Xiamen Teas

When I went to China in 2009, I found a type of tea that I and everyone I served it to loves. Someone had told me the name of it was (loosely translated) Drunken Susie. So, on my trip back last week, it was imperative that I find some more.

There are, of course, many types of tea there. I learned more about tea this time than I ever knew before. For your edification, here is a rough list of the factors involved in the various classifications.

• The tree variety
• The soil, altitude, and cultivation
• The leaf selection
• Fermentation
• Roasting or drying
• Aging
• Water temperature
• Brewing time

Beyond the first 3 factors, there are essentially three types of tea - black, green & Oolong. These three varieties of tea are distinguished by the amount of fermentation that takes place in processing them.

• Black Tea is fermented, then roasted to produce a dark reddish-brown brew.
• Green Tea is unfermented to leave a greenish, slightly bitter taste.
• Oolong Tea is semi-fermented and produces a milder brew with characteristics of both black and green tea.

Fermentation changes the chemical structure of the tea leaf, allowing key flavor characteristics to emerge. The tea leaves are first withered to remove about 1/3 of their weight through evaporation. They are then rolled and spread on cement or tile floors and tables in a cool, humid room to ferment from 1 to 5 hours. The leaves are then roasted in hot pans or modern dryers to remove almost all of their moisture and stop the fermentation process. They are then rolled and fired. Oolong is withered and fermented in one shorter stage then fired which halts the fermentation when it is about half complete. It is the extent of both the fermentation and the roasting that produce the wide variety of Oolong.  There is also a kind of tea that is intended to be aged - Pu'erh tea.  It is fully fermented, fully roasted, then compacted into a ball or brick and kept in stable condition for years.  (I got to drink a 17-year old Pu-erh tea.  The aroma is much more powerful than the taste).

 

My favorite is a modern style of a semi-fermented, lightly roasted Oolong known as (no joke) Om Bhuddism. As it turns out, Drunken Susie is actually a brand name of a Xiamen tea company - Cha Shway Tsee Tsuh (Cha being the Chinese word for tea and the rest being the company name). So, I was able to score some more of my favorite tea (Om Bhuddism), this time from a Xiamen company called Sea Dyke (Hi-Dee in Chinese). I also bought a box of Cheng Bay Woda, which is the traditional preparation of the semi-fermented, lightly roasted Oolong.