Yes, that’s right, in Qimen and the vicinity that is Huangshan, they process their leaves according to the conditions and demand. The same raw material can become either a green tea or a black tea. The green tea version is collectively known as Huangshan Maofeng, but there are many product names to help the seller to differentiate their products from others. The black one has been known in the West as Keemun, which is an older style of romanisation of the original Chinese name of the origin, which is now “Qimen” in the contemporary “pinyin” romanization. I won’t go into details of this detail.
To differentiate from the mass market productions that aim mostly for export, which are collectively still refer to as Keemun and are machine processed, traditional quality whole leaf ones are often referred to as “Qimen Hong Maofeng”, i.e. Maofeng Black Tea from Qimen.
The term Maofeng refers to the shape of the finished product. It can be translated as “downy peaks”, suggesting shoot buds covered with downy hairs. In another word, it maybe borrowed for use in teas outside of the green tea category, as long as the finished product has that feature.
That is to say the shop you refer to is not wrong in using that term if the goods is right.
Accessing the right quality is difficult not only for people living in Europe like yourself, many in other countries have their share of issues, even those in China or India. I think this is not right and that is why I started to be involved in the beginning.
You are correct that I do not carry Nilgiri at the moment in my own shop, but I am growing my collection to include things from regions outside of China. There are a few principals I abide by when taking in a new offer and that makes the collection grow only slowly. We do not have an investor to back us so we have to be very conservative in expansion and that s another reason.
Thank you for your patience with us and I am working hard to give more choices. There already are some very fine ones from Taiwan, Nepal and Sri Lanka. I hope you will enjoy them and see more coming.
