TeaChat

My brother was given several packets of 2006 Tie Guan Yin oolong tea by a friend who is a native of China living and working here. The tea is vacuum packed in individual 7 gram packets. The friend told my brother that he purchased the tea in China, and that the tea was of a very high quality, but I have no experience with this type of oolong so I'm no judge.

Here's a photo of an open packet:
Here's a photo of the box lid:
Here's a photo of some tea:
I apologize in advance for the photos. I'm learning to use my beautiful new point and shoot camera but the after effect of Hurricane Sandy - no heat or hot water - means that photos take second place to dealing with contractors!

I don't think the outer box matches the tea. The outer box seems to say 正山小种红茶 （in other words, zhengshan xiaozhong red tea, which is either the smoked or unsmoked version of lapsang souchong).

Then the only information the tin provides is that the gifter picked up an empty tea tin and packed it with some single session packets of a different tea. Despite the statement from the gifter that this was a hard-to-obtain high quality tea not available to us ordinary folk it was a casual gift.

I hope someone can read the packet!

I had to look up the first character and it took me a bit of staring at the second one to figure out what it is, but the packet says Ruisi tieguanyin. I'm going to assume Ruisi (瑞私) is a brand name. I have never heard of it.

Looks like Anxi Oolong..like TGY, Huang Jin Gui, Fo Shou etc..

Poohblah wrote:I had to look up the first character and it took me a bit of staring at the second one to figure out what it is, but the packet says Ruisi tieguanyin. I'm going to assume Ruisi (瑞私) is a brand name. I have never heard of it.

I think the second character is 弘 (hong), not 私. Not sure if Ruihong helps you any more, though. The TGY-part is is probably more important, anyway.

Drax wrote:

Poohblah wrote:I had to look up the first character and it took me a bit of staring at the second one to figure out what it is, but the packet says Ruisi tieguanyin. I'm going to assume Ruisi (瑞私) is a brand name. I have never heard of it.

I think the second character is 弘 (hong), not 私. Not sure if Ruihong helps you any more, though. The TGY-part is is probably more important, anyway.

whoops. You're right. I misremembered the radical when I was typing it out.

What's up with the wildly contrasting colours of the leaves? Some look positively black. The small broken nature of the leaves don't bode well for the quality.

MarshalN wrote:What's up with the wildly contrasting colours of the leaves? Some look positively black. The small broken nature of the leaves don't bode well for the quality.

I agree. It looks similar to the "monkey picked" mentioned in another thread!

Judging from it's appearance, it may be cheap anxi oolong. Also, the air-sealed/vacuum-pack that the tea was put in isn't always what it says it is. Since I personally can't read the characters I wouldn't dismiss it though.

It's hard to judge a tea by the pachage bag or brand~ especially tie guan yin. Some times I ll find the tea bymyself and choose the package by myself to send my friend as a gift~ it's very easy and every tea store can do that~.
It's a gift, so just drink it, comfortable or uncomfortable, like or dislike~ tea will tell you, your mouth and even body will tell you~ anyway, hope you like it~