Curious Tea – Oolong – Zhang Ping Shui Xian
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Hey everybody, it’s Oolong Time! This is the first oolong tea I’ve reviewed here. You’ll notice that is currently the lone entrant in the ‘Oolong’ category. (That’s assuming that you’re reading this review at some point close to its publication date. If you’re reading this several years hence, ‘Dave’-style, then there may be dozens of the blighters.) This is the exciting thing about oolong tea. It defies categorization. There are white teas, green teas, black teas… and oolong.
OOLONG NO NEED YOUR PUNY HUMAN TEA CLASSIFICATIONS. OOLONG JUST OOLONG. OOLONG SMASH! (Oolong talks like Hulk, for some reason.)
The distinctions in tea categories are all down to oxidisation which is the process of exposing dried teas to sunlight and is what makes black tea brown. Basically, green teas aren’t oxidised and black teas are. Oolong teas are oxidised just a bit. Enough to exclude them from the Green Tea gang but not enough to qualify them for membership of Black Tea-exclusive country clubs and dating sites.
This tea, Zhang Ping Shui Xian from Curious Tea arrives in a little block of loosely-packed enormous tea leaves. (We’ll get onto quite how enormous these leaves are later.) As instructed, I broke the block roughly in two, added not-quite-boiling water and then watched mesmerised as the desiccated leaves unfolded themselves into an autumnal-looking collection of brown foliage.
The first steeping of this tea was a pleasant, fresh, slightly floral brew that I enjoyed a lot. You’ll notice that I said ‘first steeping’. Regular readers of this website will know that I have struggled a bit with this whole Tea Connoisseur business of re-steeping tea leaves. I’ve gamely given it a go with a couple of the fancier single origin teas now and I have hitherto been unable to detect any real difference in the flavour of the tea in the first, second or third steepings.
This, my friends, is where that all changed. For the first time, I’ve gained some insight into what Tea Sommeliers are talking about when they wax lyrical about resteeping tea to release different ‘flavour profiles’.
Not only does Zhang Ping Shui Xian taste noticeably different every time, I actually prefer the third steeping to the first. Every time I re-added hot water to the leaves in my teapot, the tea became richer and more robust as the slightly slight black-tea-ness of the blend made itself known.
This is still more of green tea than a black one – I’m not going to start adding milk and dunking digestive biscuits in it anytime soon – but as I progressed in my tea steeping journey, I appreciated better what makes this tea a different sort of business from any tea I’ve tried before. (Which makes sense, obviously. These tea wizards aren’t just semi-oxidising this stuff for a laugh.)
Now onto the massive massive leaves. Honestly, they’re humongous. I have never in my life seen tea leaves this big. To demonstrate, I have taken a photo of one alongside a normal size tea bag so you can get some idea of the scale.
Is this an oolong thing? Is this a thing which is specific to this particular blend? I don’t know, But I know that I like it. I spent an enjoyable time hoiking leaves out of my teapot and examining them. Who knew that this tea fancying business could be so much fun? Not only did I get to spend time examining some massive great leaves, but I also got a really nice cup of tea out of it.
Today’s featured book is Flowers In The Mirror by Li Ju-Chan.
