What Color Is Oolong?
By Bil Silliker | March 24, 2006
White tea, green tea and black tea are fairly descriptive of the color of the leaf and the liquor that you would expect to drink from these teas. Even the taste of white, green and black tea seems to match their names, whites are mild, greens are vegetal or grassy and blacks are robust. What about oolong? What color is that and what does that taste like?
Oolong isn’t a color it’s a reference to tea that’s been semi-fermented. Some say that the words oolong and wulong are variations of the same word. Wulong means ‘black dragon’ and there are oolongs called black dragon as well. Throughout my sources of tea information I find conflicting stories and references to oolong and wulong and their potential connection to each other.
Oolong comes in several shapes, sizes and colors. Some are rolled into tight pellets and others are fully open leaf. Some are very green, some are a bluish green, and others appear black, but all of them pull in the characteristics of both green and black tea. This usually leads to a floral or fruity and sometimes even nutty taste. Oolongs tend to offer several infusions, each one slightly different than the one before it. Often it’s the second or third infusion that gives the more interesting steep.
The best method for steeping China or Formosa (Taiwan) oolong tea is with a yixing (yee-shing) pot, which is made of porous clay. A yixing pot needs to be seasoned before use and should be used with only one type of tea. When steeping with a yixing pot you’ll fill the pot one third to one half full with tealeaves, add water of an appropriate temperature and steep for about 3 minutes. Pour off that steep and fill the pot again with the appropriate temperature water and then immediately pour that into your cup(s). If done properly you’ll get several rewarding infusions.
As I’m writing this article it’s the evening before I leave for Las Vegas, Nevada, where I’ll be attending a seminar on oolong tea. I’ll also be attending a gong fu style tea ceremony, which is traditionally done with oolong tea and resembles the steps that I mentioned above using a yixing teapot. By the time you’re reading this I’ll already be back in Newburyport and will look forward to sharing my experiences with you. Maybe you can stop by and find out what color oolong really is.
