Wassup with jasmine tea?

[Wassupfrombustamove]

Do u like jasmine or is it too sweet???

What is your favorite jasmine tea?

[gingkoseto]

But why is this under oolong?
I absolutely love jasmine green tea. I love the kind with lots of jasmine petals in the tea. My favorite kind is bi tan piao xue (snowflakes on green lake), made with jasmine petals and very young green tea leaves.
This is some photo I randomly found on web. The photo seems to have some color bias. The color should be brighter green tea color.

[Wassupfrombustamove]

I like it better with Oolong tea.

[Herb_Master]

But why is this under oolong?

Many vendors do Jasmine oolong - Adagio do 3 - some of them rolled in different ways - such as Dragon Pearl - and some of them are pricey enough to suggest they are serious teas.

Many sites state that the tea has been stored with or packed with Jasmine Petals - some of them suggest the tea bushes were growing alongside Jasmine -

I will explore these one day!

but what I want first is a Jasmine Fragrance (Xiang) dan Cong that has never been near a Jasmine plant!

[gingkoseto]

Many vendors do Jasmine oolong - Adagio do 3 - some of them rolled in different ways - such as Dragon Pearl - and some of them are pricey enough to suggest they are serious teas.

Many sites state that the tea has been stored with or packed with Jasmine Petals - some of them suggest the tea bushes were growing alongside Jasmine -

I will explore these one day!

but what I want first is a Jasmine Fragrance (Xiang) dan Cong that has never been near a Jasmine plant!

I have just realized jasmine #12 is under oolong category. Most jasmine tea is made with green tea. Jasmine #12 looks very much like mo li long zhu (jasmine dragon pearl), which is traditionally a jasmine green tea from Fu Jian. It will be interesting to try out oolong version of it

[Wassupfrombustamove]

ya i know it's classic but I put it under Oolong to make for an interesting debate...

If you try the oolong version can you tell which is better?

[lydia]

I love jasmine teas, my favourite is jasmine #12. This tea is made by hand with delicate scent and flavor. It is really a great tea no matter it is oolong or jasmine.

[wyardley]

I don't like Jasmine tea much, and don't drink it other than at restaurants.

But I think the person starting the thread was actually more right than they know... the base for a lot of Jasmine tea (as I understand it) is a semi-green tea, at least according to Mary Lou Heiss's AoT article:

http://www.cooksshophere.com/newsletter/Art-of-Tea.pdf

She differentiates between Baozhong and "Pouchong" (the latter apparently is used as a base), however, since she doesn't include the characters or proper pinyin, it's hard to guess what the actual word is and whether these are really different things -- anyone know? She says that it's not technically an oolong since it's lightly oxidized, but without being bruised.

So if she's right, Jasmine "green" tea is usually not technically a green tea. Of course black (red) tea can also be used as a base too.

[ABx]

Hm, I always understood them to be different spellings of the same word, but as you say they don't generally show the actual characters used. If you accept "bao" and "pou" as being the same (the b is kinda pronounced with kind of a pop), "chong" is a little closer to the pronunciation than "zhong." I actually don't know why they don't just spell it "jong."

I think that Adagio uses similar logic. Perhaps someone that knows/remembers can chime in (I think it was Chip that I heard it from), but I believe that the idea is that it's basically a green tea but oxidizes some during the scenting stage and so technically becomes something like a wulong. This explanation is at least third-hand information, however, so your article (wyardley) may have actually been the original explanation - so hopefully whoever it was that heard the explanation from the Adagio folks will drop in.

[Rakuras]

How this flower has haunted my pallet since I was a babe in the snowy or burning flats of Albuquerque. Since my grandmother's affection with the scents and oils to my mother's lotions from those varying Bath and Bodyworks shops here and about, I've had it everywhere. Sadly it was not until a random chance in a Chinese restaurant that I tasted it, in a cheap bagged blend. Since I've made an effort to try every variety of it and I've settled on two commons: Adagio's Jasmine #9 and a random fresh-flower bag that has drifted in and out of a teashop down in the college district. Been meaning to try the Twining's blend as it's sitting sealed and about four feet away from me but I'm trying to get through my current samplers and batches before I open the 100g tin.

By odd habit my mother has also taken to enjoying jasmine tea and often steals a few cups from my batches whenever I make it around the house. Fortunately I can have the better stuff without her polite thievery later in the evening as she's unable to process caffeine that late- but she's taken to the Rooibos Jasmine mixes from varying vendors. I swear I shant be able to keep the good stuff long enough to enjoy it at this rate.

As for the Oolong vs Green topic, I know that the second of my jasmine's is a basic green infused via steam after the fact with jasmine by the local roller/supplier. It steals a little of the initial steeping as far as I'm aware but the delicate lines of definition might brandish its head on this one as it'd almost fall under Yellow Tea according to varying sites and their information (wikipedia rings a bell). Makes me want to read about the whole process for each tea type again but I'll just leave it at that and run away from the Oolongs section like a good Black n' Green drinker. 9.9

[wyardley]

Hm, I always understood them to be different spellings of the same word, but as you say they don't generally show the actual characters used. If you accept "bao" and "pou" as being the same (the b is kinda pronounced with kind of a pop), "chong" is a little closer to the pronunciation than "zhong." I actually don't know why they don't just spell it "jong."

So there might be some mistakes or oversimplifications here, but here goes...

At least one of the old Taiwanese romanization systems uses a 'ch' for what would be 'zh' in hanyu pinyin (confusingly, I think it may use 'ch' for 'ch' as well). So the surnames 'zhou' or 'zhang' is often 'chou' or 'chang'. In the same system, 'P' represents 'b'. 'B' and 'p' in Mandarin are are the same sound, except 'p' is aspirated.

As far as how it's "spelled", Hanyu Pinyin (and most romanization systems) weren't designed to be phonetically pronouncable when pronounced as they would be in English. "j" has a very different sound than "zh". j is like an English j, but with the tongue farther forward, ('x', 'z' and 'c' have similar placement). 'zh' is like 'j' in English also, but with the tongue way back, kind of on the roof of the mouth (same with 'ch' and 'sh').

That's standard Mandarin; in actual practice, many Mandarin speakers, especially those from Taiwan or South China say 'zh' and 'z', 'ch' and 'c', and 'sh' and 's' basically identically.

But going back to the original question, even assuming the romanization system is the same, it's very possible for a word to have the same sound, and even the same tones, but have a different meaning. Without knowing at a bare minimum, what tones the words are, and preferably seeing the characters, it's impossible to tell whether they are the same word or not.

A lot of talking for something that would be a simple matter if we could see the actual "words" we're talking about. But hopefully this was useful to someone.

See also:
http://www.sinosplice.com/lang/pronunciation/

[gingkoseto]

Baozhong, in the most specific meaning, is Wen Shan Baozhong, the light oxidized oolong from Wen Shan district of Taiwan.

Baozhong as a term, simply means "wrapped variety". The name was widely used for tea from Northern Taiwan and tea from Anxi, Fu Jian (the 2 places are not far from each other anyway). When the tea was sent to the emperor as royal tribute, it was wrapped in small packs of certain amount (I guess, around 125g, 4oz.). It's because the tea was a greener oolong and very fragrant. Wrapping prevents loss of fragrance. Nowadays the trend in Asia is many green oolong teas are wrapped in 7gram vacuumed bag to maintain the best freshness. If Baozhong is taken for its original meaning, "wrapped variety", then all these 7gram vacuumed bag oolongs are Baozhong. Oh, naming in such way will surely cause trouble. So I assume all Baozhong in market are Wen Shan Baozhong (and hopefully the retailers mean it too).

When Baozhong get popular, people recognize the light oxidation feature as feature of Baozhong. Then many people put Dong Ding oolong in the category of Baozhong. In early time, all oolong in Taiwan were Dong Ding and Wen Shan Baozhong. But in modern day, there are so many various kinds of oolong in Taiwan and most of them are greener oolong. If Baozhong simply means light oxidation, then most Taiwan oolongs are Baozhong. Well, such way of naming will also surely cause trouble. So it's better to restrict commercial name of Baozhong just for Wen Shan Baozhong.

I don't think it's necessary to distinguish Baozhong from other oolong. All kinds of oolongs have different degrees of oxidation, 30%, 40%, 70%. It's not necessary to distinguish each of them from each other. Then why single out Baozhong.

Even Wen Shan Baozhong or An Xi Baozhong, I don't believe they had all light oxidation from the beginning. The royal tribute, of course was light oxidation, in order to be very fragrant and impressive. But that was 150 years ago, and even at that time Baozhong was widely available for people, not just the royal family. By that time, without air-conditioned room and everything, most retailers and consumers simply couldn't afford having very light oxidation green oolongs that are harder to preserve and have shorter shelf life than more heavily oxidized oolong. So I believe, even 150 years ago, the tea sent to the emperor was much "greener" oolong than the Baozhong in market of that time.

Baozhong (in a broader sense, including An Xi Baozhong and Dong Ding Oolong) is ancestor of modern day green oolong. I've heard some older tea drinkers complaining that nowadays oolong has been largely "greenized". But since so many oolongs are green oolong now, and we can't call all of them Baozhong, I think the simple and safe way is to restrict the name of Baozhong for Wen Shan Baozhong, and call other oolong whatever they are usually called.

[gingkoseto]

Oh, why did I say so much about Baozhong under a jasmine thread

Jasmine tea of course can be made with any tea variety, including white, black, oolong, and, if you like, puerh. As long as there is jasmine and there is tea. In production and in market, most jasmine green teas use green tea, the very green kind, like in bi tan piao xue. Adagio's jasmine#12 sounds like a oolong-ized jasmine green.

[Wassupfrombustamove]

Thanks guys!