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I had a small free sample packet of Taiwan Dongding Oolong in my desk for at least a year and finally got around to trying it. It bred up real light with overpowering tones of smoke in the background. Anyway I was wondering if anyone knows if it is supposed to be like this or if its just the result of aged declined tea or simply poor quality tea from the start.

Dong Ding, aka Tong Ting, normally doesn't have any smokiness and it isn't a particularly light-bodied tea either. I don't know if aging would create those results. The Tong Tings that I've tried have a floral aroma and the taste has a bit of spiciness to it.

The only thing that I can think of to possibly explain the smokiness would be that someone had roasted the leaves for longer. I've never heard of this being done to a Tong Ting, but I know that you can get Ti Kuan Yins both greener or darker, so maybe that's what happened there. What color were the tea leaves? They should be green.

If you want to try a typical Tong Ting, I recommend Tao of Tea's Frozen Summit.

The sample bag also said dark on it, which I guess if it refers to being a dark as compared to light roast that might explain things better than my initial assumption that it was simply telling you that it was dark oolong so you'd know how to brew it properly.

Thanks for the pointers, but to be honest I'm not that big on oolongs to begin with, which is actually the main reason why the free sample sat in my desk for so long in the first place.

You got a high fire version of it, which means it's roasted. The smoke should be from that.

The lower fired version is very different, more floral.