Michelle Butler Hallett Send Message

1.5 tsp for 250mL water @85C, steeped four minutes, drunk bare. (I prefer many oolongs at 90C, but I followed the packet instructions)

I am greedy with oolong and steep it Western style. I don’t often rinse it, either.

So the only place left in my little city for tea is DavidsTea, and I notice both their tea quality seems to be going down over the last year. For example, they’ve gone to a flavoured oolong for their Quangzhou Oolong, adding milk flavour to oolong leaves instead of using the real thing (and you can totally tell), and heaping the artificial flavours into the Long Life Oolong (what once smelled f peaches now smells of apple cider vinegar, just NASTY). Their tieguanyin, or Tie Kwan Yin as they transliterate it, surely, I thought, must still be okay.

It is. Okay. An acceptable tieguanyin but nothing special.

“Oolong tea from Nantou, Taiwan,” reads the package, At least there’s no “natural” flavours added.

The tea clerk corrected my pronunciation of tieguanyin when I asked for some. Even if I was wrong, and I’m pretty sure I wasn’t, I’m not sure that saying “Oh, you mean the tye-kwaahn-yeen?” is the best way to handle the question.