Tea of the Month September- Milk Oolong

I nearly missed putting this post on this month. As many of you will know, I was away from Shanghai for the month of September. I had not thought to be away for so long, but it coincided with lots of events, of which I will relate to you in a post that will hopefully capture most of my summer activities. Fortuitously, I had taken a small bag of the tea that I had intended for this month with me, so on the first day of fall, while working on a puzzle in the front room with my sister in law and my mom, we pulled out the tea, the china cups and shared a really interesting gustatory experience.

Before my travel back to North America, I went to Tian Shan Tea city to buy some tea for gifts. While at my best supplier of Keemun tea, they asked if I had ever tried Milky Oolong. The salesclerk then pulled out from the refrigerated container, a sealed bag. By now, you know that I love fragrant teas, so when she tilted the bag towards me so that I could smell the leaves, I was surprised at the scent. To my less than perfect olfactory ability, these dry leaves smelled exactly like a can of sweetened evaporated milk. I don't own a poker face, and the girls could tell that I was intrigued, so they suggested that I sit down to taste it. Language barriers prevented them from telling me the story of the tea (which I have included for you below), so they let the tea speak for itself. I loved it and quickly bought a small package of roughly 100 grams (you'll remember that altough I really like it, I do try a new tea every month, and there is just so much caffeinated tea that I can drink in one day. I've accumulated quite a few teas over the last few months!)

So just as a reminder, Oolong or Wu-long teas are sometimes called blue teas; this refers to the partial oxidation that makes this kind of tea different from the black (fully oxidized) and the green (not oxidized at all). Wulong teas are made from large leaves which are crinkled and are often greenish with reddish edges after infusion. After rolling, the tea is allowed to oxidize only until the edges of the leafs start to turn brown and then the tea is then fired which arrests the oxidation process and captures the interesting character.

Milk Oolong is grown in the Wuyi Mountains of China and has a really unique taste of sweet milk. This is the result of a sudden shift in temperature during harvest, apparently an extremely rare occurrence. Over the years, production methods have remained unchanged but temperature changes have been automated and regulated. First, the leaf is plucked from gardens situated between 500-1200 meters, and is produced between March and December. The tea is produced in relatively small quantities from March to December; in fact, only 80,000 kg are produced with about 60,000 kg headed for the export market.

In my searches for information about this type of wulong, I found the following explanation for this tea. Milk oolong has such a unique taste that many stories have evolved to explain its unusual flavor. One of the many legends of milk oolong explains that the first time the temperature shift, which defines this tea(and is mentioned above) occurred was centuries ago when the moon fell in love with a comet passing through the night sky. The comet, passed by, burned out and vanished. The moon, in her sorrow caused a great wind to blow through the hills and valleys bringing about a quick drop in temperature. The next morning, local tea pluckers went out to collect their fresh leaves. To their surprise, when the tea was processed it had developed an amazing milky character, which was attributed to the motherly character of the old moon.

The only thing that remains for this post is the taste. The tea brews into a really nice lightish yellow color. The odor which is present in the dry leaves, is also present in the scent of the brewed tea, as well as in the taste. It is a truly intriguing flavor and is difficult to describe. It is smooth in flavour, creamy (if you can imagine it) and the taste is not fleeting. I found this description in one of my web searches : "imagine if velvet somehow took liquid form and was blended with a sweet light cream. While drinking it, you find yourself swimming to the bottom of a deep well of orchids." While I don't know about swimming in a deep well of orchids, I rather would describe is as a light creamy blanket that warmly coats your tongue.