Could you help identify this tea please?
I was perusing my local Whole Foods bulk tea section today to pick up some cheap samples of a few teas that I needed to work on Gongfu brewing styles with.
I noticed this tea and thought… “Hey, why not?” It’s cheap enough to sample these things when you can spoon out just as much as you need, and the smell was nice enough, but here is the dilemma:
http://www.republicoftea.com/wuyi-oolong-full-leaf/p/V00692/
“Pure Silver- Tip Formosan Oolong leaves made from the WuYi tea varietal.” is how this tea is described.
So… despite the main name of the tea is “Wuyi Oolong”, I guess this is not actually a Wuyi oolong in the sense that most of us would mean when we refer to a Wuyi oolong/yancha. I guess it is a Formosa oolong (a type of Taiwanese oolong) but grown from one of the Wuyi varietals? Correct me if I’m wrong, but there are several wuyi varietals, right? Da Hong Pao, Shui Xian, Bai Ji Guan, Tie Luo Han (etc)… these are all varietals right? If so, I wonder which one was used.
What a doozy of a descriptor they’ve given. I can’t make heads nor tails of it.
Should I steep this like a Wuyi oolong or more like a Baozhong?
I think what they’re saying is that its a Taiwanese oolong made from a Wuyi varietal bush. It looks like it’s processed bai hao/oriental beauty style more than a yancha. It’s definitely confusing (perhaps purposefully?) that they call it a “Wuyi Oolong.”
The different types of Wuyi oolong all have a specific varietal, but are also (perhaps more) differentiated by the processing techniques.
I would brew it similar to this tea
Having had that tea, it tastes kinda like an ‘average’ Oriental Beauty, so I agree with tperez’s assessment :)
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