Making rock oolong (Wuyi Yancha): an interview with Cindy Chen

originally posted as:  http://www.tching.com/2015/12/making-rock-oolong-an-interview-with-cindy-chen/

The following relates to asking an online tea friend questions about tea, Cindy Chen.  She lives in Wuyishan, the village area beside the mountains where amazing Wuyi Yancha / rock oolongs are grown and produced.  She makes this tea; it’s her family’s business.  And what a business it is: Cindy Chen’s family just won two different awards for best Wuyi Yancha teas produced in one of the main Wuyishan competitions recently. Their Rou Gui was judged 1st place, and Shui Xian 2nd place, among over 100 local producers.

Actually Wuyishan is the city, and she live in the Tian Xin Yancha village, but there are complications related to tea growing areas versus where people live and how cities and villages are designated, perhaps varying with how terms for districts and counties are used in other countries.  I've written about a few of her teas in my blog earlier this year, a Rou Gui, a Da Hong Pao, and a Shui Xian.

I've been drinking Wuyi Yancha teas for awhile but to be honest these teas are probably better than I can fully appreciate with my current sensitivity to the other aspects, so I have to make due with enjoying them to my current potential.  A follow-up review of a Da Hong Pao will say more about the more subtle and interesting aspects of these teas beyond taste components, some of which Cindy goes into here.

Cindy is very kind but of course there is a limit to how many questions she could answer, so this is just intended as discussion of some interesting points, which really leads to a lot of other questions.

Cindy, making tea

Interview with a tea grower about making Wuyi Yancha:

The content is edited slightly for verb tenses and such but it's amazing that she really can write like this in English.  She starts with a little about the area and teas in general:

The reason why the rock tea from Wuyi Zheng Yan Circle Mountain cost so high a price is that they have the best appropriate environment for growing the tea, with moderate sunshine and humidity.

Another important factor is the land, the soil type.  The soil in the Zheng Yan Circle is very rocky, and the land is not so hard, so the plants can have good air and water circulation.

The soil also has plenty of  mineral composition, so the high quality rock teas have a mineral feeling.  I do not know how to use the words to express about this mineral feeling, but if you drink Wuyi Rock teas for a few years your mouth can appreciate the feeling.

How old are the oldest tea trees?

It is a pity I really do not  know the exact age, but in Wuyishan the early documents about Wuyi trees are from the Song dynasty,  about 400 years ago.  My family Laocong Shui Xian plants we normally understand to be about 100 years old.  Yunnan is where the older tea trees might be; those used for making pu'er [versus the Fujian Province, where she lives].


In some follow up discussion Cindy talked more about prior history with tea in the area, so this isn’t really intended as a full historical account, just her immediate simple response to a question.  She also later noted separately the Camellia Sinensis var. Assamica plant type is grown in Yunnan versus the var. Sinensis type in her area, also not really a detailed part of this discussion.


It's interesting that no teas in Thailand are processed the same way [relating to me currently living in Thailand].  All are typically produced as lighter oolong, almost always rolled, like Tie Kuan Yin [I actually wrote about exceptions recently, other Thai tea types, but this is true in general].  I'd assume that relates to plant type.

Could the teas there be made into green tea instead?

No.  Any kind of tea in my family normally has three different baking styles:   lightly--roasted, middle--roasted, and highly--roasted, according to the tea characteristics.

Technically it would be possible to make different teas out of them, as she goes on to explain:

I think it is possible to use other types of tea leaves to process into darker Oolong tea.  A few years ago the rock tea market tea prices went up sharply so some tea business people in Anxi started using the Tie Guan Yin leaves to process into Wuyi Oolong.  It looks ok, very similar to Wuyi rock tea, but the taste is quite different.

There are only two styles of this tea, one very light, almost like water as a brewed tea, and another style very high roasted, with nothing in the brewed tea except a charcoal fire feeling.


So the idea is that technically other plant types or tea from a different area can be used to create a similar processed tea but it’s not the same, not nearly as suitable, with a much different final product.

Do the tea plants need direct sunlight?

I can use Rou Gui as an example.

People think the Rou Gui grows in a tea land like a valley, which doesn't have abundant sunshine through the whole day, and the land where the tea grows is high in humidity.  The Rou Gui style of tea produced from land like this is like this:  the tea soup is soft and sticky, and the Chaqi comes out gradually [also referred to as Qi or Cha Qi].  The tea can stand a least eight infusions, and the tea soup can keep a good balance, without sharply changing in taste and aroma.  We always bake this kind of Rou Gui in middle--roasted style, which can help keep the aroma, like a flowery aroma, or fruit aroma.

Some Rou Gui grows in a tea land like flat ground, which has abundant sunshine the whole day.  The Rou Gui styles from this type of area are like this:  the tea soup is very strong; some people cannot stand this style.  Chaqi come up very very quickly, in the first few cups, and you will turn hungry and it will increase body circulation.  Most of the time, this kind of tea changes sharply after 6 infusions.  Most of the time, we bake this kind of Rou Gui in highly-roasted way, and most Chinese people like this style very much.

In Wuyishan we bake the tea according to characteristics, like Qilan, Huang Guanyin, Baijiguan, and Huanmeiguan, these all are high aroma teas, so it is better to bake them in the middle fire, not too high, to retain the fragrance.

But some other varieties like Da Hong Pao and Rougui the teas have a very very strong body, so we need to highly-roast them, and keep them to sell in the second year [as she already mentioned, with variation for growing area difference that changes leaf character].


We discussed a number of other issues, some of which will be included as a separate post about tea cultivars, plant types used to make different teas.

The issue of aging of Wuyi Yancha is particularly interesting to me but it’s only introduced here, as saying for more roasted versions it’s best to store the tea for a year for the “fire” to subside and other elements to become more pronounced.  Of course the issue of aging is more complicated than that, as she covered in further discussion, but this is a good place to stop for now.

Thai Lana black tea from Monsoon teas (Chiang Mai shop)

Another interesting Thai black tea, thanks to Monsoon teas for sending some samples (a tea shop in Chiang Mai).  They don't seem to be set up for online sales but do have a website and a Facebook page for contacts.  I've been drinking a lot of different Thai and Vietnamese black teas lately so it will be hard not to compare it to those, but maybe that's not such a bad thing.  Straight to it then.

The dry tea smelled a lot like cocoa; not a bad start.  The leaves were a bit broken and dusty in appearance but beyond that black teas can tend to look a bit the same.  The leaves were dark and twisted, and relatively whole, a good sign.


In the first taste that cocoa scent translated into one of the most pronounced flavor elements.  Altogether it seemed a relatively smooth black tea, with some sweetness, and a decent balance of other flavors.  Beyond that in terms of taste the sweetness extended to other flavors that mixed a bit with the others, a bit of dark cherry, a hint of pine wood, even a trace of smoke.  There was not much in the way of astringency, beyond the body even softer black teas possess.  

It reminded me a lot of the Wild Boar black tea from Vietnam, from Hatvala, so much so it was hard to not taste it just as a comparison to that tea.  So how did it stack up?  The flavor profile was similar, rich and sweet, somewhat complex, with a good balance for a black tea, right in the range of what I prefer.  Somehow the flavors were a bit less clear, with a slight mustiness to them, that the Vietnamese tea didn't possess, and to me that tipped the balance in favor of that Wild Boar version.


I talked to Kenneth, the owner of Monsoon teas, about the unusual nature of the tea, related to the flavor profile, and he said:


All the teas that I sent to you are from forest plantations that comes from wild tea seeds. That's why the flavors are different from usual....The musty flavor comes from the Camelia Assamica bush. 


Even more interesting that it reminded me of that locally sourced Vietnamese tea, which was also not a type you might often run across.  Going back to that reference--which I had already added a link to--that tea was also Camellia Sinensis var. Assamica, also described as from "wild" tea plant sources.


But for once I'm not going back into that, how wild or not wild some other general hearsay indicated they might be, most of which relates to teas in China anyway.  If that subject is of interest there was a good reference table of plant types in a recent post about a Jin Xuan (a tea from Taiwan, but that tangent drifted into talking a little about Thai teas too).  And there was more about it in a post about traditional versions of Thai iced tea, that type that's sold as bright orange powdered tea now, but it had been a "real" blend before it changed into that, a local black tea mixed with orange blossom and crushed tamarind seeds, per some accounts.

Tea preference and experience issues related to judging teas:

Ordinarily I try to be really positive about teas I review, since that seems more interesting to a reader, to hear about the strengths of teas I like.  I want to be clear that this is a very nice example of a black tea.  It would be easy for someone to drink tea in Thailand for a long time and not even know options like this were available, soft and sweet, interesting and complex versions.  This tea is a good bit better than anything I've ever tried in a tea bag tea, so really on a completely different level than any of those.  It's not that really incredible tea couldn't be held captive in one of those pyramid-style tea bags; I just don't end up drinking tea from tea bags, and I typically remember why I don't when I try.


Related to being negative, it also seems problematic to identify attributes that don't match my preference as flaws, when someone else might love those same aspects in a tea.  One way around this is to only review teas that I love.  Another might be to clarify when I think an attribute really is a flaw, and when it's just about what I like.  All those positive aspects I mentioned weren't flaws, of course, but a slight mustiness would hardly seem to match a potential preference.


Lately I've been considering how having more experience actually makes it harder for me to be positive.  A year ago I'd not tried that particular Vietnamese black tea yet, or a second that was roughly the same, or a lot of other Thai black teas I've been writing about, or a great example of one from Indonesia.  Or any black teas from Japan and Korea, which I have tried since, etc.  A year ago I'd have been amazed to discover this tea as a version from Thailand (although I had tried one pretty good black tea from here prior), and it's not really any worse a tea for me having tried other exceptional versions somewhat recently, as well as some that weren't quite as nice as this one.  I guess I'm saying it's good tea that sounds worse because I've said another that it reminded me of is better.

some scent training lately:  orchids smell sweet

A tea friend mentioned once that there is a natural experience curve for tea bloggers, not a universal trend, but that some tend to write less and less, to have less things to investigate and comment, and then finally it makes sense to just stop talking about teas.  I related that to the general idea that many things tend to seem simple at first, then more complex, then simple again later, once you move past lots of details and can focus only on what's most important.



I might need to keep "chasing the dragon" related to trying better or newer teas, or else struggling to explain what I experience as positive instead of noting that each is a decent version of a tea, while turning a blind eye to awareness of others that are better.


Of course the new and different part does come naturally.  I have at least a dozen examples of teas that are quite new to me sitting at home that I still need to get around to trying, maybe a good bit more, who keeps track, and I'm off to visit a tea producing country right about now (Indonesia!).  I've only tried one black tea from Indonesia, from PT Harendong, as luck would have it not in such a different style than this one, so I'm looking forward to what might turn up.


As a test of all this, past experience and a taste for change affecting judgment, if anyone reading this has tried that black tea I'd like to hear their take; how was it?

Shangrila estate white tea from Nepal

An online tea friend, Ethan, visited Bangkok last week and we tried some teas and traded some.  One was a really nice version of a white tea from Nepal, from the Shangrila estate.

Ethan!  Rouging it local-style in a Bangkok hotel restaurant

First a bit about what it is.  This link includes some information about the grower, but the tea he bought from a shop in Nepal, with nothing like a shopping-cart style website with product descriptions to go on, so I'm just not turning up those sorts of details.  It's white tea, with lots of fine buds and very small leaves, of course grown at elevation--it's from Nepal.  It would take more research to get further, but there is more for a lead to look into in the Buddha Tea Shop in Katmandu here, or in their Facebook page here.

an interesting look; lots of buds, a bit of oxidation

The dry tea has such a strong fruit smell that it reminds me of some oriental beauty teas I've been trying lately.  Of course some of that general range is also common with Darjeelings, intense fruit aroma with so many aspects that it's hard to separate them, grape and orange, berries, with some fresh vegetal aroma.


The first time I tried the tea with Ethan we had it brewed lightly, which does work for this sort of tea.  Of course I brewed it stronger the next time; easier to tell more about what those subtle flavors are that way.  I split the difference between Western style and gongfu approach, using a relatively high proportion of tea to water, and limited infusion times, steeping around a minute rather than the range of 20 seconds or less.  Why would I do that?  Intuition; just trying it out.

brewed lighter, orange-gold

It comes across more like a Darjeeling prepared that way, but as a unique version of one.  It was still hard to list out the flavors with so much going on, definitely fruit oriented, with lots of orange-citrus, maybe hinting towards a berry character, most like blackberry, with a bit of subtle earth element.  Of course it's natural to compare the orange citrus element to muscatel, that related component in Earl Grey, essential oil from a bergamot orange, but it's really more like orange zest than that, lighter and brighter.  There is a bit of astringency, but of course adjusting brewing parameters varies that aspect.  In this case it wasn't along the lines of needing to brew around a flaw, more about balancing and optimizing the different aspects.

brewed stronger, more copper colored

The next time I tried it I went with an approach closer to standard Western brewing, a bit longer with a more typical proportion of tea to water, backed off of boiling point water temperature (so more like a Darjeeling is normally prepared).  The character of the tea changed.  The flavors might have been a bit brighter, with the astringency dropped off.


It tasted of bright orange citrus, more pronounced this time, and grape, even raisin, again with some berry, along with a little underlying richness, something like walnut coming through better.  It tasted a bit like a fresh fruit salad.  Changing the brewing adjusted the effect of the astringency, not just the level but the feel of the tea.  It shifted from seeming like a greener Darjeeling towards how lighter and softer versions of black teas come across, and of course with aspects related a white tea, which it actually is.

buds and small leaves, just a bit of oxidation

Someone just raised the topic of general impressions of Darjeeling teas in a tea group, and I guess some of the strengths and weaknesses apply to this tea.  It doesn't give up much in terms of complexity and strong fruit flavors compared to any other teas, although preference for tastes within certain ranges would vary.


The body or feel of the tea is a bit thin compared to some styles, which--per my experience--holds true for Darjeeling in general as well.  It's just not rich and full in the way oolongs from Taiwan generally are, or some darker oolongs (Wuyi Yancha--I can't go a post without typing that), or even as Silver Needle teas can be.  Definitely an interesting, pleasant, unique tea though, with a lot of range of aspects expressed by one single tea.