Aged Oolongs?
Aged oolongs are something I rarely hear about and I just recently even found out existed. I’m starting to see them pop up more and more on online tea shops when I browse and it’s getting me curious.
Are they aged in a similar way to pu-erh and do they exhibit similar flavor characteristics? I imagine they might be a little more complex then a lot of pu-erh. Anybody have any experience with these?
Kwinter-We sell a fantastic aged oolong as well as a few puerhs. Aged oolongs are quite different than puerhs and typically aren’t as earthy. The aged oolong that we sell has notes of honeysuckle, bark, and grass and is sweet.
Here is an article that I think might be of interest to you: http://www.tching.com/2012/02/aged-oolong-tea/
Thanks. :) I’ve been planning to make an order from you for some time now, I’m just on a tight budget so I’m pretty much limited to buying from one or two vendors a month. There’s too much great tea out there!
You’re welcome! Well, if you end up making a purchase, let us know that you are Kwinter from Steepster and we will be sure to throw in some extra samples for you. :)
Butiki Teas is worth every cent :D the only oolong I’ve tried of hers so far is Peach Oolong but it was really good (when I did it right) sadly I’m out now but my other order will be here in the near future. With it will be some more oolongs :D
I think my tea money for next month is going to Butiki, I just keep hearing awesome things.
So glad you are hearing awesome things about us. Let us know if you decide to purchase something and we can add some extra samples for you. :)
I really enjoyed Jteas aged oolongs. In particular, the 1979 Aged Beauty and Dong Ding 1982 are very fine, in my opinion. The 1979 Aged Beauty has interesting notes of bell peppers while the 82 Dong Ding has subtle notes of lychee.
I just happened to try a few aged oolongs and was looking into discussion here to compare notes. There’s always going through reviews instead, but that’s more to do, and those could be inconsistent, and I wouldn’t be trying the same teas. I’ll just say a little about what I’ve encountered, and mention where I wrote full reviews (I write a blog about tea). For what it’s worth another tea friend said his experience is that aged oolongs go to plum and floral taste range (surely related to Taiwanese versions), not exactly my experience with three of them, but reasonably close for one.
40 year old Chinese Tie Kuan Yin, from a Bangkok, Chinatown tea shop: this tasted like coffee. It’s hard to go much further, although it was earthy and mineral intensive, structured, complex, just a little bitter, and a bit strange in general. Maybe people could acquire such a preference.
30 year old Dong Ding (from Hojo teas in Malaysia): this tasted really musty to me, on first tasting, for a few infusions. Then it cleaned up, and was interesting, with lots going on in the earthy flavors range, with complexity that kept transitioning. This was less bizarre but not exactly a pleasant tea, drinkable after several infusions, but not a tea I’d even consider buying at the price offered, or half that, or maybe at all.
21 year old Thai Chin Shin (from Tea Side in Thailand): nice! complex tastes in an earthy wood / leather range, some fruit and spice (date and raisin range), decent sweetness and an interesting feel, a tea that changed a lot over infusions. Maybe I wouldn’t make a habit of seeking out old oolongs based on this tea but I did order some immediately, to keep trying it.
http://teaintheancientworld.blogspot.com/2016/07/trying-40-year-old-tie-kuan-yin-at-jip.html
http://teaintheancientworld.blogspot.com/2016/07/comparing-aged-teas-21-and-30-year-old.html
I looked up Hojo Tea. The odd thing about their website is they list a lot of teas but I don’t see any prices? Very strange.
There is a price list on the site, it’s just not easy to find, it takes some clicking around, here: http://hojotea.com/img/tealineup10.pdf
It’s in Japanese Yen (their shops are in Malaysia and Japan, but they do sell online). I won’t sugar coat it; the pricing is up there, eye-watering, double what one would normally see for comparable teas. To some degree tea quality might account for that but they also simply aren’t using a value-oriented marketing approach; it’s a physical store brand, selling teas that aren’t easy to find in those two markets. Japanese shops are a lot more open to foreign teas than one would expect (this based on limited exposure; I was in Japan on vacation April of last year, but a little looking around doesn’t make me an expert), but imported teas can cost more anywhere since it adds that step and costs. Good tea isn’t as inexpensive as one might expect in China anyway; the pricing would be about the same as in any US city, or here in Thailand, except that on the lower quality level good deals would be out there, where the supply is larger.
I didn’t ask what that 40 year old tea I tried would go for in the Bangkok shop (probably should have, just for reference) but given supply is virtually non-existent pricing could be a bit arbitrary. The Hojo tea was $76 for 70 grams (7980 Japanese Yen); getting up there for a tea that tasted like really musty for the first three infusions, but to be fair, ok and interesting from there. I won’t say what the Tea Side version was going for since he was just about to update it except to mention it was less than half that, for a much better tea, in my opinion. It’s rare that tea pricing seems too low to me but this was an example of that. The tea was too good and too unique to be selling for normal-range tea pricing like that.
I agree with you on tea-side’s aged chin shin and I immediately bought 150g of it. Exceptional value! Thanks for letting us know about Tea-Side over on TeaChat.
Sure! Did you try their Thai hei cha? I’m not the best person to compare it to pu’er but the samples I liked the most seemed nice. That Thai OB is really something too, the loose version, not the one prepared as a rolled tea, but I’ve seen it selling elsewhere too (Dong Fang Mei Ren versus Gui Fei, isn’t it? I’m lazy to look it up).
Haven’t tried their hei cha, but I have a bunch of samples to get through from them. I like OB, but buy mine in Taipei for very fair prices (and I have an exceptional grade in a sealed government container). I have a sample of his OB, though, and will give it a whirl when I get to it! :)
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