Qi Dan Da Hong Pao?

[Catsgurleygirl]

Hello, I have a question about a tea that I have. I have had it over a year and I think it is from Golden Teahouse they don't seem to carry it anymore. I have read a little bit about Da Hong Pao oolong tea, and I think I have the jist of it (I know it's not real Da Hong Pao, lol) . My question is that one of the teas I have is labeled "Da Hong Pao" yet above it Qi Dan has been written (by hand). I don't know if you have ordered from golden teahouse before, but the labels have the Chinese characters and then the english pronunciation of it. I also have a bag of just Da Hong Pao and the charaters are the same on both bags with the exception of Qi Dan being written in. So I tried looking up Qi Dan Da Hong Pao and I cannot find any tea of this name. I have found a Qi Dan tea, and of course Da Hong Pao, but no Qi Dan Da Hong Pao--so is there such a thing as Qi Dan Da Hong Pao, and if so, what exactly is it?

Thanks,
Amanda

[Victoria]

I would tend to think it was aged and/or fermented.

[scruffmcgruff]

qi dan = (奇丹) literally Strange Vermilion, a Wuyi Yancha cultivar possibly the same as Da Hong Pao

http://www.panix.com/~perin/babelcarp.cgi?phrase=qi+dan

[ABx]

To me it almost just sounds like they used a DHP label and wrote the correct name above it.

[Salsero]

My take is that Lew Perrin is saying that it is a cultivar about which the taxonomy is uncertain ... it may be the same cultivar as used for DHP or it may be a separate cultivar depending the taxonomist you talk to. Such situations are not uncommon in botany, especially when you get into plants that have been hybridized by humans for thousands of years. Roses are a fine example. Things are not always as cut and dry as we laymen think they are.

I suspect that Golden Teahouse was just trying to be as precise as possible about which plant that tea came from. Have you emailed them?

[chrl42]

Qi Dan is Da Hong Pao.
From what I know of, Qi Dan is how Da Hong Pao tree was called before it got its name. Correct me if I am wrong.

[Catsgurleygirl]

Thanks so much for everyone's help. I have not emailed them--I was thinking you all would probably know something . I may go ahead and email them later and see what they say. It's actually quite a delightful tea even though it is at least over a year old!

Amanda

[Salsero]

Qi Dan is Da Hong Pao.
From what I know of, Qi Dan is how Da Hong Pao tree was called before it got its name. Correct me if I am wrong.

LOL, not many of us around here are qualified to correct you even if you are wrong!

Thanks for straightening us out!

[wuyiman]

yes i've consumed a lot of that tea (da hong pao as well as Qi dan). They are entirely different, but if you spend a long time in that area as I previously enjoyed quite a bit (!!), then you'll see how many teas get labeled as da hong pao but are in fact something else. Sounds like golden Teahouse was just playing it safe and showing that many might identify it as da hong pao but in truth and to be more precise, it is in fact Qi Dan. I like golden teahouse, because they realllllyyy take wuyi teas seriously it seems. that's my style;
Qi dan is grown in a very specific area in the wuyi mountains, and must go through just as specific a processing style, as overseen by another specific tea master - very complicated! I know many tea rooms take a very poor quality of shui xian tea (also wuyi mountain) and label it as da hong pao too. Many companies are guilty of this.
Maybe we should look at da hong pao almost as a way of branding the wuyi-style teas. I don't mind that, since these things are hard to control, but the companies selling them should at least specify what the tea 'actually' is

[ABx]

So this is a bit late, but better late than never, I suppose.

I had gotten some Qi Lan from Golden Tea House about a year ago, but when I just checked my history they had changed the listing to Qi Dan. Babelcarp has two different entries for Qi Lan and Qi Dan, but I don't know if the two are actually the same or not. At any rate, it was indeed labeled without the DHP, and it really does taste quite different from DHP.

It may have just been that they only had "Qi Lan" labels left. It would also make some sense if the two teas are made from the same bush, but then I think there's more to making a DHP than which cultivar you use. For example, Bei Dou is made from clones of the original DHP bushes, but is it's own tea AFAIK. I've also heard it said that real DHP only comes from the (very few) original DHP bushes, which is worth more than gold.

[edkrueger]

There are 4 or 5 original "wild" bushes. At auction the 20g of this tea from these bushes sold for over 20,000 dollars! Around the original bushes are many bushes that have cultivated from the "wild" ones.

You can buy from the original estate [not bush] at Seven Cups Tea [never tried it its like a dollar fifty a gram].

[ABx]

I ended up writing Golden Teahouse about an order I just placed last weekend, so I took the opportunity to ask them if Qi Dan is a variety of DHP or if they just ran out of labels.

Here is their response:

Essentially Qidan is the old name used for the tea trees where Da Hong Pao originally came from. It has since developed flavour characteristics of its own as has Da Hong Pao, so I would at this point in time classify it as quite a different tea, but if one were to look at it on a more rigid legal perspective then the Da Hong Pao name can somewhat stick. In the future we'll always have stickers made individually for Qidan, but in those times where us or our vendors are running short, this is a decent alternative.