Tagged: tea breeding

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.