Makaibari...

Note two things:

1. In the US, there is a "Lipton Darjeeling" for sale in bags, which is not at all even vaguely related to the Green Label tea sold abroad.

1. Lipton Green Label isn't 100% Darjeeling, I suspect, and contains a lot of the "Darjeeling-style" teas. Which is fine, since you aren't paying some outrageous price for the name.

--scott

I know what you're saying but the box says "The rare flavour of 100% pure Darjeeling tea". They also imply that on their Connoisseur green label which isn't cheap. The parent company Brooke Bond says that also on their boxes. AFAIK Lipton owns their own DJ plantations. I don't trust the boxes that just say Darjeeling tea. The fact there is more DJ consumed than produced.

Jim

Scott Dorsey wrote: ...bit bucket...

Michael where did you get this stuff? It sounds good. I am not much of a wuyi drinker either but I love that gravel taste.

Karsten I find that tea keeps for a really long time in those vacuum-sealed bags. Two weeks ago I was digging around in my tea closet and found one that claimed to contain Si Ji Chun (Taiwanese oolong). The bag was in complex characters too - clearly Taiwanese. Now the last time I went to Taiwan was two summers ago, but that was for work and I didn't do any tea shopping, and furthermore I have no memory of owning this stuff, so I must have bought it the last time I

Since we are a good bit OT already, I always wonder this myself. I have found a cheap black/white tea blend twice when I moved and each time I pulled it out and brewed a cup and it is just as intense and sweet and great as the day I received it as a gift more than 5 years ago! It was stored in a foil pouch that I always ket tightly rolled and expelled of air and sealed with ordinary scotch tape. No nitrogen, no seal-a-meal, nuttin. But then I have had other teas that are just plain stale after a year of being forgotten and in the back of a cupboard. It's a mystery to me, but at least I'm not alone... I almost feel "dirty" when I pull one of these opened containers from the depths of hell and prepare to brew it. Sometimes for good reason, others I'm pleasantly surprised.

- Dominic

I have a similar experience with two bags of tea. One was an air-tight, sealed bag of A Li Shan that I got here on the mainland and the other was a bag of A Li Shan that one of my Taiwanese students brought back from Taiwan for me. When I was moving, I came across both of the bags sorta under some stuff in the bottom of my tea closet. The Taiwanese bag survived well and when brewed the tea wasn't too bad. The Chinese bag had air in it.

You feel that the bags from Taiwan are of better quality than the sealed bags from China? They do seem thicker, that's for sure.

Space snipped-for-privacy@m79g2000cwm.googlegroups.com8/9/06

Jim we live in a rotten capitalist world. Let us therefore examine the syntax of that sentence you quoted above. See what I mean?

Michael

snipped-for-privacy@h48g2000cwc.googlegroups.com8/9/06

A shop in NYC called "The Tea Gallery" is my main source of tea nowadays. They sell a 50 year old Shui Xian and a 1980's Ti Lo Han. (You were referring to my mention of the TLH, right?

I notice that a lot of vendors on the internet sell WuYi teas that are much more green in style. these are interesting enough, but probably unstable, and they don't maintain their interest as long as the more roasty offerings. Just my opinion.

Michael

Not really. In these times any sentence can be parsed to mean anything. You mean something like the 1% of Darjeeling is rare and by definition making it 100%. I'm sure if BrookeBond and Lipton were cutting their teas at packing plants in India the Darjeeling Certification board would be raising a stink with statements like this. I think in general the problem is with Private labels and distribution.

Jim

Michael Plant wrote:

I have gotten good vacuum sealed bags in China, but, as we both know, like everything else, it's better in Taiwan. As a foreigner anyway you are far, far less likely to get ripped off there than in China. The bag seemed unusually thick and heavy compared to a Chinese bag.

Are you gett> Alex wrote:

Many people tell me that living in Taiwan is leaps and bounds better than living in China, that's for sure. As for Good TGY this year, you are going to have to wait until the Autumn pick and hope for the best. Both spring picks this year yielded very little good tea. The highest grade is going around 800RMB which is 300-400 shy from the best grade last year...what basically means that this year's highest grade dropped a whole class.

Anyway, autumn is right around the corner.

It varies. China is a lot more exciting but Taiwan has a lot of advantages, and not getting ripped off at every turn is chief among them. China is certainly a way better place for learning Chinese (pinyin, simplified characters, and largely standardized pronounciation), if you can get out of the trap of everyone you know trying to get free English lessons out of you. It sounds like you're not having problems with that though. One very cool thing about Taiwan is that the main form of transportation is motorcycles, but on the other hand I hear they are now letting white people ride those in China too.

This is for those less fortunate of us that d> Alex wrote:

Sure, if they want English lessons, they can pay the standard rate of

Yeah, us honkies can buy and own cars here now too. Motorbikes are such a hazard on the roads, that most cities limit the amount of motorbikes that can be purchased or sold. Here in Dongguan, the numero uno cause of death on the road is motorbike collision.

Well, even for us within striking range, most people didn't buy TGY this year. Everyone around here is on a pu'er binge and the lack of quality TGY only reinforced it. Do yourself a favor and wait until autumn.

Thanks for the TGY update. Re: English lessons, that is the only attitude to have. As for bikes, when I lived in Taiwan, they were also the numero uno cause of my broken bones. They sure are fun though.

Just saw this in the Times and thought, "Just like China!"

Stuff like that doesn't happen here AS MUCH but it does happen. Like when I was in Beijing a few weeks ago, someone tried to charge me 10 or

As for cutting the quality of some dishes, I haven't really seen that as much but the food in most restaurants around here isn't that good to begin with; so, who knows. I think it's a general trend to try to use as low quality food stuffs in restaurants as possible in the Guangdong province.

For sure. I still have some mainland Oolongs around I too bought some

Karsten [gongfuing some unknown yellowish Fujian Oolong]

I tried to get some official information on Lipton Green Label from Lipton (part of UniLever) but could not find any mention of it at any official UniLever, Lipton, or Tata Tea site.

Anyone know of the "official site" about Green Label tea?

snip

What's really interesting about what you report is that they dropped the price because the leaf was less good. In the happy world of Pu'erh, I'm given to understand, the quality can fall through the floor, but the proce will forever rise. No price drops reflecting poor quality leaf to be seen. Sounds as though with TGY there's some integrity somewhere.

Michael