First time with Dong Ding

[gingkoseto]

Especially something like Dong Ding which has become so diluted as a style it is even produced in China nowadays, and sometimes with strange/oddball varietals (very little of it comes from the traditional region even in Taiwan from what I understand)....

Good Dong Ding sold by mainland China vendors is supposed to be from Taiwan, and Dong Ding made in mainland is always considered "fake", not an acceptable marketable product, but rather illegal. If a mainland China vendor carries Dong Ding from Taiwan to US market, it's normal. But if some vendor sells Dong Ding that is not made in Taiwan, that's questionable behavior.

[hop_goblin]

'Best' is subjective of course. I generally get my Taiwanese tea from Floating Leaves Tea and Hou De (both owners have strong ties to Taiwan, a focus on that tea industry and excellent pallettes), and my chinese tea from New Century Tea Gallery, Jing and Teaspring with some RB and Teacuppa thrown in occasionally. FLT and NCTG are both local to me and to be honest with those two sources available where I can sit and sample all of their offerings prior to purchase my online exploration is starting to fall off a bit and is way more targeted and cautious than it has been in the past.

I agree it is a good general rule to not buy Taiwanese tea from the mainland, and visa versa. Especially something like Dong Ding which has become so diluted as a style it is even produced in China nowadays, and sometimes with strange/oddball varietals (very little of it comes from the traditional region even in Taiwan from what I understand)....

Oh man, Houde has nothing on Shan Shui teas for oolong! Most of their teas are from Taiwan and seem like a good selection. Are you familar with them? Of course I am subjective as well

[tenuki]

Oh man, Houde has nothing on Shan Shui teas for oolong! Most of their teas are from Taiwan and seem like a good selection. Are you familar with them? Of course I am subjective as well

So not true in my experience. Every tea I've gotten from Shan Shui has been stale or poor quality for the price. Ya, i'm familiar with them unfortunately. His packages are prettier though and I have gotten stale tea that was obviously good quality at one point in it's life (ie strong tea base, etc, just stale). I'm open to it being just the couple times I ordered from him, but I'm picky, I have to be pleased at least 80% of the time or I stop ordering.

[tenuki]

Good Dong Ding sold by mainland China vendors is supposed to be from Taiwan, and Dong Ding made in mainland is always considered "fake", not an acceptable marketable product, but rather illegal. If a mainland China vendor carries Dong Ding from Taiwan to US market, it's normal. But if some vendor sells Dong Ding that is not made in Taiwan, that's questionable behavior.

Not to belabor the point, but I've heard of chinese dong dings openly winning competitions in china and seen vendors advertising their dong ding as made in china so I'm not sure this is true across the board, although I certainly wish it was. I'm not sure it makes much difference since a lot of dong ding from Taiwan isn't from the original region either and china can obviously produce perfectly good tea and has been doing so longer than Taiwan. Remember that the root/parent varietal for Dong Ding and even the processing style is claimed to have come from China in the first place and then adopted for the local conditions. At this point I always assume that unless the vendor claims it's from the original Dong Ding region it isn't and if it comes from china it is possible that it was produced there. Feel free to make different assumptions.

( here is a couple examples of what I'm talking about from US vendors in case you don't believe me, maybe some chinese speaking teachatters could research that end - http://www.ateacupdropped.com/tea/teaDongDing.html , http://luyutea.com/tea.html .)

[Herb_Master]

Some interesting points of view coming across, it makes good reading.

I am still learning and loving the 3 Mainland Oolong regions, when I do get round to moving on to Taiwan, I had always imagined I would start out buying from Zen8Tea
http://stores.ebay.com.my/zen8tea_Tea-T ... idZ2QQtZkm

[tenuki]

i'm assuming you are buying a lot of your chinese teas from Jing, being in the UK?

[gingkoseto]

( here is a couple examples of what I'm talking about from US vendors in case you don't believe me, maybe some chinese speaking teachatters could research that end - http://www.ateacupdropped.com/tea/teaDongDing.html , http://luyutea.com/tea.html .)

It's not about if I believe you or not It's more about how much we should believe the descriptions on "An Xi Dong Ding". I heard in An Xi there are oolong advertised of being made by Taiwanese experts, because Taiwan does have good technique and experience of making good greener oolong. But the oolong advertised of being made by Taiwanese experts are still sold as An Xi Tie Guan Yin or whatever tea it should be. There are also raw Dong Ding tea leaves purchased from Taiwan to mainland (in low temperature preservation) and processed in mainland, and if it's well made, it's still Dong Ding.

But it's a totally different story if the tea is not from Dong Ding Mountain at all. I've never seen a vendor in mainland China selling "An Xi Dong Ding", and actually, who would buy a Dong Ding which is not from Dong Ding. But maybe I've not seen enough vendors. I will try to ask some Chinese suppliers about Dong Ding made in mainland China. I guess they will just warn me about staying away from fake Dong Ding. But I will try to explore around and see if someone can provide additional information.

Also I wonder if Dong Ding in Taiwan is under geographic region patent protection. I personally think it's really unfair to call a tea produced elsewhere Dong Ding.

[tenuki]

Also I wonder if Dong Ding in Taiwan is under geographic region patent protection. I personally think it's really unfair to call a tea produced elsewhere Dong Ding.

Good points Gingko.

I've heard from a couple of my tea buyer friends that dong ding isn't even reliably one varietal anymore (traditionally chin shin), most of it is mixed/blended. I haven't seen evidence of this myself, but you bet I'm digging through the leaves after I'm brewing nowdays looking for it. The area of Lugu that grows the original Dong Ding is pretty small to be servicing the full demand for it despite it being the largest single tea producing county in Taiwan, yet look, you can always buy some....

[gingkoseto]

Also I wonder if Dong Ding in Taiwan is under geographic region patent protection. I personally think it's really unfair to call a tea produced elsewhere Dong Ding.

I've heard from a couple of my tea buyer friends that dong ding isn't even reliably one varietal anymore (traditionally chin shin), most of it is mixed/blended. I haven't seen evidence of this myself, but you bet I'm digging through the leaves after I'm brewing nowdays looking for it. The Lugu area is pretty small to be servicing the full demand for dong ding ( I don't know the production numbers, let me get back to you on that next time I talk to my friend in Taiwan who might ), yet look, you can always buy some....

I am doing the same digging leaves thing too! Because I did get some not so good Dong Ding in recent one year, from different vendors. Most of them are not that bad either, but I used to worship Dong Ding and thought all of them were prestigious I even recorded some leaf photos on my blog

I heard in old time (well in the near past) only chin shin varietal could be labeled with geographic regions such as Dong Ding or Alishan, all the other varietals should be labeled with their varietal name such as jin xuan or si ji chun. It wasn't a law but more of a trade rule. But not a rule any more.

Yeah please get the figure of Dong Ding production! It will be interesting comparing it with the amount of market flow - probably similar to the yixing clay issue

[Herb_Master]

i'm assuming you are buying a lot of your chinese teas from Jing, being in the UK?

No strangely I have never ordered from Jing - partly due to my early days confusion between Jing and JingTeaShop.

I hope when I start exploring WUYI in depth to try some of Jing's [funds permitting]

Yellow Gold and Sparrow's Tongue for instance. Maybe Rou Gui and Iron Arhat.

Have you tried Jing's wuyis.

[Katmandu]

So....guys, I'm curious to know where I can buy nice oolongs if teaspring is not the place- thats good to know!

[Chip]

After rereading your OP, maybe they have better sources today for Taiwan oolong.

I defer to the experts here on where to buy ...

[Oni]

I think teaspring has nice oolongs too, TGY, Da Hong Pao, Rou gui etc., and the free shipping above 70$ is attractive.
i also think that taiwanese oolong should be bought from taiwan and taiwanese vendors. Sofar Dragon teahouse has the most complex selection of teas and teaware, so when it comes to chinese tea I will surely try them out, but the global economy crisis has struck my country hard, so less tea and teaware for me this year (I hope I can survive wothout them).

[snafu]

It was already mentioned, but Floating Leaves Tea in Seattle is really worth checking out. Their Winter Roasted Dong Ding is one of my favourites from 2008. They also offer a superb Li Shan.

Hou De of course, especially for Bao Zhong, which is essentially Taiwan in a cup.

Teahomeus on Ebay sells some nice high mountains, though maybe not the best Dong Ding.

[skywalker]

If you are interested in Taiwan tea, I can find some for you.
But now I just can offer you some samples of TKY from Mu Zha and Bao Zhong from Ping Lin.
Two of these teas were purchased from the local production area.
I am not a tea merchant, just one of my hobbies, so I can't share too many samples. If you are really intetersted, pls feel free to pm me.

Happy Chinese New year!