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Taiwanese Golden Lily Milk Oolong Loose Leaf Oolong Tea

Regular price ยฃ19.99
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27p per cup

Style

An aromatic Taiwanese Oolong loose leaf tea with a smooth, creamy texture.

Tasting Notes

Sweet and grassy with soft floral notes leading to a deep verdant finish. Crafted from a rare cultivar renown for itโ€™s succulent, milky texture.

Cost Per Cup

27p per cup based on 2g of tea per 150ml of water and 3 infusions.

Origin

Taitung, Taiwan

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A gaiwan is the ultimate way to enjoy your oolong tea. 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 โ€“ the following method can be used to make up to six infusions.

Start with 4-6g of oolong tea and pop it in the gaiwan teapot. Boil a kettle to 100ยฐC/212ยฐF, then pour an inch of the water on the leaf for a few seconds, then discard this liquid. This "wash" softens the rolled leaf and allows the water to penetrate.

Next, fill the gaiwan with hot water to just below the rim, infuse 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 steeps. 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 see our full guide here:

Here is a short video demonstrating how to get the most out of your precious oolong leaves with a gaiwan:

TAIWAN

Milk Oolong

Sourced from the rolling mountains of Taitung province, Southern Taiwan. This Oolong is from a rare varietal that is renowned for its unique, creamy softness and milky aromas. It is this characteristic that gives this tea the name Milk Oolong.

"The temperature was up in the 40s and my shirt felt like a fur coat. Wei, the young farmer, tall, bashful and funny, showed me around. I imagine he is funny, although he didnโ€™t speak a single word of English he laughed a good deal. His friend David translated for him. One of the barriers to export for farmers is finding a market and then communicating with that market. Farmers around the world are finding ways, at least this generation is.

Over long afternoons I spent hours on the farm watching the production. Blunt fingered experts bound and unbound the leaves in muslin cloths; twisted them into tight bundles; pressed them between rolling iron plates; untwisted the cloth and released the leaves into drying machines; transferred the leaves to roasters; laid them out to dry; bound them again; rolled them; roasted them; exposed them, in an intricate dance that seemed to have no formal pattern.

The precise semi- oxidisation of the leaf, to reveal its most subtle, nuanced flavours was all done by smell and touch and feel. There was no measurement or timing, instead, the craft was instinctive understanding. Sometimes the tea went into the roasters for 20 seconds, sometimes 2 minutes. Sometimes the tea was laid out for days and sometimes for hours. All this was done by men who spent the spring season making tea and the summer and winter practising other trades: carpentry, engineering, farming on their own plots of land with other crops. The little plots of land are bound together; not just by their overlapping crops, but their skills and the manpower. One month a farmer might be cutting pineapples, the next picking and crafting tea. This was Pharaoh Sanderโ€™s playing intricately glorious free jazz, rather than the Royal Philharmonic orchestra playing from sheet music."

Extract from Infused: Adventures in Tea

Oolongs lie in a category between green and black teas, occasionally called a blue tea. They are delicately crafted to the point where they reflect these two very different categories of tea and reveal their hidden subtleties.

According to legend, this oolongโ€™s milkiness is the result of a sudden change in temperature during harvest time that occurs very infrequently.

The first time this temperature shift occurred was hundreds of years ago at a time when the moon fell in love with a comet as it was passing through the night sky. The comet passed by and then burned out and disappeared. The moon, in her sorrow, caused a great wind to blow through the valleys and hills, creating a sudden drop in temperature. The following morning, the tea harvesters went out to collect the fresh leaves and when the tea was processed, to their surprise, it had developed a unique milky characteristic, which they attributed to the motherly nature of the moon.

Shipping, delivery & more...

UK Shipping Information

FREE UK Tracked when you spend ยฃ30 or more

FREE UK Express - Next Day* when you spend ยฃ60 or more

UK Tracked - Two Day Tracked ยฃ3.99

UK Express - Next Day* Tracked ยฃ5.49

UK Express - Next Day* Courier from ยฃ8.49

*Subject to next day cutoff 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.

All prices quoted in GBP and 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 tea or teaware 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 itemโ€™s cost excluding postage. We may ask you to return the item to us. Customers in the European Union have a statutory cooling-off period of fourteen days that is not affected by this guarantee, but any tea pouches much remained sealed for this to be in effect.

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