Buying Oolong: A Five Step Check

Buying oolong comes down to five steps: look at how tightly the leaf is rolled, smell the dry leaf, read the colour of the liquor, count how many good infusions it gives, and inspect the wet leaf. The order matters because the first three take a minute and the last two decide the purchase.

Oolong needs a different checklist from green or red tea because the variables are different. Shape, roast and endurance matter more here than freshness or grade, and the single most useful test, counting infusions, has no equivalent in the other classes.

The five steps are a filter rather than a verdict. A tea that passes all five is worth buying again, and a tea that fails two is not worth the shelf space.

The five steps

The roll is the first thing to look at and it tells you a great deal before anything is brewed. A tightly rolled oolong, whether a ball-style Tieguanyin or a twisted Wuyi strip, protects the leaf and releases slowly; a loose or broken leaf releases everything at once and will not last.

The dry smell gives the roast and the aroma in one pass. A baked tea smells of toast, cocoa or wood; a light one smells of flowers, cream or fruit. A chemical or perfumed note that sits on top of the leaf rather than in it is a warning.

The liquor is the first check that requires brewing, and it is mostly about clarity. A bright, clear liquor indicates clean processing; a cloudy one indicates dust, uneven oxidation or a fault. The colour should also match the claimed roast.

Counting infusions

This is the step that matters most and the one no other tea class asks for. Oolong is built to be brewed repeatedly, and a good tea gives six to ten infusions while a poor one gives three.

The count is a direct measure of how much the leaf contains and how well it was processed. Mature leaf picked at the right time holds its compounds and releases them slowly; young or broken leaf gives everything in the first two pours.

The count also interacts with roast. A heavily baked tea may seem closed for the first infusion and open afterwards, so a count taken too early underrates it. The fair test is to keep brewing until the tea is clearly finished and then count.

For a buyer in a shop the practical version is to ask for three infusions from the same leaf and see whether the third is still worth drinking. That single test defeats most of the fraud in the category, because every shortcut works on the first impression and fails later.

• A tight roll protects the leaf and slows the release.
• The dry smell gives roast and aroma together.
• Clarity of liquor is more telling than its colour.
• Count infusions; six or more is a good sign.
• Patchy wet leaf means uneven oxidation.

Reading the wet leaf

The wet leaf is the last check and the most informative about processing. Spread it out and look at three things: evenness of colour, thickness of the leaf and whether the pieces are whole.

Even colour indicates even oxidation. A leaf that is green at the edges and brown in the middle was oxidised unevenly, and the cup will taste muddled as a result. Patchiness is the most common processing fault in oolong.

Thickness indicates the pick. A thick, supple leaf came from a mature bush picked at the right time; a thin, papery leaf came from young or poor material and will not have given much in the cup.

Wholeness indicates handling. A leaf that is torn into fragments was over-handled or machine-broken, and it will release too fast. A whole leaf, even a small one, has been treated carefully.

The leaf also shows the roast. A baked tea is brown throughout and feels brittle; a light one stays green and feels supple. That single observation tells you whether the tea is the type the label claims.

Common shop situations

The table is a reading of behaviour rather than of tea, and in oolong behaviour is unusually informative. A merchant who sells single-bush tea has to know their stock, because the product is defined by genotype and the buyer will ask. A merchant who sells blends can be vaguer and still be honest.

The refusal to brew a third infusion is the most telling of the five. A shop that will pour one cup and no more is either rushed or aware that the second and third will not support the price, and neither is a reason to buy.

What the price should tell you

Price is the sixth check and it is not one of the senses. In oolong the price is unusually informative because the gap between a zhengyan tea and a flat-land tea is a multiple rather than a margin, and the gap between a single bush and a blend is larger still.

A rock tea at a low price is a contradiction, a single-bush Dancong at a blend price is a contradiction, and an aged tea at a fresh price is a contradiction. The three contradictions cover most of what goes wrong in the category.

Price also sets the expectation, and expectation is a real part of the experience. A drinker who pays a premium will look for depth and find it whether or not it is there; a drinker who pays little will be pleasantly surprised by anything decent. Knowing that bias exists is the best defence against it.

The practical rule is to compare within a price band rather than across bands. A good tea at twenty units and a good tea at two hundred are both good and they are not competing, and judging them against each other wastes both.

A buyer who finds a shop where the five checks and the price agree should buy there repeatedly. That agreement is rarer than the size of the market suggests.

Matching the checklist to the type

A light Tieguanyin should pass on roll, dry smell and liquor, and it will not give many infusions because light tea is not built for that. Judging it by the endurance test used for rock tea will unfairly fail it.

A Wuyi rock tea should give many infusions and show a mineral note that a light tea does not have. Judging it by the floral aroma standard of a Tieguanyin will unfairly fail it too.

An aged oolong should be judged on texture and depth rather than on aroma, because aroma is what ageing removes. Applying a fresh-tea standard to an old tea is the most common misjudgement in the category.

The rule is to hold the right target in mind before starting. The five steps are the same for all oolong and the pass mark changes with the type, which is why the checklist begins with knowing what you are buying.

One habit is worth building on top of the five steps, which is to keep a note of each tea you buy with the cultivar, the roast and the infusion count. Three such notes turn into a personal reference that makes every later comparison easier, and the notes cost less time than reading about tea does.

The final point is that the checklist is a way of judging the seller as much as the tea. A shop that can answer the five questions in order is worth returning to even when the tea is ordinary, because the next tin will be better informed.

That is the whole method: look, smell, brew, count, inspect, and notice who is answering. None of it requires equipment, none of it requires vocabulary, and all of it works.

Frequently asked questions