from my tea collection that was grown in SE Asia.  Notice the irregularity of the leaf shape, holes in the leaf, the missing leaves and the large stem.  Per the packaging, this tea was produced in the Fall/Winter of 2007.
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Unlike many other blogs out there, my pictures are simple and non-artistic, but they illustrate my point.  A tea friend, Brian Glanz, has excellent pictures of, well, pretty much everything, on his site.  Do check him out here:
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Brian's wife, Mohini, has a cool site called Mango Power Girl that has good recipes and beautiful food pictures.
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As I've mentioned before, not all oolongs have the leaf set I've described.  Traditional Tieguanyin, for example, may not.  It is roasted fairly heavily and handled pretty roughly and the leaves tend to be separated.  Baozhong is another example - the tea isn't even rolled into a ball like many oolongs. 

2 comments:

  1. Rich - We had some of the best tea tasting moments with you guys the other evening. We're long overdue for a visit. Thanks for linking to us. We will definitely stop by soon, and hopefully bring some friends! By the way, are you on twitter?

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  2. Hey! You sure are, come on over sometime! I'm usually only there on Weds or Thurs, but ping me if you intend to go out so I can bring some of my reserve stuff. I spent a lot of time in Asia this winter sourcing the good stuff.

    Sorry, no twitter. I'm not used to the info overload of that site. I'm on facebook, though.

    Take care

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