Learning Tie Guan Yin Oolong - Tea Documentary | China Trip

hey tea heads this is don from mayleaf in this video learning tie guanyin oolong in this video i'm going to be giving you the lowdown on china's most famous oolong tea this video is going to go under the teen master classes and the tea trips playlist if any point in time you enjoy this video then please give the video the thumbs up the more thumbs in there the more tea videos are going to come your way and if you haven't subscribed to our youtube channel yet then go click that button we have arrived in china we're in xiamen a small coastal city in southern fujian province well i say it's small but it's small by china's standards the population here is about 5 million so it's still a pretty big city we were meant to be arriving in last night we flew into china into guangzhou last night and we were meant to get a connecting flight to xiamen but due to the bad weather our flight was cancelled so we had to stay the night in guangzhou get up at 3am this morning after just a few hours sleep and we have finally after 30 hours of traveling arrived in xiamen and we are here to meet celine's mother so my mother-in-law she's going to be joining us on this expedition up to anshi county anshi county is about two hours drive away and it is the historic birthplace of te guanyin oolong tiaguan yin also known as iron goddess is by far one of china's most famous oolong teas it's constantly given as gift teas and for many people it's their first taste of property that opens their eyes to the wonders of true tea and maybe we've been stocking tiaguan in for nearly 15 years so we've got our established suppliers up in anshi county but i truly believe that i would be doing my clients a big disservice if i constantly bought the same tea from the same suppliers every year so it's always good to return to source learn more find new suppliers and find new teams so if you're ready let's go up to anshi and dive into the wonderfully aromatic world of tiagonyin [Music] [Music] welcome to anshi county anshi county is where you really need to find your tiaguan yin and there's lots of different mountainous areas in anshi county currently we purchase our iron goddess our tiago union from ganda which is a very famous mountainous area in anshi county but really today what i want to explore is shiping shiping is the birthplace of chieguan yin as it says down here on this rock this is where tie guanyin all came from and so it has that historical cache it has that tradition over many many generations so we are going to go up to shipping and see if we can find some amazing tea we've been driving up the mountain and we're nearly at the peak we're about 1 500 metres high it's a beautiful mountainous area there are lots of tea plantations around and the smell of tea is in the air let me quickly talk about the history of tieguanyin the history of tiege onyen dates back to around the 1700s emperor chen long was a very prominent historical figure in chinese history and he was a great lover of teas and he fell in love with tiegwan yin and he brought this tea into prominence since then it was made in the tong style the trenton style is the traditional style of making tiegwanyon which is a slightly heavier oxidized tea but in the 1990s influence from taiwan came back to the mainland and the influence for those light green very aromatic bright taiwanese oolongs came back to china and tieguanyin started to be produced in this style and it became very very popular for its floral aromas and it's for its very bright very fresh character and this is how it has been since the 1990s the qingxiang style this taiwanese style has become prominent since the 90s and this is how tiagonian is widely known today but i'll talk more about the different styles of tie guanine when we reach the peak we're walking through a tea plantation and i just wanted to stop and show you what i look for when we're searching for good tea this is a really really good example of a nice tea plantation you can see it's very very steep the water is going to run through it very very quickly if you listen out i'll shut up for a second you may hear that the water is running through it so the mountain water is running through you can see that the plants are the tea plants are planted on top of rocks so you can see the piles of rocks over there we'll hopefully get another shot of it so that again is all about making sure that the water runs through very very easily runs through quickly you don't want any water logged soil which will affect the quality of the tea the other thing that you notice is the amount of varied vegetation here this is not some sort of homogenized tea plantation where the land has been stripped and tea plants have been planted for easy picking and easy cultivation instead the tea plants have been planted with lots of other vegetation including shrubs and lots of osmanthus trees osmanthus is a really really fragrant flower and i wonder how much that affects the flavor of the resulting tea if you look over here you can take a look at the soil maybe celine you can get a close-up of this soil very crumbly can you see this very crumbly light soil this is exactly what you want sandy crumbly soil nothing that's going to get waterlogged something that's going to be really really good in terms of irrigation and you can see up here the rocks that i was talking about these tea plants here have been planted intentionally on layered rocks like this to make sure that the water flows through it very easily and that it doesn't get waterlogged the age of these tea trees they're probably something in the region of about 10 years old 10 to 15 years old for tiguan yinti it's not such a major factor the age of the tea trees higher aged tea trees will always command a higher value and a higher price but in general these are probably around 10 to 15 years old so this is an example of a really really good kind of tea plantation um the smell in here is so fragrant and it's the thing that i always left with whenever i come back from the mountains whenever we go to search for oolong teas is this smell that you just cannot recreate and every time you brew tea it's just giving you a hint of this smell in this room it's flowery with that hint of green which is still in the air which is still in the leaves it's a wonderful wonderful aroma i want to stick my nose in those leaves come on that smell so this is the guanyin varietal variety here so it's still got the green which is uh as if you pick any piece of grass that very fresh uh green smell the smell of freshly cut grass but more than that you've got this extremely floral aroma i would say that the flowers are closer to slightly more magnolia with a bit of lemon peel yeah magnolia with a little bit of lemon zest it's got a little bit of milkiness to it too and this is now in its resting phase in its indoor withering phase the temperature here is slightly cooler they'll adjust the temperature in this room according to how hot the weather is outside [Music] [Music] uh i'm going to attempt to go through the basic process to make tieguanyin so first of all it's picked the the picking is up to four leaves no buds it's then brought for solar withering the solar withering is about half an hour and the leaves have to be moved continuously so there's an even exposure with the sun it's very important that you have solar withering because that builds up much more flavor those aromatic compounds that you want for really good qigong yin after that the leaves are brought inside in a cool you can see relatively dim location and they are left for indoor withering so they're going to be left and it depends on the weather it depends on the leaves how long they're left for and during this indoor withering from time to time they will be doing the shaking just like with all oolong teas so they'll be using bamboo drums like this that will rotate for a few minutes so they'll load the leaves in here and these will slowly rotate and then they'll take them out and they'll put them in these bamboo trays here and they'll do this over the period until the tea master feels that the level of oxidation you can see that the leaves are starting to oxidize here if you take a look you can see this this red hue that's happening here so the tea master will be looking at this smelling and they'll be deciding how many times it needs to be shaken and for how long it needs to be left for for really super duper high quality oolong teas the shaking will not be done in the machines but will be done by hand but this is a very very small amount of hand shaken oolong hand shaking tie guanine this tiego onion has been shaken in the bamboo drums and will be left now the amount of time that you leave these leaves for and the amount of times you shake them has a big effect on the flavor but we'll talk a little bit that about that later let's go through the process when the tea master feels that the tea has reached the optimum level of oxidation then they will fire the tea and they'll do it just like they do in taiwan come here they'll do it in these large spinning drums probably something in the region of about 200 degrees celsius but it depends again on how many leaves they're firing and the team master has control over that so these will go in here and it spins at a hot temperature and once it's ready once it's been fixed in other words the enzymes in the leaf have been deactivated which again is done by hand and done by eye so you're sniffing and you're looking they'll release the leaves and these leaves will then be brought here to the rolling machine this is small batch rolling and what this does if you come in close here this this pushes down on the leaves and this spins and you can see these lovely gentle curved ridges here what that does is it rolls the leaf it presses the leaf and it essentially brings out all of the oils brings out all of the juicy sticky flavorful compounds to the surface to make for a much more rich tea when you brew it after that the arduous task of rolling begins so they'll let it cool and then they'll bring it over here and they will put the leaves in these bags and they'll put it in this rolling machine over here it basically rolls it and then that's the loose roll and then they put it inside these machines to get an even tighter roll and then they'll repeat this process and you can see behind you this uh has been rolled and now he's opening it all up again and he's going to do it again from time to time usually at least twice they will put it in this baking machine this baking machine is just to dry it it's not to add flavor although that obviously there will be some effect on the flavor but it's to dry it and they will repeat this process again and again and again until the leaves are nice and tightly rolled to make nice dry ball rolls oolong one other thing i want to show you is after they've rolled it and it's in this tight clump they'll either loosen it by hand or they'll loosen it in a machine like this and what this does is it starts to strip out the red edges of the leaf so that you saw previously that the leaves had developed a red edge as it had oxidized what this does is it strips off the red edge so if you look at tie guanine it'll look like it's got a slightly torn edge that's because the red edge has gone dry in the heat it's been heated it's gone dry it's gone quite brittle and so when they're shaking it that will naturally strip away so you'll naturally strip away that red edge and you'll have this slightly torn edge and that's the basic processing for tie guanine [Music] we're in a hotel room and i wanted to pause for a second to talk to you about the different types of tie guanine because it can get a little bit complicated so i need your undivided attention let's start with variety tie guanine is actually the name of a variety of tea plant and it's the variety which is most commonly used to make this type of tea in the 90s they started to strip away all the other varieties and focusing on tieguanyin now this is something that i don't really like to see because i prefer variety in the tea industry i don't like homogenization in the tea industry however having said that tiguanin variety is a very very good variety for making this type of tea however you can make tieguanyin from other varieties and they are all bundled under the name tieguanyin so it can be a little bit confusing other varieties that you may find another common variety is benshan benshan variety used to be made more is less made today but is uh but is widely available on the market bench on variety is a little bit more milky so it's similar to a ginchuan variety if you know taiwanese varieties but for my taste it's a little bit too simple it's a little bit too light that's for my taste and i prefer the tieguanyin variety another nice variety is the huangdan variety the huangdang variety is more floral it's a little bit more flowery in taste than the tiaguan variety it's another nice variety and that's an early budding variety so it's picked early earlier in the year you can take the huangdan variety and you can graft it and cross it with the tieguanyin variety if you do that you make another variety or a hybrid variety called the huang guanyin variety and that's a nice variety more floral again but it's kind of got slight sour notes to it um like sour apple candy aftertaste to it which is in my opinion very nice and a nice interesting diversion from the usual tiguanyan less commonly used varieties include mouse here mouse here is the hairy crab variety more commonly used to make other types of tea like black tea but can be used to make tiegun yin or there's meijan meijan again is more commonly used in wee province so not in the anshi county of fujian but in the woody province of fujian to make other types of tea but can sometimes be used to make tiege okay so those are the cultivars that you're most likely to find on the market now let's talk about the different styles of making tie1 yin so the best way to look at it is that there are two basic styles for making tieguanyin one is the traditional style which is known as chuentong so the traditional style and then there's the modern style and the difference between them is the level of oxidation so during the oxidation phase depending upon the temperature in the room if it's a higher temperature then it will oxidize quicker and also the amount of times that they're shaking the leaves will affect the level of oxidation so they'll control the factors to decide whether or not they're going to go for the tong or traditional style which is a heavier oxidized tea compared to the modern style which is all about lightness brightness keeping the tea green and having a very bright fresh tall aroma so traditional style and modern style the modern style is sometimes referred to as ching shang or light bright clear aroma tea however this can be a bit confusing because you can get people talking about traditional qingxiang style in other words mod traditional style but still having a bright aroma so the best way for you to think of it as is as traditional and modern style then you can choose whether or not you want to roast the tea or not so roasted tea would turn the tea into non shang nong means heavy aroma tea so non xiang means it's roasted and there are different levels of roasting from light to medium to dark so you can have all of the different range of roasting as well now the modern style is less likely to be roasted because as i said modern style is more about keeping the tea bright keeping the fragrance very light maintaining all the high notes and having a very bright light aroma whereas the traditional style is more about focusing on the body and the kind of smoothness of the teeth so it's less likely that you're going to have roasted modern style however it does exist so just because you see non xiang tiegwan yin roasted tiegwanyin it doesn't necessarily mean that it was made in the traditional style right however the traditional style is usually more suited to roasting okay so those are the different styles now we're going to go one step further and talk about the balance of the tea making so the time it takes between picking and firing of the tea is dependent again upon the temperature of the room the amount of shaking that they do and what kind of tea they want to make so if um you imagine from picking until firing as a kind of spectrum of time so from picking to the to firing the shortest period of time is kind of the next day the next morning or sometimes the same day and this is known as jungway so jungway is the first is the shortest period of time from firing and that usually means it's gone through the most amount of shaking to try and get the water out of the leaves so that's jung wei next in line is xiaojiang the next in line is xiao qing the next in line is xiao swan and the last is twas one which is usually about two days after picking so from kind of the next morning to about two days after picking and so this gives them a kind of eq balance of flavors in general chong wei is the most floral and kind of creamy and the longer it takes for the water to to the longer it takes for them to fire the the leaf means that the water stayed in the leaves longer and that generally makes the tea a little bit fresher a little bit more kind of uh green and a little bit more sour so you can control or the producers can control the balance of flavors depending on how long it takes for them to fire the tea i told you it was complicated we are in sheeping village and we are trying to find tea of course and we're looking for both the trenton and the qingxian tea so this is a jungway trenton so it's a traditional style zhong wei this one here is a zhongwei qingxian so this is the modern style and it's got what i'm finding is a little bit frustrating in sheeping we're getting a lot of really great aromatics a lot of tall aromatics milky and floral but the finish is too short the trenton this area is famous for trenton tea so we're hoping that this is going to be a little bit more successful you can see it's all maocha still needs to be sorted so we're going to sort it out and we're going to taste this one and we'll be back to see what it's like we tried the zhongwei trenton it was not roasted and it was really nice milky floral had a much more rounded finish it needs the roast and it's always difficult whenever we're selecting tea when we try these teas that haven't been roasted we're trying to imagine what they're going to be like it's a i don't like doing it but sometimes you have to now this one is a xiao zhang so this one here is a xiaojiang trenton again right so it's got more freshness it's got more of the candy it's got more of the um slight i wouldn't say sourness but freshness and less of the milkiness and floral notes but again [Music] it's unroasted so it's got that very sharp [Music] bitter finish again having to guess what it's going to be like when it's roasted we're going to keep sampling like this keep sampling you can see behind this gentleman here there's probably about 10 15 sacks of tea from different farmers um this person here collects the tea from the different farmers and sorts them and grades them and then sends them off for roasting but we can purchase at this point now if we like them um pre-roasting we can even purchase it without roast if we wanted to so there's lots of options there's lots of permutations there's lots that we can do but this is what we do we keep tasting tasting tasting and then finally make some decisions we found one after about seven seven different tries we found one finally this is again a trenton unroasted zheng wei guan yin lots of words to say but hopefully by the end of this video you'll know what i mean it's unroasted it could be roasted but it doesn't need to be and i think it's got enough going on that it doesn't need to be roasted it's creamy it's floral and the aftertaste is of this kind of sour candy not sour as in the actual taste of sourness but the the the kind of the the ghost of a sour candy taste sour apple kind of taste really really like it they've only got a tiny amount left so i'm to snap that up and bring that back to london and we'll keep tasting and see if we find anything else temptations temptations temptations this is a huang dan and it's it's really really interesting the aroma is very much like egg yolk that's the best description that i can make celine says it smells like moon cakes when you cut a moon cake and it's got that egg yolk inside it's floral but it's got this kind of yeah yolky kind of smell to it and the taste is really really nice to start but it's very short so it needs to be charcoal roasted so now we have to decide whether or not we're going to buy some and bring it to a charcoal roaster which we know we can bring it to a charcoal roaster and then charcoal roast it for us to our specifications i'm very very tempted keep your eye open for this one it's nice it's really nice it's really nice we are at our charcoal roasting ladies place in anshi city and we have purchased some huangdang you can see behind me here and now we have the very difficult decision about how much to roast it how high the roast needs to be so you can see here this is about 20 to 25 hour at quite high heat roasting this one will age very well if you store it in light tight and relatively airtight conditions that will age really well so it will stay really flavorful for quite a few years this one here next to it is a is a light roast so this is about 10 hours and this will bring out more of the fragrance it will be lighter it'll be brighter it'll be less fruity and then this is the in-betweener so this is about 15 hours so you can see the choices don't stop when you're trying to choose your tea and what you want to do with it the choices keep going so now we've got to make a decision i really really really really am stuck here so we're just going to keep tasting and just try to figure out which one feels right for this tea i'm i'm about to melt in here this is really really really hot i have no idea how they work in these conditions you can see here this is the charcoal roasting there's the charcoal and underneath this one he just showed us it's also very glowing embers and here is the tea roasting and it's very important that they do not allow any of this dust tea dust to fall into the into the embers take a look in here so this is now burnt down but if you scrape that away you've still got glowing embers in there so you've got to be very careful that you don't allow any of this tea dust to fall in otherwise it will cause smoke and that will ruin the tea so he's just moving it around this is very very skilled very very skilled he knows what he's doing and on it goes it is scorching hot in here i can't tell you how hard it is it's really like i feel like i'm in um the hottest sauna i've ever been in so the tea is sitting here this looks like it's a very dark roast here so this has probably been sitting here for about 20 hours already but he's still going and if he's doing this over 20 hour period he'll probably come in at least twice two three times to move it around so that it's an even roast [Applause] so this is the charcoal that they're using you can see it is made entirely from solid pieces of wood do we know what wood it is even better one of my favorite fruits so this is the wood from longan longan fruit is a is similar to a lychee and this is the wood charcoal from the longan tree [Music] many of you have probably heard of the origin story of tiege onyen but in case you haven't i'll give you a quick recap a farmer was walking past a temple of guanyin guanyin is the god or goddess of compassion and mercy and saw that the temple was falling apart and needed some love and attention and so the farmer cleaned the temple renovated it and as a present as a gift guanyin came into his dream and instructed him where he could find a very special tea plant well we are staying at the farmhouse of a direct descendant of wei yin nine generations down and i had this amazing opportunity to talk to him about this story and he says that the family knowledge is that guanyin did in fact come into the dream of wei yin around 300 years ago but he didn't renovate any temple that part of the story is not true but guanyin came into his dream and instructed him instructed him of where he could find this special tea plant a great story follow me okay celine you need to get a good shot here this tea plant nestled on the ledge here is supposedly the original mother tie guanyin plant that wei yin discovered nearly 300 years ago the date is supposedly 1723 now i don't know how true this story is but supposedly that tea plant over there is the one that was first discovered and from this mother tea plant all other guanyin varieties all other guanyin cultivars were created so that tea plant is about 300 years old clearly it's being trimmed and it's being kept very carefully and tea is not made from that tea plant anymore but if you follow me up here and be careful your steps so all of these teas have origin stories but it's very rare that you can actually get to see the original mother plant that everybody is talking about beautiful environment here tourist free as you can see amazingly and you can see all the inscriptions here so you can imagine imagine the history 300 years ago weigh-in dreaming about this plant coming to visit this stream and finding this special plant and then deciding to make tea out of it and tasting this incredible aromatic tiege so if you come over here these tea bushes here which again i feel so privileged i can actually just touch and i can pick if i wanted these t bushes are the first generation from the mother bush so there's the mother bush down there and these plants here these two bushes here are these two bushes here so this one and this one are the first generation so what they did is they take this plant and they put it down into the ground they bury it so that it starts to create roots and then this creates another plant and from there they can take cuttings and then they can graft and graft and graft and now this area is covered covered with the guanine variety look look at this little tea seeds are coming i might need to grab a few of those if i can and need to wait for them to be mature i guess but you know it's pretty rare that you can actually get a tea seed from the first generation of tiegoing you can see some husks of tea seeds here right so they are around i'm going to go snooping and hunting around over here is a lovely carving in the rock here be careful you're okay a lovely carving in the rock here take a look at this very content serene face this is wei yin so this is a depiction of wei yin the original cultivator and maker of tiagon yin and over there perched overlooking everything is guanyin herself let's talk about the picking for tieguanyin so take a look at this bush here that we've just passed by and i want to show you what we look for when we're doing picking okay so let me bring your attention to this one here can you see the bud here this is the bud i don't know if celine can you get a good focus on it so this is the bud and you can see that the bud starts life very very fat and as it grows the leaves start to open up see that used to be the bud right this is why we talk about white tea and you want very fat buds for white tea for yin gen because this used to be the but this used to be a fatter bud and now as the leaf is growing and maturing it's starting to open up a layer and that's going to become a leaf and eventually that's going to grow into a larger leaf and then move down the plant so for some teas you want to include buds but for tiege one year you don't for te guanyin and for most oolongs you want to wait for this bud to have disappeared in other words for the leaves to have completely opened out and the buds have been have disappeared let me show you one down here so let me can you can you get into this one see if i can hold it for you so now you can see that the bud is a lot smaller very very small we're approaching the part where the bud is starting to disappear but again we wouldn't pick this for tiege onion the reason is in the rolling process for these ball roll doolongs these young leaves and these buds would just get shredded and get pulled away and would be a waste and they would just get lost so again the this leaf is too young and it's got buds so we wouldn't pick this one either let me show you one that we would pick so here can you see that here is an example with the bud you can see that little nub of a bud there has now pretty much disappeared the leaves are large enough it's still pliable it's still got a nice glossy shiny pliable it's still young so this is perfect for picking and we would either pick three or four leaves so one two three or one two three four you'd probably pick around here and that is the kind of picking that we're looking for with tieguanyin and with many oolong teas so the bud has disappeared but you can still see this leaf is still got a beautiful sheen it's got that lovely lovely young fresh leaf sheen there's another one here i can see let me just turn that around can you see the bud has just turned around again you see the bud has pretty much disappeared that would do so again i would be picking here and you'd have either three or four leaves so when we say up to three or four leaves this is what we mean this is the classic oolong picking we are at the top of the mountainous area of shipping we had to come visit the top plantation we're above 2000 metres high now and they're harvesting in this most bijou little plantation that i think i've ever seen it must be producing some very very top quality tea and maybe we'll get to try some and you can see this row here has been has been picked already and this here is ready to pick and they're slowly moving their way towards me so i'm not going to disturb them too much so this is leaf which is ready for picking and the pick as i said previously would be three or four leaves something like this is the pick it's perfect let me move in a bit closer can you see how the bud has disappeared here but has disappeared so it's perfect maybe this leaf is a little bit young but it's still pretty good should we see what they've got in their sack i'm gonna see if i can grab one here see if i can just grab a little look they've got there you go take a look here exactly what you'd expect no bud three leaves here sometimes they'll do four leaves they're picking partly by hand and partly i don't know if you can get in there selene using this little side here which is the first time i've ever seen this side in taiwan they have little razor blades that they strap onto their fingers so they can cut very easily look how quickly they're going and it may look like it's not that accurate but you can see just by picking out what they've got in their sack of goodies there that they are picking exactly the right things because these bushes are ready these are perfect the buds have all gone they've all disappeared you can't see any buds left here can you see no buds left they've all gone so it's all about picking the right time to harvest i'll put this back don't want to take their precious their precious produce and take a look around this is a very very small small plantation it's owned by a gentleman in xiamen and he's rented away it's not owned by him he's renting it from the government the government owns all of the land here even mobile phones are ringing at the top of a mountain in anshi county that's how technology has has arrived yep the old tea pickers gotta pick up your phone calls [Music] [Laughter] [Music] oh she was very kind and switched it off for us so here you go top top quality tea being picked by hand this is going to be produced this is the guanine variety and this is going to be produced into zhengwei high quality this is like the the tea window you see this is like you know you go to a cafeteria and you get really bad tea given to you this is the absolute opposite because we're at 2 000 meters incredible tiegum onion is if you look down here celine incredible tiagonian is freshly picked and it's going going through its withering phase here and the team master here is just gonna knock up some incredibly expensive no doubt tea for us through this window [Music] that is crazy so it's got the charcoal roast but it's very very light and really what you're getting is sweet sweet plum this is the best one you ever tasted my gosh it's got everything it's got the milk it's got that milkiness it's got a very light roast actually it's more the fermented it's more the oxidation it's got more of a heavier oxidation which gives it that sweeter which gives it that sweeter sweeter tone to it yeah it's like a it's like a it's like a slightly fermented plum like yeah you know the the the um slightly um salted and cooked plum and the color is getting more vibrant okay i'm gonna switch the camera around you need to try this t come on that is like intensely sweet creamy floral it's got so much complexity it's delicious it's delicious can we get someone okay so we've just been told that the master who makes this tea makes it in the very ancient and she style he's not revealing anything more than that in terms of what that actually means there is definitely something in this tea yeah it just tastes fuller so when he sells this tea he sells it with the store oh yeah see that's bold right that's bold right there it's like no i'm not gonna i'm not gonna strip the stalk off you're gonna drink the stalking you're gonna like it [Laughter] we need to get this where [Music] [Laughter] [Music] [Laughter] [Music] we've returned to the roaster in anshi city to collect our tea and to taste it so this is the huangdang tea that we delivered yesterday she kindly knowing that we were leaving very shortly we're leaving anshi county tomorrow she kindly made it priority and she roasted it and she gave it a relatively light roast nine hours which was what we agreed to keep it quite fragrant quite light but give it that roundness and that richness so here is the tea and we're gonna try it for the first time i'm a little bit excited a little bit nervous to see how this turned out it smells great smells really really good so let's taste it oh my god it is so good she has kept she has kept the fragrance the lightness it's it's still got this butteriness and floral notes but now it's just it's it's smoother it's so much smoother than it was before it it had a shortness it had a finish that was a bit disappointingly short and the roast just extends that thickens the body and gives it a bit more length and it's smoother and it's rounder and i can feel it on the sides of my tongue more the color is really nice as well i'm so happy [Music] it's got the yolkiness it's got that floral note but it's just round it's just more round like it is the sweetness is there it tastes finished she's next to me i need to show her because she wants to see herself here you go say hello say hello camera shy welcome to the tiagonian classroom as always i am blown away by the hospitality and the good fortune that i receive when i come to china to explore tea and this trip has even surpassed all other trips we are currently in the tiaguan yin museum in anshi city we've been exploring anshi county for the past three days drinking lots of tiago onion tasting learning and trying to find the good stuff and we have found quite a lot today we've come here to the museum and we have been so privileged because the um owner of the museum is a direct descendant of weigh-in the owner of the museum is somebody who is that we met up in the mountains you've seen the video already and his family owns this place and they've invited us here and they found out we had nowhere to sleep tonight so they let us sleep in the museum so it's after hours the museum's shut we've got the whole museum to ourselves and we've just had a lovely meal in the in the canteen of the museum but i wanted to say thank you to them so i want to introduce you so here they are drinking tea after hours and i want to introduce you to them and say thank you to everybody first of all let's start here this young lady looking at her phone xiaozhong she is being the most incredible host showing us around bringing us to all the places she is a tie guanine expert she has been purchasing tiagonian for many years this is the youngest son of um mr wei so this is xiaowei he is the future tea master so get ready in the future you're going to hear this guy's name he's going to be the future tea master of tiagoin yin i know that for sure and here we have very honored lady way is here this is uh the wife of uh ueda and she has kindly opened her doors to us and shared her tea and she's now sharing her museum with us over here we've got james james we call him james bond obviously he has been bringing us around he's a font of knowledge he is again a direct descendant of the wei yin family so direct descendant and he's um part of the tie guanine heritage and empire but he's also been our driver so while we've been snoozing in the back seat he's been driving us around so thank you very much james thank you you're welcome and this is a learned scholar of tiege far a very very learned he's been teaching us a lot really giving us the full knowledge that i can then pass on to you we're drinking what are we drinking we're doing a traditional so a chuentong [Music] so the classic obviously these guys are authentic so they're going to drink chuentong so thank you to everybody oh no no no no no no no no no my mother-in-law i would get into a lot of trouble if i forgot her my mother-in-law mu she has been helping doing a lot of interpreting translating and just bringing life and laughter to the whole party and without her this trip would not be possible so thank you thank you thank you so i want to give gratitude to everyone we're going to keep drinking tea but i thought that this was absolutely necessary and take a look around we're drinking tea in the most incredible location it's the next morning at the museum and we are privileged behind the scenes this gentleman here is the master tea taster he needs to grade and classify all the tieguanyin coming through this this building he's just started it's about 8 30 a.m he's just starting this is like this is truly the inner circle of tiagoing in here this is the original tea tasters the authentic tea tasters at the tiege museum that is tasting all the tea coming in through the fields and you know we're we are definitely in the inner most of inner circles i'm hoping that i can try some of that tea [Music] [Music] and he has said that he would like to invite me to taste the best tiagonian spring harvest this year so out of thousands of teas coming from all over anshi in his opinion this is the best tieguanyin of 2000 i'm speechless really oh okay the note is floral but quite clean starts off grassy moves slightly sour that kuan yin yun that kuan yin that slight puckering sensation very very clean tasting and then the milk and the flowers this rich bouquet of milk and flowers suddenly burst forth through the nose so it's very interesting actually because the teeth is extremely fresh and bright and clean and zesty on the mouth but buttery and floral on the nose i've never actually experienced such a dichotomy in terms of the nose and the mouth really really fascinating incredible incredible tea i'm not gonna ask price on this guys by the way because it's gonna be something astronomical the nose is like magnolia and custard it's like magnolia flowers and the richest egg custard that you've ever smelt okay i said i wasn't going to find out the price but i couldn't help myself so i've just been told the most valuable tea this is if you don't remember this is the young master in training so for the finest tea coming out of this area one jing which is 500 grams will set you back something like 180 000 rmv which works out it works out to be about let's say about 18 000 give or take 18 i don't know something like that 18 19 000 dollars for one gin which is 500 grams i told you i really it was pointless me finally out the price but there you go in case any of you were wondering i'm kind of speechless um the whole trip we've been here in anshu for four days now and we've been trying to find a ching chang and we've got a really high quality ching chang already we from another supplier that we purchased but we've been looking for other suppliers and i've been a little bit frustrated because i haven't been able to find any and much to everyone's frustration i've been refusing lots and lots of samples we've tried dozens and dozens of samples and as is always the case the last day the last hour before we head back to xiamen i'm suddenly presented in this inner circle of tiago and yin buyers um with two qing changs that just are incredible and i found out that they are hand shaken so they're not shaken by the bamboo rollers they're actually shaking by hand by tea masters this is really really top drawer stuff um i found that out after tasting it by the way but the taste is incredible i'm trying to choose between two one of which is a little bit more creamy and yolky and the other one's more kind of fruity and floral and i've been back and forth back and forth back and forth and you know what i just i can't decide and so we're going to get both we're going to get a small quantity of both i have no idea how we're going to put them in the luggage honestly we're already full but we'll figure out a way i cannot leave here without taking some of this tea with us so this is coming back to london with us and we're about to head back to siamen and then go to japan for some green tea hunting but that's the end of this video i hope that this has enriched your knowledge about this incredible and most famous chinese oolong and now you are the connoisseurs that's it t-heads if you made it to the end of this video then please give the video the thumbs up check out our youtube playlist and let us know if there are any videos that you'd like us to make if you're ever in london then come visit us in camden to taste our wares if you have any questions or comments then please fire them over other than that selena's behind the camera and i'm don from melee thank you for being a part of the revelation of true tea stay away from the tea bags keep drinking the sublime stuff and spread the word because nobody deserves bad tea bye you

Channel: Mei Leaf

Views: 99,742

Keywords: tea, don mei, loose leaf tea, oolong tea, websites for tea, tea tasting, tea shopping, high quality tea, chinese tea, taiwanese tea, japanese tea, tea ware, teaware, tea gifts, gong fu tea, gong fu brewing, tei guan yin, tie kuan yin, iron goddess, iron goddess of mercy tea, tieguanyin, tiekuanyin, iron goddess oolong, tie guan yin oolong, chinese oolong, fujian oolong, anxi oolong, xiping tea, what is oolong tea, how is oolong tea made, wulong tea, чай улун

Id: CS-KCBmY2pA

Length: 58min 14sec (3494 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 10 2017