Thailand Dong Fang Mei Ren is a great ceremonial oolong for sophisticated tea adepts and at the same time a characteristic unforgettable experience for beginners. It is a product of refined taste, ideal for festive evening-time ceremonial tea sessions, a friendly chat or a special and sensual meditative experience.
Description
Visual description
The dry leaf is of an uneven carmine-brown to hazelnut-brown colour. It has medium-sized spirals of intermingled leaves with silvery white tips.
The fragrance is remarkable, fruity-tropical-floral, mellow, with hints of muscatel wine, rose, cheesecake, blueberry, pomegranate. It also has grape, moist mangrove forests, dessert wine and rosé wine nuances.
The infusion is transparent and light-golden in colour.
Taste and aroma
The bouquet of the tea soup is deep, playful and polyphonic, honey-like, floral, milky-herbaceous, bready and fruity, with berry nuances.
The aroma is sweet, warm and multifaceted: the tea’s essential oils create a real symphony on the empty cup’s surface.
The taste is a silky nectar, refined and full-bodied, sweet, with warm grape juice and forest berry sweet-and-sourness, transforming into a sweet refreshing lingering aftertaste.
General information
Thailand Oriental beauty or “Dong Fang Mei Ren”, as it more often referred to in Chinese, or “Champagne oolong” is renowned for its technology involving of tiny green-winged tea jassids Jacobiasca formosana (Fuchen-tzi) which «work» the tea plants as the young tea shoots develop. The plant protects itself by building up more terpenes in the leaves providing for an exceptional characteristic muscatel-like flavour and extra caramelisation takes place as the leaf is very slightly rolled and well-fermented. This tea was picked and processed in the northern mountainous highlands of the Kingdom of Thailand in autumn 2020. It was made using the originally Taiwanese Chin-hsin Da Pa cultivar which was one of the earliest to be imported to Thailand from Taiwan.
Brewing method
Brew the tea with hot near-boiling water (98°C+) in a porcelain gaiwan or a teapot of porous clay. The recommended proportion is 4-5 g per 100 ml. Rinse the tea with hot water and do a first infusion of about 2-4 seconds. After that do flash infusions, increasing the infusion time as the taste dwindles. You can repeat the procedure up to approximately 10-12 times, or by taste.