It’s as fun to drink as it is to say. Its Chinese name is 烏龍茶, meaning black dragon tea. But make no mistake, oolong is not a black tea. Nor is it green. It’s somewhere in between. Sophisticated oolong teas are grown on the highest mountain tops of Taiwan and parts of China, and on the base of cliffs in remote valleys of the Wuyi Mountains. Sip it for the ultimate natural high.

This wonderful tea has been around since the Ming Dynasty and its limited growing areas make it a prized possession. Oolongs have always been revered for their aroma and flavour. It’s said that if you sip a good oolong, you taste the cold mountain dew, the light breeze, and the dark soil that gave the tea the taste of its mountain top home.

Oolong (aka Wulong) is often made from more mature, darker, richer leaves than whites and greens, and undergoes a very complex and time-consuming series of bruising and partial drying. Oolongs are semi-oxidized so they fit in between green teas that undergo no oxidation and black teas that are fully oxidized.

Some people think that oolong is so special because it’s all rolled by hand. However, in some cases oolong has jumped into the modern age. With so many avid oolong drinkers in Taiwan, extremely advanced processing techniques mimicking hand rolling have developed to keep pace with the demand. Some famous hand-rolled oolongs are still produced in China and on some smaller gardens in Taiwan. We carry several of these hand-rolled types. Either way, the complex processing of the leaves results in a wonderfully complex array of flavours in your cup – from vegetal to fruity and rosy to even nut butter notes. Oolong teas are often tightly wound, and expand dramatically during infusion, so the type of infuser used is very important. This makes it perfect for Gong-Fu Cha; an ancient practice of multiple infusions of the same tea, so that the leaves open up more and more to reveal a different flavour every time.