Tieguanyin: Anxi, Three Aroma Types and the Grades

Tieguanyin is a ball-rolled oolong from Anxi County in southern Fujian, made from a single cultivar of the same name. It comes in three aroma types, and the type is a bigger decision than the grade: qingxiang, light aroma, is floral and green-edged; nongxiang, strong aroma, is roasted and deeper; chenxiang, aged aroma, is stored for years and tastes of dried fruit. A buyer who knows the type but not the grade will do better than the reverse.

The three types are not quality levels. They are three products made from the same leaf by different finishing, and each has its own best grade. A top-grade qingxiang and a top-grade nongxiang are both excellent and are not interchangeable.

The cultivar and the county

The Tieguanyin bush is a small-leaf Sinensis type with a distinctive red-purple tinge on the new shoots. It yields less than a modern clone and it is fussy about soil, which is why the best leaf comes from a limited set of villages around Xiping, Xianghua and Gande.

Anxi sits at 300 to 1,000 meters in a humid subtropical valley. The high villages pick later and produce a leaf with more aroma; the low ones pick earlier and produce more volume. That gradient is the main quality variable inside the county.

A tea sold as Tieguanyin from outside Anxi is usually a different cultivar processed in the same style. It can be good and it is not the same product, which is why the county name is protected and why producers use it loosely anyway.

What the three types actually are

Qingxiang is the modern mainstream style, developed from the 1990s onward. The leaf is oxidized lightly, dried at low temperature and left unroasted, so the green edge and the floral volatiles survive. It is the style that made Tieguanyin famous outside China, and it is the one most tourists meet.

Nongxiang is the older style. The leaf is oxidized further and given a roast, traditionally over charcoal, which converts some of the floral compounds into toasted and honeyed ones. It tastes rounder and keeps longer, and drinkers who find qingxiang thin often prefer it.

Chenxiang is nongxiang stored for years and re-roasted periodically. The aromatics fade and the taste moves toward dried fruit and a medicinal sweetness. It is a small category and it is priced by age, which makes it the easiest type to fake.

The grades, and what they measure

Tieguanyin grading is not standardized across the industry. The common domestic system uses a set of special grades from the top down, and the labels are applied by the producer rather than certified.

What the grader actually assesses is aroma type, aroma intensity, the thickness of the liquor, the aftertaste and the appearance of the wet leaf. A high grade has a clear aroma, a thick mouthfeel and a sweet finish that lingers.

Because the system is not enforced, the reliable signals are the producer and the price. A tin with an impressive grade name and a low price is a grade name, not a grade.

Why the light style dominates now

Qingxiang took over the market for a reason that is partly agricultural and partly commercial. It is cheaper to make, because it skips the roast, and it is more photogenic, because the leaf stays bright green and the liquor stays pale.

The cost is durability. A qingxiang tea is at its best within six months of picking and declines after a year. A nongxiang tea improves for a year and holds for three. A buyer who stocks up on qingxiang in spring has a tea that is fading by the following spring.

• Three aroma types, not three grades.
• Qingxiang is unroasted, floral, and fades within a year.
• Nongxiang is roasted, rounder, and keeps two to three years.
• Chenxiang is aged nongxiang, stored and re-roasted.
• Grading is producer-applied, not certified.
• Anxi is protected, and the name is used loosely anyway.

Buying and storing

Buy qingxiang in the spring it was made and drink it within the year. Buy nongxiang without that urgency, since the roast stabilizes it. Buy chenxiang only from a producer who can state the storage history, because age is the product and age is the thing most easily invented.

Storage is the same for all three: sealed, cool, dark, away from strong smells. A qingxiang tea in an open tin loses its aroma in weeks. A nongxiang tea left in a warm kitchen goes flat in a season.

A drinker deciding between the types should start with nongxiang if they drink tea daily and with qingxiang if they want to understand why the tea became famous. The two answer different questions, and neither is the beginner’s version of the other.

The grade system deserves a caution because it is the most abused part of the market. The domestic special-grade scale has several levels, and none of them is enforced by law. A producer prints the label, and a buyer has no way to check it.

What the label does indicate is the producer’s own confidence, which is worth something. A producer who prints a modest grade and sells at a modest price is often more reliable than one who prints the top grade on every tin.

The practical alternative is to buy by village and by season. A spring pick from a named high village is a more informative claim than any grade label, because the village and the season are facts that other buyers can verify.

What changed in the 1990s

Before the 1990s, most Tieguanyin was nongxiang. The leaf was oxidized further and roasted, sometimes over charcoal for many hours, and the result was a darker, rounder tea that kept well.

The shift to qingxiang came with a change in both market and technique. Taiwanese oolong had shown that a light, floral, unroasted style could command high prices, and Anxi producers adapted. The new style required cooler drying and more careful handling, and it spread rapidly.

By the 2000s qingxiang dominated, and by the 2010s a reaction had begun, with buyers returning to nongxiang and to charcoal roasting as the light style became ubiquitous and cheap. The market now supports both, and the split is the main decision a buyer makes.

The reaction is worth noting because it is a pattern in Chinese tea: a style becomes standard, the standard becomes cheap, and the older style returns as a premium product. The tea has not changed; the position in the market has.

• Qingxiang is the modern mainstream, developed from the 1990s.
• Nongxiang was the pre-1990s standard and is now a premium choice.
• Chenxiang is a small aged category, priced by year.
• The shift followed Taiwanese oolong’s commercial success.
• The 2010s saw a partial return to charcoal roasting.
• The three types are products, not quality levels.

What the wet leaf tells a grader

Graders judge the wet leaf as closely as the liquor. A good Tieguanyin leaf is thick, pliable and evenly sized, with a green centre and a distinct red border. The border is the trace of the bruising and it should be present but not dominant.

An uneven leaf, with some pieces dark and some bright green, indicates either mixed picking or careless bruising. A leaf that is uniformly brown has been oxidized too far or roasted too hard.

The smell of the wet leaf is the other half. After the second steep it should carry the same aroma as the liquor, and often more of it. A leaf that smells of nothing after two steeps was either poorly made or is not the cultivar.

The village question

Anxi is a county of small villages, and the best-known ones sit at different altitudes with slightly different soils. Xiping is the historic centre and the highest-priced name. Xianghua and Gande are lower and cooler respectively.

A single-village tea is now sold with the village on the label, which is an improvement in information and a new source of confusion, since the village names are not protected in the way the county name is.

A buyer should treat a village name as a claim to be tested by taste rather than a guarantee. The village matters, and the producer matters more.

Frequently asked questions