howdy T people I'm so hon we're here at the beautiful guan yin tea house in Austin Texas
welcome to another episode of gong fruity cha and today we are gonna talk about one of my favorite
types of tea that woo Young's oh boy I love with Young's so what are will ulong's who owns let's
start with that well it's actually Wulong which means dark dragon and i'm gonna go ahead and show
y'all what this dark dragon to you looks like this is why they call it dark dragon because
you have this nice twisty leaf and what is it it is partially oxidized tea that's what we long tea
is and remember we've talked about green tea new Thai or green tea and how it's completely
unavailable the spectrum then we've talked about Hong Chow or red tea aka black tea which is fully
oxidized well who lungs are partially oxidized they fall somewhere in the middle of there and
what are will you owns well the mountains are located in northern Fujian in southeast China
which is where who owns in general come from they're all from that Southeast Chinese region
they've got Fujian you've got Guangdong you've got the island nation of Taiwan as well produces
oolong and so those are the places you get your lungs and so in the north of Fujian are the ouya
mountains they're very beautiful and they're the home of these teas right here so that's
gonna give us a look at our woo Young's as you see they are long twisted curly leaves that are
dark and oxidized so I'm gonna go ahead and get us started drinking some of this delicious tea so the
weary mountains are famous not only for being the origin point of who on teas and this is always a
point of contention in China who invented what but the strongest claim definitely goes to the
lui Mountains which the claim being that they were invented there these partially oxidized
roasted teas were invented in the way mountains in the end of the Ming Dynasty the late 15th century
and these are supported by records poems actually from the beginning of the Ching dynasty in the
16th century that refer to who long tea partially oxidized who tea and make specific mention of the
wooly mountains as their origin point so very strong credible claim something that we don't
get that much with tea stuff so we're grateful for it go so in addition to being the origin point of
the technique of making long teas we mountains are known for imparting a very distinctive D way
or terroir flavor of the earth to the teas that are grown there and to understand what
that flavor is we have to look at the geography of the wooly mountains they are sparse they are
craggy rocky mountains that don't have a lot of soil and so the plants that grow there including
the tea plants are very slow growing and they're dwarfed even some of the very ancient Wooyoung
plants which there's some that you know go back centuries even these centuries old plants are
pretty small compared to the giant tea trees of Yunnan for example there we go I'm just gonna let
us look at this beautiful power here see this beautiful red color that's that oxidation not
quite as red as the Hong [ __ ] that we did in the last episode but nice and rosy red and that
is that oxidation level right there so because these plants grow slowly and are dwarfed they
end up concentrating a lot of nutrients in their leaves and this gives them a very distinctive and
very complex mineral flavor that's called the Yin way or the rock taste and the will Youngs
are collectively known as yin cha or a rock teas for that reason which is I think that's such a
great name and what is the best this this Yin way this rock tastes well it's a very broad profound
complex flavor that is very nuanced it's caramel E it's roasty it's toasty its woody its tobacco E it
has a very particular mouthfeel you can feel it in your throat it gives a nice cooling sensation in
the throat and because of this really big flavor that is common to all the will you along stall the
end chop you do end up having more a little more clumping profile wise where the will you who owns
are not as distinct from each other as say the different Phoenix who long varieties are from
each other those are really really distinct with all kinds of different characters the we Long's
tend to you know be a little bit more similar to each other but because of that deep complexity and
profund to be any given will you on a good will young is among the most complex and nuanced ease
around in the terms of the abundance and variety of flavors and fragrances you get from them in
fact one of the most famous woolongs da Hong Pao our big red robe is probably the most expensive
tea in the world it has been the most expensive tea in the world and it may still be the most it
always changes something else will come up and get a higher spread price but da Hong Pao big red robe
is definitely one of the most famous and expensive and highly sought after teas in the world
especially among Chinese teas and it's the first of the four famous bushes of the wooly mountains
the way mountains make dozens of different varieties of tea there are different dozens of
different varieties of tea oolong tea plants that are grown there but that for big famous ones the
Chinese like to make lists of things and so they have the four big famous bushes this citta means
home and the home power big red robe is the first of these then you also have Shui Cinque which
means golden tortoise golden water turtle and then you have TL ohon which is iron our hot and our hot
is one of the disciples of Buddha who achieved Nirvana and then you have by g'quan which means
white cockscomb and that's what we're drinking de and white cockscomb has a fun origin story
dongpal big red robe has a fun origins actually I'll have fun origin stories da Hong Pao the big
red robe origin story is very famous you can find it anywhere on the internet so go check that out a
lot of other people have probably taught it a lot better than I could but I'm gonna go and tell the
white cockscombs story because it is a fun story also and I'm gonna take a sip of this first and
talk about its flavor real quick so what is white [ __ ] come one of the famous wheels it's got this
incredible custardy egg yolky profile that's a it's not really a better way to describe it's
very sweet it's very got a lot of subtleties that are kind of tucked under this big rolling Yin way
this big rolling mineral flavor and it does have this distinctively custardy egg yolky a little bit
of like a downy soft character to it nice so the story of what cockscomb goes that one day a monk
observed a heroic rooster defending his chick from a hawk and he was killed defending his chick from
this hawk and the monk was so moved by his bravery that he buried the rooster and where he buried
the rooster a year later the following spring a tea plant sprung up and that was the first white
cockscomb tea plant and in addition to that and we'll look at the leaves at the end addition that
the leaves of the white cockscomb plant actually are light in color and they also have a bit of
but this one here they have a bit of serrated look to them all tea leaves are serrated buddies have
like big floppy serrations that make it look like the comb of a rooster so that's where another way
it gets its name is from the appearance of the weeds themselves and it does have this cute story
so how are you Williams processed this is very important because we've talked about the flavor
of the earth where they come from we've talked about that the genetics the different varieties
including these four famous varieties and how those give rise to the different characteristics
but it's also very important to think about the way they're made who lungs are very very complex
and probably require the most skill knowledge and effort of any single category of T to process
correctly not the least of which because there are all these different varieties and they do have
these varieties specific specifically separated from each other like white cockscomb and and
they've red robe if this was a different T growing region those different varieties might just be
processed together and just be this is the T of the region but when we make who owns especially
we're in Phoenix who owns we're very particular about separating out all the different breeds
all the different sub varieties and so a will you who long T Master has to be skilled in oxidizing
each given T to the appropriate degree because if you oxidize a too little or too much then
the distinctive characteristics won't be fully brought out and this is accomplished by twisting
and rolling and withering all these different ways of distressing the leaves and letting them sit
in order to oxidize distressing them to release that enzyme polyphenol oxidase to catalyze that
oxidation of the tea and then letting them sit and just chill and go through that oxidation process
and you want to oxidase them to just the right degree will you owns in particular are generally
medium to fairly heavily oxidized more so than say the Phoenix and the unchi who owns and the
Taiwanese oolongs you can have low oxidation versions of all of those the will you owns are
always fairly heavily oxidized and then there's a charcoal roasting process to dry the tea out
and this is the tonbei process and this is super super important the better part of the skill of a
whoo-hoo long or anywho long tea master is going to be this hand roasting step using white hot
charcoal and tossing the leaves in a basket above it and that's called tonbei and a good tonbei can
make a tea fantastic a bad ton bay can destroy the flavor of a tea and if you are not good at
this tonbei process you end up over roasting your teas and they all taste the same they all end up
tasting like toasted marshmallows kind of or like coffee you know they get this really really heavy
rose tea taste and some people are really into that but a well roasted hulong is nuanced and
subtle it's not just a whole party of charcoal nests altogether so and then yeah you may not
have noticed that when we made this tea I didn't pour out the first steeping like we usually do I
didn't rinse this tea I set it aside here and that wasn't just for the benefit of showing you guys
that well we color that's because it has become the custom in recent years with will Young's among
certain people not everyone does this but are we doing it to not throw away the first steeping but
save the first steeping and drink it at the end after you've gone through all of the permutations
of the tea and enjoy the cold it's pillow of cold by that point the code for steeping as a way of
taking you back to the original flavor of the tea it's called the highway Bay which means returning
flavor cup so way way bay woody means returning to the original flavor of the team and because it's
cold it allows us to taste some dimensions of this incredibly complex and nuanced flavor profile that
we wouldn't get otherwise and it's great you know we long as they taste great right from the start
so no reason to waste good tea I know that sounds a little bit iconoclastic but I didn't make it up
it's from China so I'm gonna go ahead and taste us I want to taste some of this cooled way away
Bay it hasn't had much time to cool because we're not actually drinking tea I'm doing going food
teacher so not super cold but it is still the first steeping and it is gonna have a different
profile then these other steep things that we've just gone through so I'm just gonna it's cooled
a little bit yep okay yeah it has cooled a little bit and what comes out when it cools some of the
biscuity notes some of these like chewy sweet dense moist biscuity notes that you can get
from some of these teas which are really nice and almost a little bit of like spiciness comes
out when you let it cool like that and also you are going back to the first steeping of the team
and then as promised I'm gonna go ahead and let us work the leaves here they're not done yet because
I've always steeped this tea three times but I'm gonna go ahead a good one couldn't pull one out
and let cha look at it because as I was saying these leaves are fairly light in color compared
with some other Wu yuan leaves which again are so heavily oxidized in general and that is what
gives them their name white cockscomb obviously not white and then you have these nice serrations
I've almost got this I swear it to God it's nice floppy serrations it's folded literally exactly
in half can you see that there right against my thumb the serrations and the white color of the
leaf give this name give this tea its name white cockscomb by g'quan it is one of the four Saddam
in song the four big famous bushes of the wooly mountains home of oolong teas and the subject of
this episode of gong fu tea cha thank you all so much for joining us today please stay tuned for
more great episodes we're going to cover all the other who lungs and you can find out all
about them too they're great and if you enjoyed this please subscribe to our YouTube channel tea
house ghost and we will keep bringing you all these great tea Peppa so thank you very much you