Topic: Oolong and Jin Xuan

I have been dealing with a vendor in Taiwan who has some products separated as oolong and Jin Xuan, but always just took "oolong" to be a more generic name that could be anything. However, I ran into a Taiwanese news site with some articles that separate the two, such as this one that states: "...which is one of the tea production areas in Alishan(阿里山) mainly provides two kinds of tea: Oolong(烏龍) and Jin Xuan(金萱)."

So does anyone know why they would say oolong and Jin Xuan separately?

Re: Oolong and Jin Xuan

They always use plain oolong to refer to the lower quality teas. For example In Anxi their oolong is divided up into three categories: Tieguanyin, Sezhong (Which is many different varietals) and Oolong. In my opinion they probably do this either because it is so cheap that the precessing style, the varietal and the origin are irrelevant (In general people drinking these teas may not know enough to find this information useful), or because they are a blend of a few different things, and it might confuse customers rather than make things more clear.

Often in China I get condescending looks from certain people when I say I like Taiwan oolong. I think this is because they assume I drink the tea which is only marked as oonlong from Taiwan, when what I mean is I like a variety of Taiwan oolongs. In Taiwan when they want to make a regular oolong sound fancy without adding a varietal or place name which could be construed as deliberate lying they just call it high mountain oolong.

红焙浅瓯新火活,龙团小碾斗晴窗

Re: Oolong and Jin Xuan

Ah, that makes sense. I had forgotten about Se Zhong -- just remembering that does lend some perspective.

I too figured that the tea simply labeled "oolong" is probably a mix. I guess what threw me off was the usage in the context of that article. I guess it would make sense for them to say "their well known tea and other general stuff."