Jade Oolong

Ask if it's an osmanthus blossom tea.

--scott

It could be many things. Could you please describe the leaves or ask about the Chinese name of the tea?

Jade oolong is a light roast floral green oolong from Taiwan. It is from the NanTou mtn area. Another name for light roast green oolong is pouchong. I pay about 2 bucks an oz. Floral is the natural taste.

Jim

snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com wrote:

Space snipped-for-privacy@75g2000cwc.googlegroups.com8/14/06

Jim, IMHE pouchong is quite different. It sports twisty long beautiful green leaves, and brews a different taste that I call cucumber flower because it differs considerably from Jade Oolong, which I don't like quite as much. Too much florisity. Have to admit though that pouchong is iffy. Sometimes it's wonderful, and sometimes not. Michael

I am simply unfamilar with the English tea terminology with tea, I find. What is the Chinese name for jade wulong?

Pouchong = qing xiang?

We had a previous discussion on the character(s) for Pouchong. Given the transliteration I was assuming two. On the commercial packaging you'll see that character with the word. It is only one character:

The are the two characters for 'jade' oolong:

Jim

Mydnight wrote:

I can't really disagree with you that the two are different. My Jade is semi rolled and Pouchong long and twisted. However I can taste more similarities than not once you get beyond the floral taste. I think pouchong is a style from Nantou. However it could be from other areas like DongDing or AliShan but I don't know.

Jim

Michael Plant wrote:

Mydnight, you are possibly unlikely to encounter Jade oolong on the Mainland because it's one of the new Taiwanese cultivars, like Si Ji Chun (四季春) and Jinxuan (金萱).

Actually, it would be > We had a previous discussion on the character(s) for Pouchong. Given

Pouchong = baozhong = 包种 (simplified characters) = traditional ie. not high mountain Taiwanese oolong. Not tightly rolled, but long leaf form like a Wuyi oolong. I don't think they are as roasted, but I don't actually know very much about them.

The character you posted is 清 (simplified) and means 'pure'. I don't know why it would be on a tea package, but you might be confusing it with 青 which means 'green' (really, blue-green) and is used to describe lightly fermented teas like oolongs, certainly including baozhong. They are pronounced the same - 'qing'.

翠玉 is jade as > We had a previous discussion on the character(s) for Pouchong. Given

Ok, thanks, I got it now. I know a few vendors that sell low quality productions of those teas; more than likely fake, doctored, or nonsense.

As for Taiwan tea in the market, really high quality stuff is hard to come by. A student of mine brought me back some A Li Shan he got in the supermarket in Taiwan and it was leaps and bounds better than some of the "'real' Gao Shan shops" that had been suggested to me by my tea drinking friends here on the mainland. I have also been lucky to meet several Taiwanese, pretty old guys, that are really into tea. They have basically "shown me the light" so to speak. You simply cannot acquire a really high grade of this tea on the mainland, even if you pay like 1500RMB.

Down at Fangcun, you will find a slew of different shops that sell "gao shan" teas and "Taiwan" teas. They mostly do business by selling the teas that supposedly come from Taiwan in packages, but that doesn't explain the boxes and boxes of loose tea in their backrooms. They markup the prices insanely and mostly do business with the money-laundering types that can get "fa piao" invoices to get money back from their companies. I've sampled several different grades, supposedly, at those shops and it sorta all tasted the same: slightly floral with the astringent finish that can be found in most low grade Wulongs. Ali Shan...Dongding Wulong...Li Shan...basically the same.

There isn't much of a trend with the Taiwanese tea as it is with the Taiwanese tea stuff. Pots, cups, tools, trays: It's all so much better quality than the mainland stuff. You can so easily see it. I have a pot that was given to me by my Taiwanese tea pal...leaps and bounds...leaps and bounds.

The single character you see for Pouchong is what I stated. It is used on every commercial package I have which is at least five. The Taiwanese spelling I see for baozhong is paochung. On the surface I would say PaoChung and PouChong are both Wade-Giles equivalent but maybe not. Only the characters count.

Jim

Alex wrote:

We've gone over this before in detail. They use it for advertisement mostly; not saying anything about the tea specifically. Another friend of mine told me that it could have been a mistake made at the factory when they were producing the packages. Factory workers have been known to make mistakes in lettering. Another example of this is the "Cinese Hotel" here in the Houjie district...they tried to play it off by saying they meant to mean it as like Sino or something.

My Taiwanese pals tell me that Baozhong tea is the most low quality tea that they produce in Taiwan. Not sure if this is true or not. They also said it was mostly meant for export. heh.

They are 'modified' W-G - pao-chung is correct. W-G is frequently abused by Taiwanese people. That single character certainly relates to tea, but I'm pretty sure that it doesn't *mean* baozhong, even if you see it on a hundred thousand packages.

Mydnight thanks for the > The single character you see for Pouchong is what I stated. It is used

snipped-for-privacy@m73g2000cwd.googlegroups.com8/14/06

Pouchong = Bao Zhong, but greater lights will help you here. This tea is so lightly oxidized that most refer to it as something other than Oolong. Babelcarp says quing xiang means "clear fragrance" in an Oolong sort of a way. Michael

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Jim, your point is well taken. I wonder though whether a super-super-fresh Jade Oolong vis-a-vis a super-super-fresh Pouchong wouldn't show more dramatic differences. Michael

snipped-for-privacy@i3g2000cwc.googlegroups.com8/14/06

Given the equisite examples I've tasted from Wen Shan, I seriously doubt the truth of this. I'm told that Bao Zhong producers are very proud of their product. This makes sense. I have to say that many are cloying and overly thick and just don't do it for me. Michael

Stéphane, please do go into those details. Very interesting. BTW, I'd tasted some Bao Zhong at 50% oxidation, which I wasn't fond of. You say this is the old style. I'm partial to those long deep lovely green leaves. Michael

I looked at Stephane's blog and she has no notes for Jade oolong. I looked at her notes for Baozhong. If I read between the lines maybe some Baozhong can match the Jade in fragrance like intensity. I notice the similarites after the first pot once the fragrance has receded. According to her the two cultivars are different, elevation, and location. Darwin says they should taste different from geographical isolation. I was surprised that the Jade oolong is mass produced. I pay more for it than the Pouchong. All of a sudden my Pouchong taste better. You can't go wrong if you are drinking the two jade characters, the single commercial Pouchong character, or the twin baozhong characters. I've never tasted a bad Taiwan tea. If it says Taiwan I buy it with no hesitation even Assam packaged in Taiwan.

Jim

Michael Plant wrote:

It stirs my Taiwanese patriotism to hear you say that you've never tasted a bad Taiwanese tea.

Pers> I looked at Stephane's blog and she has no notes for Jade oolong. I