Description

As tea shop owners it would be foolish of us to scorn the type of oolong tea we sell most of: Milky Oolong. Having said that, we ourselves like to drink tea in its purest state. The Chinese Milky Oolong loved by our customers is in fact a copy of a Taiwanese tea made from the cultivar “Jin Xuan”, known for its buttery and creamy taste.

Needless to say the “copied” tea has added flavours that make the tea smell more intense and taste sweeter than the original “pure” tea.

Real Milk Oolong (from now on referred to as Jin Xuan) is a lightly-roasted ball style oolong tea with a floral scent and a sweet, buttery taste. It comes from Taiwan and is made with leaves from a particular tea bush cultivar, Jin Xuan (#12 in the register of Taiwanese cultivars). This cultivar is sometimes also referred to as Golden Lily. Jin Xuan is one of the four most popular cultivars for making oolong tea in Taiwan and is much loved because of its sweet, creamy taste.

This particular batch of Jin Xuan has been made by organic farming pioneer Katie Yen. It comes from her highest elevation garden (1450 m above sea level) and was made with leaves gathered in the first plucking of the year. The higher the elevation, the more intensely the flavours and aroma are concentrated in the tea leaves. The highest quality Jin Xuan tea is always grown high on the slopes of large mountains.

If you already know Jin Xuan then congratulations! This is the best organic Jin Xuan we have ever tasted and we would be delighted to share it with you.

If you are fan of the flavoured Milky Oolong we implore you, no we beg you, to invest in a 10g sample and try the real thing! Subtle, sweet and floral it is a joy to watch the tightly rolled leaves unravel as they are brewed time and time again. Depending on where you are on your personal tea journey we wouldn’t be surprised if this tea helps you make the leap from flavoured tea to pure tea, and what better way to dive into the wonderful world of oolong than with this excellent Jin Xuan.

If you like this try we highly recommend you try the same tea from a different mountain as well: Ali Shan Jin Xuan. It is so delicious, we are sure you’ll love it just as much.

While this tea can of course be prepared “western style” in a teapot using ca. 6g tea for 500ml of water and making 1 – 4 infusions of 2 – 3 minutes each, we strongly recommend  brewing this tea gong fu style so that you can fully appreciate how the tightly rolled leaves unfold to reveal their beautiful scent and complex flavour notes.  If you do this, use the same amount of tea (ca. 6g) for 120ml of water, make a first infusion of 15 – 20 seconds, then add 5 seconds for each subsequent infusion. This should allow you to make approximately 4 – 5 infusions during which you will experience how the aroma and flavours develop with each steeping.

DE-ÖKO-006 Non-EU Agriculture

From controlled organic cultivation