I agree that dong ding and high mountain have been quite vague concepts since people use them in different ways. The name of dong ding is from the name of mount dong ding (oh, and I have to correct my previous mistake that mount dong ding is actually lower than 1000 meter - I used to think of it as really high and freezingChip wrote: My understanding is that Dong Ding will not always refer to oolong grown on Dong Ding. It can also refer to a particular style of Taiwan oolong. This is partly why it can be so variable perhaps. This was not always the case. But demand has outstripped supply.
Of course, if a Taiwan oolong is from one of its major mountains such as Ali Shan or Li Shan, I would expect the packaging to proclaim such information. High Grown sounds like generic nomenclature/offering.
) So I don't think it's fair to call other oolong dong ding, and it's not fair to call lower land oolong "high mountain". I guess the problem is even though tea associations (both in Taiwan and mainland China) have guidelines about these concepts, there are no legal regulations on how tea dealers and retailers should label their products. In China large companies use their own labeling standards, usually even stricter than standards of tea associations or national standards, and as a result, their products are reliable but overpriced (I think). Many smaller businesses obtained tea from local sources, make their own packaging and labeling, have much better prices, but then consumers have to really trust a retailer to believe what's labeled on their package, or pay a tuition to see