Posts Tagged ‘oolong tea’
September 24, 2011 | 
Author I did a Dong Ding Oolong tasting today using tea imported and packaged by The Tea Farm in Honolulu. Their information on the tea states, “Dong Ding Oolong tea, otherwise known as cold summit oolong, is a high quality oolong tea. Its flowery aroma when brewed and smooth taste is a signature of its quality. Once you try this tea, you will be hooked!”
The tea comes gunpowder style (rolled into pellets). While brewing I did notice the flowery aroma, and the tea was certainly smooth. It’s the greenest oolong I’ve had and brews into a pale greenish yellow liquor. It tastes like a fine green tea, but it has very little bitterness, even on a fairly long steep. The first cup was so mild I didn’t think it would work for multiple infusions, but I was very wrong. The second infusion actually yielded a stronger cup, which stands to reason when you see that the large leaves, often two or three leaves attached by stem, are obviously rolled quite tight and need time to open and develop flavor. The third and fourth infusions were also tasty.
Dong Ding Oolong
Am I hooked? Let’s just say that I will continue, proudly, to offer Dong Ding at my tea store.
Roland at Tea & Treasure
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Both green tea and black tea come from the same plant, camelia sinensis, or Chinese camelia. If the buds and youngest leaves were not always picked to produce tea, the bush would, like ornamental camelias, flower. But the buds and the first two leaves, at least, are always picked for tea, and what follows is how the bitter leaves are converted to brew the teas that we know and love.
To produce green tea, the leaves are first steamed or pan fired in order to have enzymes destroyed by the heat and therefore to prevent any enzymatic reaction. Next the leaves are crushed, sometimes broken or rolled, and then dried. What determines the different types of green tea are where they’re grown, how the bush is treated prior to plucking, what combination of buds and leaves is used, and how the leaves are crushed, broken, and/or rolled.
To produce black tea, the leaves are withered to reduce moisture, then they’re rolled to macerate and break them, and then they’re left alone for the enzymatic reaction to occur which has become known as “fermentation” even though it does not involve external micro-organisms and no alcohol is produced. What actually happens is that the enzymes react to convert catechins, the major component of green tea leaves, into theaflavins and thearubigins, compounds that are responsible for the flavor and character of black tea. These compounds (catechins, theaflavins, and thearubigins) are all polyphenols, and these are what give tea, both green and black, its incredible anti-oxidant capacity. Only when the enzymatic reaction is complete does black tea undergo the drying process.
Now we are in a position to better understand the production of Oolong teas, which are known as “semi-fermented”. These teas start out being treated just like black tea but the enzymatic reaction is cut short by heating the tea. Oolongs have different characteristics depending on exactly when the enzymatic reaction is stopped; thus, some oolongs are closer to green tea while others are closer to black tea. What is common to all oolongs is that they retain some of the characteristics of green tea while taking on some of the characteristics of black tea.
I culled much of the information on the processing of tea presented here from information made available by the Tea Research Institute of Sri Lanka. Whichever type of tea you prefer, it’s healthy!
Roland Petrov