How to Choose a Good Wu Long Tea ?
How to Choose a Good Wu Long Tea ?
Before you made any purchases of Wu Long Tea, you need to find out the following from your suppliers:
1) The Type/Grade of Wu Long TeaWu Long Tea is just a name for a type of Chinese Tea Category Classification similar to Green Tea, White Tea, Black Tea etc. For Wu Long Tea, its fermentation is around 40%-50% compared to the 0%-10% of green tea and 10%-20% of white tea. Within Wu Long Tea category itself, there are various grades depending of the source,location and harvest season of the tea which i will cover in the next section below. Common type of Wu Long Tea found are the Ti Kuan Yin (Tie Guan Yin) which is the best grade of Wu Long Tea, Dong Ding Wu Long (Tong Ting Wu Long) from Taiwan (commonly known as Formosa Tea) and Wuyi Cliff Tea (Wuyi Rock Tea) from the Wuyi Mountain in China. Those Wu Long Tea outside these grades are those of normal quality and are only known as Wu Long Tea just because they undergo the same processing method (same fermentation level). So be careful which type of Wu Long Tea is the one you actually buying.
2) Source, location and harvest season of the teaWu Long Tea is mostly found in Fujian,China and Taiwan (Formosa). As there are many tea farms in those area, the quality of land, altitude (height of tea farm in the mountain) and harvest seasons will affect the quality and taste of the Wu Long Tea. Personally, my favorite is Ti kuan Yin, as i love its smooth after taste effects, followed by Wuyi Cliff Tea and Dong Ding Wu Long. It is difficult for me to describe the taste for each type of Wu Long Tea for you and the best way to choose it, is by trying it out yourself and see if you love its taste. Tea is not medicine. One should appreciate it and drink it as a form of lifestyle and enjoy the process of drinking it.
3) Is there any proof that the tea's pesticide content is within allowable level ?One of the most common problem in Wu Long Tea is the high pesticides content especially from China. Locally in Singapore, our government is very strict with tea merchants importing tea. Every batch of tea imported must be lab tested for pesticides content. Any batch that failed the lab test will be destroyed. Therefore, i am quite confident of the tea i obtain locally. For US , i believe as long your FDA approved the product for sale in US, it should be all right. Try not to purchase directly from China. I have yet to find any online tea merchant displaying any lab test report for their tea. You might be interested to ask them to email one to you if available.
posted by Allen @ 5:08 PM
5 Comments:
So whats your advice on where or how to buy Wu-Long tea? Is there a website or place which is safe to buy it from?
Hi Anonymous
I bought most of my tea from TeaPal based locally in Singapore from their retail outlets located shopping mall.
You can get their tea products (Only teabags no loose tea form) from
http://www.naturaworks.com/STSoscommerce/tea-wu-long-tea-c-37_34.html
who is their authorized online reseller if you are Not in Singapore. Well, basically i trust my government's regulation authorities to do their job better than direct purchase from vendors who get their products from China too without any screening/lab test.
For Taiwan Oolong Tea or Formosa Oolong, I normally get it here. You can get good loose oolong tea here :
http://www.teafromtaiwan.com/
Hope this helps.
Mmm...maybe i should do an article on one of my tea local shopping trip with photos.....
Heys! I just came across this post and i just wanted to say that, to my knowledge, Singapore's government doesn't actually check imported teas for pesticides.
In order to get a license to import your tea, all you have to do is produce documents to certify that which every factory you are importing from is certified to be safe locally (meaning their own country). Maybe some other documents too, but none undergoing pesticides tests.
I know this because i have friends who are in the tea business in Singapore. Also, i was once interested in taking some of my own tea for pesticides testing and called AVA to ask about the procedure. The lady told me that no one really sends tea for testing and that each sample would cost $600 to test D:
The only procedure close to pesticide testing for tea would problem be the random checks at the immigration counter. They might sometimes randomly open one batch of shipping and send it for testing.
Yup, so just wanted to bring this to attention. I tried some of the tea sold in Singapore tea shops and i can tell that the pesticide levels are overwhelming. Also, sometimes just because that level is below the acceptable standard doesn't mean it is actually 'acceptable' for our body haha.
So it's always better to trust your own tastebuds. Always try the tea before you buy it. Tea should beneficial health; don't pay to harm yourself ;)
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If you are asking about where to get tea with minimum pesticides in Singapore, of the Oolongs, i usually drink Wuyi Cliff Tea, so for that, i can said that those that i have tried and think is okay, are the really high ends one at Tea Chapter, or those from Cliff Three, which is relatively new in Singapore but focuses on high quality and tea with minimum pesticide.
Notice i say minimum pesticide, because it's really hard to be 100% pesticide free these days. I know farmers who don't use any pesticides at all, but whose crops might be contaminated from pesticides used by neighboring plots of tea
At the end of the day, as i said, always try the tea before you drink it. Tea without pesticides shouldn't leave a rough feeling on your tongue or make you feel like your throat is contracting.
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