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GABA Taiwanese Oolong Loose Leaf Oolong Tea

$104.00
$0.00 $104.00
$2.08 per cup
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A bright amber oolong with high levels of GABA (gamma-aminobutyric acid) from the monsoon drenched mountains of Pinglin, Taiwan. You might compare this tea to a fine malt whisky that has been quietly resting in sherry casks. A bright aroma over deep flavour.

Also known as Gabaron, Jia Ye Long or Jia Wu Long cha.

Tasting Notes

This unique oolong transports you in the first sip to a tea garden in harvest. There are aromas of freshly plucked spring leaves and honey over deeply concentrated flavours of dried fruits from tropical mango and pineapple to sticky prune and raisin.

Origin

Ching Yuan Tea, Pinglin, Taiwan

Cost Per Cup

$2.08 per cup based on 3g of tea per 150ml of water and 3 infusions.
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Recommended Infusion Guide

  • Quantity

    Use 3g of tea per 150ml of water.

  • Temperature

    For the optimum infusion use 100Β°C water.

  • Time

    Infuse for 1-2 minutes, tasting regularly.

  • Infusions

    This tea can be infused at least three times. With each careful infusion, different subtleties of flavour are revealed. In a gaiwan, possibly six.

1 3

More infusion tips

How to infuse your tea is very personal, and these are just our recommendations based on experience. Please experiment with these variables to your heart's delight. These are our recommendations, not hard and fast rules. The most delicious tea is the one you love.

Our guide uses a standard tea cup size (150ml/5.5 oz) as a measure, please adjust the quantity of leaf accordingly for less or more water. Our whole loose leaves are of such a high quality that you can infuse our teas at least twice, and the second infusion is often better than the first, with different flavours revealed as the leaf softens. If you prefer your tea stronger, add more leaf, don’t leave it for longer (this will just make it bitter).

Making oolong with a gaiwan

A gaiwan is the ultimate way to enjoy your oolong tea, using a high leaf-to-water ratio that extracts very quickly. Used in China since the Ming dynasty (over 900 years ago), gaiwans are unassuming but beautifully functional teapots that can be used to explore tea to its fullest – the following method can be used to make up to six infusions.

For small gaiwans (e.g. our Traditional Gaiwan) start with 2-4g of tea, for larger gaiwans (e.g. our Easy Pour Gaiwan) use 4-6g.

If you're using a rolled oolong (Tie Guan Yin, Waikato Oolong, 21st Century Breakfast or Golden Lily Milk Oolong) this next step will greatly improve your infusion. Using boiling water cover the leaf in your gaiwan and immediately strain and discard the liquid. This "wash" softens the surface of the rolled leaves and allows the water to better penetrate.

If you're using a traditional gaiwan and you don't want to burn your fingers, please fill the bowl just to where the sides begin to curve outwards towards the rim. If you're an experienced gaiwan handler you can fill the bowl higher – its just important to note that as the water level reaches close to the rim it gets very hot to handle.

With such a high leaf-to-water ratio the infusion is very quick; infuse you leaf for 5-10 seconds and strain completely into your cup or a jug. There's no need to reheat the water as you go, because the softened leaves will require lower temperatures to release their flavours - but you will need to extend the time to 10-20 seconds for later infusions. We recommend at least six infusions to allow the leaf to completely open out and reveal all its beauty.

For a more comprehensive guide to using a gaiwan (including a video), click here for our full guide.

This sublime oolong also makes an extraordinarily good cold infused tea.

Add 8g of dry leaf per litre (0.3 oz per 34 fl oz) of cold filtered water and leave to infuse overnight in the fridge. You will get a super special, rich, chocolatey, mangoey infusion.

What is GABA?

GABA is gamma-aminobutyric acid, one of the brain’s important neurotransmitters, that regulates stress.

What is GABA tea?

GABA tea is a relatively new emerging tea category. Its development originated in Japan by Dr. Tsushida in the 1980s.

Tea leaves are slowly oxidised in a nitrogen-rich environment. Nitrogen flushes out the oxygen to produce an anaerobic environment for several hours during crafting. During this time natural glutamic acid in the tea leaves is converted into GABA.

This results is not just a much larger amount of GABA molecules present in the finished tea, but what attracted us to this oolong tea were the incredible flavours. Jammy notes of dried fruits appear in this succulent and truly unique tea. The unique terroir is every bit as crucial to the flavour as the crafting.

What are the benefits of GABA tea?

The content of Ξ³-aminobutyric acid (GABA) in every 100g of this tea is around 150mg.

It offers the potential benefit of lowering stress and anxiety and aiding rest.

We are not doctors or scientists and make no health claims. It's unclear how the body absorbs the GABA in tea and more research is required. But what we can say for sure is that this is an organically grown tea; rich in L-theanine and caffeine and the amino acids and antioxidant properties of all good tea. And it tastes amazing.

This tea is grown and harvested by a collection of small organic farmers in the Pinglin region, where the Beisshi River flows into the Xindian and down into the Emerald Reservoir.

This unique terroir is drenched by the northeast monsoons and the water coming from the surrounding mountains flows down through the tea into the rivers and reservoir - an essential water source for 2.5 million people in Taipei City.

For this reason there are very strict environmental and conservation regulations in the region. The tea farmers work organically to protect this precious environment and the water that flows through it and the people reliant on it.

"In our organic tea, we don't over-intervene; we allow everything to operate autonomously within a framework of chaos. Countless insects and animals freely inhabit and hibernate, while nameless wild grasses flourish and wither with the seasons. The intermingling of microorganisms in the soil creates a self-sufficient micro-ecosystem that provides the tea trees with wonderful flavour compounds and nutrients."

The organic farmers work together with Ching Yuan Tea and the Tse-Xing Organic Agriculture Foundation, a non-profit organization established in 1997.

The mission's foundation is to promote physical and mental well-being, to restore the vitality of the earth to benefit future generations and to promote compassionate initiatives to build a better society.

Currently, the foundation carries out major initiatives focusing on environmental sustainability: promoting organic agriculture, green conservation, plastic reduction, and tree planting.

Ching Yuan Tea is one of the initiatives under the foundation's organic agriculture promotion program.

Hou You-Sheng is the tea master who crafts our GABA oolong.

  • Inspired to put ecological and organic environmental philosophy into practice, he moved from a pharmaceutical career to learn about tea production, tea garden management, and organic tea promotion.

    Mr. Hou has now been with Ching Yuan for 18 years.

Shipping, delivery & more...

Shipping Information

UK Shipping Rates
FREE UK Tracked when you spend Β£40 or more
FREE UK Express - Next Day* when you spend Β£60 or more
UK Tracked - Two Day Tracked Β£3.99
UK Express - Next Day* Tracked Β£5.49
UK Express - Next Day* Courier from Β£6.99

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FREE Europe Tracked when you spend €70/DKK 515/CHF 65 or more
Europe Tracked Delivery from €5.95/DKK 45/CHF 6
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*Subject to next day cut-off and postcode location. Availability of rates depends on location and order weight. For a complete overview of our shipping rates please see our delivery page. Prices displayed at the checkout are based on live currency exchange rates and may differ slightly from the listed price. Prices quoted in Β£ GBP will be converted to your local currency if available.

Returns

The Rare Tea Lady believes that our teas are some of the greatest in the world, and that our range and service are second to none.

In the isolated case that you are not completely satisfied with any product you purchase from our website, please get in contact with our customer services team to discuss returning your order.*

In most instances, we will give you a full refund of the item's cost, excluding postage. We may ask you to return the item to us.** Customers in the UK & European Union have statutory rights not affected by this guarantee, but any bags of tea must remained sealed for this to be in effect.

*We only accept returns/refunds for tea within 30 days of receipt, because it is impossible for us to know if the tea has been stored correctly.

**We will endeavour to ask for pictures where possible - but if you have changed your mind and are outside of any statutory rights time period, return postage is payable by you.

IOSS for EU Orders

Rare Tea Company uses IOSS (Import One Stop Shop) for EU orders placed on the website.

🚨 IMPORTANT UPDATE FOR FRANCE & ITALY 🚨

On 1 January 2026, the Italian Government introduced a €2 (approx. Β£1.73) customs administration fee for parcels sent for delivery from outside the EU with a value less than or equal to €150. We cannot collect this at checkout as part of IOSS and the fee will be collected directly from the consignee. For more information, click here.

On 1 March 2026, the French Government introduced a €2 (approx. Β£1.73) customs administration fee per item sent for delivery from outside the EU with a total shipment value less than or equal to €150. We cannot collect this at checkout and this fee will be collected directly from the consignee. These fees will also attract a processing fee from La Poste. For more information, click here.

How IOSS works and how it is applied on the website.

The IOSS scheme allows us to collect VAT during checkout on your behalf, meaning that no VAT is due when your order is assessed by your local authority.

  • If the combined value of the products in your cart are equal to or below €150 (excluding tax), VAT will be included at the point of sale and you should not be charged any import VAT when your order arrives.*
  • Once the €150 threshold is exceeded VAT will be removed from the items in your cart and from this point onwards when your order ships you will be liable for local VAT, duties and import fees.**

To avoid unnecessary import charges, keep your orders under €150 (excluding tax and shipping). Tax is included on all applicable products at Rare Tea - if your order is applicable for IOSS tax will be shown at the checkout.

Valid for IOSS

Not valid for IOSS

Your order confirmation and shipping confirmation emails will also confirm whether your order is valid for IOSS.

As with all complex shipping methods, the IOSS system isn't foolproof, and orders that are valid for IOSS are occasionally incorrectly charged VAT by customs.

If an order shipped via IOSS and that you have paid VAT on does get incorrectly assessed by customs, please don't worry. It's usually just a mistake that can be fixed by contacting customs and explaining that the order shipped via IOSS with VAT already paid.

If this does happen to you then we suggest the following:

  1. Please contact us before speaking to customs.
  2. We will double check that the order was valid for IOSS.
  3. We will provide a VAT receipt and a shipping label as evidence.
  4. Contact your local customs for assistance, using the shipping label as evidence.
  5. If all else fails we will attempt to get our shipping provider to investigate, but this process can take a while.

*Please note - this does not include any a) any duty charged when the item is cleared or b) special customs administration fees levied by customs for import.. Within the EU tea is free from duty, but your region might have a different rules for non-tea items such as tins and teaware. Some governments have also introduced low-value consignment administration fees (either per order or per item) for orders under €150. Any duty or fees charged are payable by you, the customer before delivery via your local customs authority. We cannot refund these fees.
**In special cases where custom fees have been unexpected we have retroactively refunded these in select cases. As of the 15th February 2023 (the start of IOSS) we have discontinued this process.

What is IOSS?

The Import One-Stop Shop (IOSS) is the electronic portal businesses can use since 1 July 2021 to comply with their VAT e-commerce obligations on distance sales of imported goods.

Up until the 1st July 2021, no import VAT has to be paid for commercial goods of a value up to EUR 22. New VAT eCommerce rules abolished this provision as of 1st July 2021. Thus, from 1 July 2021, all commercial goods imported into the EU from a third country or third territory is subject to VAT irrespective of their value.

What is IOSS for?

IOSS allows suppliers and electronic interfaces selling imported goods to buyers in the EU to collect, declare and pay the VAT to the tax authorities, instead of making the buyer pay the VAT at the moment the goods are imported into the EU as it was previously the case (for products over 22 EUR).

What are the advantages of IOSS?

IOSS facilitates the collection, declaration and payment of VAT for sellers making distance sales of imported goods to buyers in the EU. The IOSS also makes the process easier for the buyer, who is only charged at the time of purchase, and therefore does not face any surprise fees when the goods are delivered. If the seller is not registered in the IOSS, the buyer has to pay the VAT and usually a customs clearance fee charged by the transporter.

What countries does IOSS apply to?

IOSS applies to the EU member states of Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Republic of Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain and Sweden.

It does not apply to the EEA.

How much tax will I get charged?

Tax will be charged at the base VAT rate of the shipping country.

Full details of IOSS can be found on the European Comission website.

Any questions? Please get in touch!

Send us a message using the form below, or call +44 (0) 207 681 0115 (9am - 5pm GMT, Monday - Friday).

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