Oriental Beauty oolong ✦ ◆

Oolong Oriental Beauty (Bai Hao)

What it is

The honey-muscat aroma is a wound response: the tea jassid Jacobiasca formosana feeds on the growing shoot and the plant answers with terpenes, which heavy oxidation then fixes. Growers stop spraying to invite the pest, and the local name pengfeng cha, braggart tea, is said to come from a farmer nobody believed when he reported what his bitten leaves fetched.

In the kitchen

Heavily oxidised, it takes 90 °C and a full three minutes without hardening, and it holds up infused into a custard base at 80 °C. Never roast or reheat it — the honey volatiles go first.

Goes with

Honey Peach Mascarpone Apricot Grape Ruby port

Same species

Assam tea Ceylon tea Da Hong Pao Darjeeling tea Earl Grey Genmaicha

In season alongside

Elderflower Bergeron apricot Black locust flower Apricot Bee pollen Blueberry

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