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In preparing Longjing using a long steeping approach, better longjings can be infused in the method Chawang described. This way the true wonders of Longjing manifest to their fullest. The gaiwan cannot do the job well enough in this situation. Gaiwan infusion is particularly suitable for shorter infusions with higher leaves to water ratio. The Yixing pot, first popularized in Ming Dynasty in Jiangsu / Zhejiang areas, where green tea was and still is the predominant tea variety, was particularly good with many types of green tea.
Using a tall glass is good if you want to focus the enjoyment for the aroma. It is good also if you want your tea to cool down quickly for the sake of a quenching drink.Apologies for having been absent from this forum for such a long time. Whether to cover the gaiwan / tea mug / teapot between infusions seems to be the topic here. It actually matters not hugely unless under a few conditions. It can be slightly to long a discussion here and I shall write a little article (or part of an article about it) in Tea Guardian. Please be generous enough to continue to share your views here. You may be aware of something that I don’t. I could use that in the article if suitable.
To me, the botanical taxonomy of the tea plant goes like this:
1. Genus: Camellia1.1 Species: Camellia sinensis1.1.1 Variety: Camellia sinensis var sinensis1.1.2 Variety: Camellia sinensis var assamica1.1.1.1 Cultivar: Camellia sinensis var sinensis cv Qingxin1.1.1.2 Cultivar: Camellia sinensis var sinensis cv Qingxin Dawu1.1.1.3 Cultivar: Camellia sinensis var sinensis cv Qingxin Ganzietc, etcTo me, a clone is a “replica” of a cultivar. When a clone grows in a different environment it may result in leaves with different physical & chemical properties.
Clones and QingxinThe way the word “clone” is used in the wine world is confusing to me and I have tried very much to avoid it.Wulong is a collective term for many things in the Chinese tea world and one meaning refers to quite a large number of cultivars used particularly for oolong tealeaves production. For example, Qingxin is a wulong cultivar. So are many others in an average Taiwan tea garden: Jingxuan, Four season, #13, etc, etc. There are even more used in Mainland China. Many are forming every year in different research institutes and by tea farmers themselves.ShuixianThere are many other cultivars used particularly for oolong production that are not in the group of wulongs. Such as the group we call shuixian.I suspect (still much study needed) that shuixian is not only a group but rather a sub-variety (not sub-species), as I said before. And I suspect that those cultivars used in Wuyi and in Phoenix (Fenghuang) are of the same origin. However, there are many cultivars within this group. A cultivar is different from another sometimes only slightly, but sometimes quite dramatically, even within the same group. Physically and chemically. They give teas of different taste profiles. For example, the cultivar baiye gives Honey Orchid (milan xiang) and the cultivar zilan gives Zilan Xiang. The two tea are of almost opposing characters. They are both Shuixian. A baiye can have many variations due to sexual propagation, different natural mutation due to environment etc and the clones from different baiye individual plants do have different values. Therefore they do have names for different baiye plants. Maybe at that level, you’d like to apply the term clones for them. I am searching for a more suitable one.There are many literature in Chinese documenting the physicality of different cultivars (though not enough yet) and I don’t want to get too explicit and technical here lest I bore the readers.Let me know if you have other ideas.D____ responded to my answer with another email. Again, it’s worth sharing here because it does represent the confusion that some people may have. Here it is:
Hello Leo,Thank you for your wonderful reply! I am pleased you could confirm that “Dan Cong” refers to the “single trunk” growing and processing method and not to the cultivar per se for I was fearful I might have been misleading my customers. As to the variety, is Shuixian the same variety as is grown in Wuyi? I know this variety is widely grown in China.Another point (question): in the wine business we would refer to what you have called “sub-species” as different clones and the asexual propagation method you describe as cloning. Might the different bushes be referred to as “clones” rather than “sub-species?” For example, in the viticultural field, vitis vinifera is the species, chardonnay is a cultivar and Wente and UCD4 are clones (and there are hundreds of chardonnay clones each with its own particular ripening cycle and taste nuance.) To carry this into tea it would be camellia sinensis v. sinensis as the species (and sub-species), shuixian as the cultivar and zhuye as the clone. Does this make any sense?In one of your essays, you stress the difference between Wulong (the cultivar) and Oolong (the manufacturing style.) I had always thought this a confusion unique to Taiwan (early in my career I was at a cupping in Taipei and one taster averred that the best tea was the Wulong; I thought “what, they are all oolongs!” – it took me some weeks to be clear on the difference.) In Taiwan the Wulong is a particular clone of the Qing Xin cultivar. What is it in China?Thanks again for all of your help Leo; I know I have much reading ahead of me as I move through your voluminous research in The Tea Guardian.Cheers,D_____The original meaning of “Dan Cong” is “single bush”, referring to the idea that the tealeaves from a single bush are not to be mixed with those from any other bush and should be processed and consumed as the product from that singular bush.
This is still practiced for some special bushes in the Phoenix and the Wuyi regions. A way to satisfy the market for the taste from those famous bushes is to produce children bushes asexually from the mother bushes and plant them in neighbouring plots so the soil and micro-climate are as identical to the mothers’ as possible. The leaves from these children bushes can then be processed as the extended “single bush” idea.The reason that the taste from a particular mother plant is different is exactly because Nature has created a unique cultivar through sexual propagation.In Fenghuang (ie Phoenix), (actually in many other oolong regions as well), cultivar diversification is a big topic. Product diversification through this not only helps marketing, but also production resource management. I have written briefly about such topics in Tea Guardian and will write about it in the future in more details.The major group of cultivars in Fenghuang belongs to a group of cultivars called Shuixian, which I suspect is rather a sub-variety rather than just a cultivar group, but I need to verify that with more study. Shuixian presently is classified under Camellia sinensis variety sinensis.There are, however, many other cultivars in that area that are NOT under the Shuixian group.These are a few photos of different Phoenix cultivars that we have posted in our Facebook page:
These are some pages that touch on the topic of cultivars in Fenghuang:Do let me know if I have not answered your question, or if you have more.Semi-black white is Mandarin Duck in Tea Hong. I am still not certain whether this is a good trade name for the tea.
@raphael, Fuding is great place to visit, but trying to find the right producers there is a bit of a hunting game. Production locations are not simple sidetracks on normal tourist routes. More so if you are a laowai. You have better luck in those tea markets in Fuzhou where you can sample many different qualities in a day. Update us of your finds!When Alzheimer’s is the concern, it is in tea the good catechins, theanines, and caffeine, that you want. In better quality greens, whites and oolongs you have a lot of these things and not so much the AL. AL is present in many things you eat and trace amount is good to health. For overdose concern, AL from other things in modern life: cookware, water, commercially produced baked goods, etc are a lot more serious.
I don’t think it really is the tea that’s causing the problem. Kukicha are basically stalks of younger leaves, and their al and fl are not really that high. The amount of tea consume has to be extremely high (like 10 litres a day) and from over-grown leaves for overdose symptoms. That’s why I suggest you should check with a physician to see if other things are causing you the joint problem.
That really is a very good question. Actually it can be extended to question all teas of origin. However, let me answer it specifically first.
Wuyi style oolongs are produced not only in nearby areas, but also in other tea regions, some even outside of Fujian. I cannot tell the difference by just looking at them. However, the taste tells. So what is it in the taste that marks the difference? How would you describe the difference between Yosemite and a neighbourhood park, or your backyard, or a run down lot in a bad neighbourhood? Or how would you describe the taste of a fine Kobe cut from a MacDonald burger “beef”? You won’t know it until you have experienced it. Beautiful poems, stunning pictures and hundreds of books are never nearly half as good as being there. That is the difficult part of word communication. Reality is so much beyond the capability of the language.Back to the real issue. There are merchants selling other productions as Wuyi. Some even in shops in tourist shops in Wuyi itself. Price is not a guarantee and neither is this or that Chinese government label (trusting any Chinese government certification is like trusting any used car dealer). However, once you have properly infuse a genuine fine quality Wuyi Shuxian or the likes, you’ll know there is a distinctive taste that differentiates a Wuyi from others. Most others.I know there are very good tea regions now attempting to make high quality production to compete with Wuyi. First lots are very convincing, but with their own finesse.Note also that even within Wuyi, there are many, many different qualities. Wuyi is not a very small place. Sometimes a real Wuyi one is not as good as a good imitation.As for the rest of the imitations, please judge it by the price-quality rule. You are buying a drink after all. If you think the difference does not matter to you, don’t pay for it. If you think you have discovered a very distinctive quality, enjoy it. But don’t cease to explore. It took me many years. I believe it’ll take you perhaps the same time as well.I think if you are getting joint pain, you should be consulting a physician to see which is the cause.
The teas that contribute to problems of the bone are mostly over grown leaves and those with twigs. Amounts of fluorides and aluminiums accumulate more in older parts of the plant. One issue with findings such as that cited in Daily Mail is that there is no discrimination as to the type of tea drunk. One prevalent tea product in the mass market is teabag, and the other, bottled tea drinks. Both are the lowest of all the low quality tea productions. Plantations sell their pruning wastes, ie what is mown from their tea hedges after plucking for better quality productions, including branches, clipped old leaves, etc as raw material to tea companies. Guess what you are drinking when you open your next plastic cap on that “Pure Green Tea” from Big Soft Drink Brand?I used to have joint pain too, even when I was much younger. It has been tea (good ones, of course), as well as a dramatic change of life style, that turns things around for me. That is one reason why I dedicate so much of my life in advocating it.
