Tagged: cultivar
DNA Testing Keeps Finding Tieguanyin's Own Cousin in the Bag
Genetic and spectral tests on commercial Tieguanyin keep turning up a different, related Anxi cultivar blended in, most often Benshan, close enough in leaf and aroma to pass for its more famous cousin.
Honey Orchid to Duck Shit, and Whether the Names Are Real
These Chinese oolongs, the Phoenix Dancong family, are named for a smell, not a place, and nothing is added to the leaf. Gas chromatography has now checked whether a bush named for one scent really carries different chemistry from the next. Mostly it does, but the lab draws fewer lines than the menu.
Jin Xuan and the milk that isn't milk
Genuine milk oolong gets its creamy note from a bred cultivar, Jin Xuan, not from added milk. But a lot of what is sold under that name is flavored, and the difference is checkable before you buy.
An Oolong Cultivar Takes Two Decades to Earn a Number, and Longer to Reach a Nursery
An oolong cultivar clears a fixed government pipeline of field trials, roughly fourteen to twenty-one years, before it earns a number, then a separate license before any nursery can sell it. Taiwan's newest release traces its parent stock back to the 1960s.
Same Leaf, Split Into Green and Black, Kept Almost the Same Caffeine
Catechins collapsed by more than ninety percent between the two halves. Caffeine barely moved. Oxidation, the reaction that defines oolong, is not what decides how much of it ends up in the leaf.
Oolong Grades and Cultivars
Oolong carries four different things called a grade: a national sensory tier, a government cultivar registration, a trade aroma-type name, and a competition award. The canonical account of what each one actually certifies, and what it does not.
What Is Oolong Tea
Oolong is partly oxidized Camellia sinensis, made to a chosen point between green and black. This is the canonical account of what it is, how it is made, the major style families, how it tastes across the spectrum, and why it is brewed gongfu.