All the Tea in China(town) UPDATE

[Paul H]

Gary Soup helpfully provided a pointer to a tea shop I had missed:

Natural Tea Shop
1199 Stockton Street (Storefront is actually on Pacific)
San Francisco, CA 94133
Phone: [phone]

This is the smallest of the five shops that I visited, but it has a good representation of green, oolong, red, and black teas. It's a friendly sort of place; the woman sitting next to me was originally from mainland china, but now lives in Concord. She stops by for some tea and a chat in Chinese every trip she makes to Chinatown. I tried two interesting teas here that were new to me: "Blue Tea" and "One-Leaf Bitter Tea." The "Blue Tea" was had very thin thread-like leaves and tasted a bit smokey with hints of eucalyptus. The "One-Leaf" tea is a herbal tea which may also be known as "Kuding Pearl Tea-Jin Liu Tuan" or "Golden Willow Dumpling". It produces a green liquor which is exquisitely bitter. The hostess called it "Chinese Espresso." This is a friendly place, but it doesn’t seem to be a place to learn much, as it is so small with a single hostess. I bought some tea and the bag said "Vital Leaf Tea" on it, so perhaps there is some common ownership between this shop and the Vital Tea shop on Grant.

P.S. Anyone have any more insight on what they were calling "Blue Tea?"

Link: http://www.chowhound.com/topics/show/...

[Gary Soup]

Blue Tea is another term for Oolong Tea, and also might refer to a particular varietal. In Chinese, it's "Qing Cha." "Qing" can be translated either as "blue" or "green". Green tea, however, is always "lu cha" (using a different word for green). "Blue" tea therefore may just refer to a different shade of green tea.

Is that confusing enough?

Link: http://eatingchinese.org

[Paul H]

"Is that confusing enough?"

Indeed it is. I am learning that there are many correct answers to questions about Chinese culture and not all of them are correct. The folks at Natural Tea Shop insisted that Da Hung Pao was not an oolong tea. But, it certainly seems an oolong tea to me. I guess I'll have to go get more details on this particular "blue" tea.

[Limster]

Do you know what kind of tea they refered Da Hong Pao as? I always thought of it as a oolong style tea myself, and count it as one of my favourites, but perhaps these tea guys know better.

[Peter]

Hi all,

I've been following this thread and related tea threads and wanted to clarify several things. (full disclosure: i manage red blossom tea company mentioned in an earlier thread)

A fresh tea leaf keeps its shape from water pressure on its cell walls. When a leaf is picked and left to wilt, the resulting water loss collapses the cell wall, releasing enzymes which begin to oxidize the leaf. In green teas, these enzymes are deactivated with heat (usually through roasting) before they have had a chance to take affect. In black teas (or red teas in traditional chinese parlance), enzymatic oxidation is allowed to run its full course.

We define an oolong tea as any tea that is partially oxidized...somewhere on the spectrum between a green and a black tea. Oolongs, therefore run the gamut between very lightly oxidized types (e.g., high mountain oolongs from taiwan, 'jade' tiekuanyins from fujian) to more heavily oxidized (and roasted) oolongs from the Wuyi Mountains.

Da Hong Pao is a specific variety of tea leaf that comes from the Wuyi Mountains. It is a fairly well-oxidized oolong. It is also one of the rarest and one of the most expensive. Unfortunately, the lore and marketing hype surrounding this tea makes finding it on the market very difficult. None of the tea available on the open market are 'true' da hong pao (annual production of the 'true' da hong pao is only several kilos a year, and is auctioned-off for astronomical prices (several hundreds of thousands of dollars)).

What is available on the market are the second generation leaves - harvested from the same variety of plant, but not grown wild in the original location. Take care when you're searching for this tea, however, many dealers either knowingly sell more common Wuyi oolongs as Da Hong Pao (thereby commanding a higher price) or were unwittingly sold common Wuyi oolongs by suppliers who tell them it is Da Hong Pao. In either case, ask the right questions, and if the answers seem suspect, go elsewhere.

* I have never come across anything called blue tea, except what has already been discussed on this board. In our two decades in the business, we have not come across a tea by that name either, nor have my network of tea contacts in both China and Taiwan (i sent inquiries out last week) ever heard of blue tea. I suspect it is a marketing term and may well be a tea of another name that has gotten "re-branded".

I hope this was helpful. Feel free to ping me directly with questions via email.

~p

[Gary Soup]

AFAIK, it is an Oolong tea from Wuyi Mountain. It's the one sometimes billed as "Monkey-picked" tea, a.k.a. "Red Robe Tea."

[Peter]

Yes, you're right. The lighter oolongs are often called blue-green tea in Europe.

[Cloudwayfarer]

Paul I hope i can give it to you straight
My tea credentials will become apparent after your done reading.
The Blue tea (Lan cha), sometimes called Lan Ren (Blue Person) referred to in the "Natural" tea shop is an "wulong" dusted with ginseng and licorice.
But as Gary pointed out they might have also been referring to Qing 青 (a blue green color similar to jade or moss) tea, which is the broad category for "wulongs" based on the leaf color and color of the brew (jade color) but it is not just another name for wulong.
The truth is though that wulong is a tea tree varietal in and unto itself and because of its popularity all Qing Cha (Jade color teas) became collectively known as wulong, a misnomer. That why some Chinese or anyone who knows a bit about tea will say Da Hong Pao is not an wulong, meaning not of the wulong plant varietal but yes in the Qing (Jade color) category commonly known as wulong. This is the same for the famed Tieh Guan Yin, Huang Dan, etc. Some plants are hybrids of the wulong varietal, such as Dong Ding, or Jin Xuan, some are subvarietals of the master wulong plant, classic wulong subvarietals are Ben Shan, Mao Xie, Huang Jin Gui. A clear indicator of a varietal is the leaf and the taste. If you try to different teas but they have a very similar core flavor they could be relatives.. make sense? read it a few times might help.

As far as the "Natural" tea shops affiliated with "vital", i'm not so sure how natural the teas are. Tea is inherently healthy but if its not grown in strict organic accordance can be a carrier for all kind of pesticides and heavy metals. Signs of this will be headaches after drinking, sore throat, runny nose and nausea
get off the computer and drink some outdoor tea its spring out

Cloudwayfarer from Five Mountains Tea Assoc.