Lapsang Souchong Oolong Tea

This Lapsang Souchong is an alternative version of the traditional homonym red tea produced in the Chinese region of Fujian. The huge geographic distance between this product and its Chinese reference involves some differences from the standards leaf varietal and processing. Just by looking at this tea, in fact, you can notice that they are bigger than the ones you can have from camellias in Fujian province. Beside this difference on the material there is another important variation on the traditional version, this time, in the processing. The Lapsang Souchong, in fact, has to be smoked using the pine wood but in this Taiwanese product the producer used other evergreen plants easier to find on site.

The differences we mentioned to you change quite significantly the flavor profile of this tea making the tasting experience quite distant from the one you could have with a traditional Chinese Lapsang Souchong. In particular, the infuse don’t already reveal in the first sips all its smokey character but, instead, it begins with some citrusy notes. This acid feature increases its intensity while, in the back of the mouth, you can start to feel a smokey and pleasant woody flavor without any astringency. In the end, in the aftertaste, it comes a slightly pungent vegetal taste of rosemary due to the Taiwanese cultivar of camelia involved here.

Place of origin

Taiwan

Production

After the harvest the leaves wither under the sunlight for a certain period of time depending on the tea master wisdom before going through a bending phase. The leaves are pressed and rolled to mix the vegetal juices in their and so cause the beginning of the oxidation process. In this case the tea leaves are exposed to a progressive increase of temperature during the oxidation phase and, after the leaf has reached its typical dark brown color, it comes the roasting phase over wood charcoal. After some cooking cycles and few days the tea is ready to be consumed.

Preparation

We invite you to brew this tea in the traditional Chinese style (gong fu cha) in order to extract more from your leaves. Following this preparation you could use 5 grams of leaves (about 3 teaspoons) in a gaiwan of 100 ml so you can obtains more infusions with different flavors. After a brief rinse of the leaves in a 95°C water you can go with a first infusion of 10 seconds and, after that, at the same water temperature, you can do multiple infusion adding 5 seconds every steeping time (10 – 15 – 20 …)

These leaves could be steep about 7 times.

To prepare the tea in the western style we suggest 2 grams of leaves (about 1 teaspoons) in a 150 ml cup with 95°C water for a steeping time of one minute and a half.

The tea could be filtered if you want to avoid some little piece of the leaves during the tasting time and also the steeping time we recommend here could be modify on your personal preferences.

We recommend you to store this tea in a dry and cool place avoiding the direct sun light on the leaves.