What is Oolong Tea?

Want to know more about oolong tea and where this type of tea comes from?

View our range of oolong teas here: http://bit.ly/2SxH0fq

Oolong tea is processed according to a three-century-old tradition which originated in Fujian province in China.

The name oolong itself means black dragon in Chinese and there are several myths about why the tea has this name.

Some people believe that in Fujian where the tea is grown there were plants that wrap themselves around the tea bushes that looked like black dragons.

Other people say that when the tea unfurls in hot water the leaf can look like black dragons dancing.

Fujian makes amazing oolong teas but you also find oolong in Taiwan now, where tea bushes were taken from Fijian and grown.

You can get a huge variety of flavours within the category which makes it one of my personal favourite categories.

Depending on what type of oolong you want to make, you can twist the leaf very carefully like this, or have it be very open.

You essentially get two different varieties; a lightly oxidised, tightly rolled leaf which undergoes around a 10-30 per cent oxidation.; is very bright green, buttery, floral.

A darker oolong would be oxidised around 50-70 per cent and almost looks a little like a black tea.

It has flavours of mineral, cocoa, nuts, chocolate, very, very beautiful, a completely different taste.

The tea that I have here is our garden party oolong. It has a darkly roasted, highly oxidised oolong tea to which we’ve added papaya, pineapple, strawberry and marigold petals. So it’s a very tropical tea that’s great hot or cold.

To make all oolongs you want freshly boiled water, to bring out the flavour and you use one teaspoon per cup.

You want the higher temperature water to help the leaf open up and to draw out a lot of the darker flavours.

We’ll wait for three minutes for this tea any longer and it will start to get quite bitter and strong.

The caffeine level of oolong is in general between 30 and 60 milligrams per cup. Much less than your standard coffee but similar to a black tea in general.

We don’t recommend adding milk to oolong um it's still quite light, a little bit lighter than black tea and doesn’t work well with the flavour combination.

So, if you’d like to learn more about tea head to whittard.co.uk.