Hong Kong Curious: Roasted Oolongs & Aged Puer

Hong Kong is known for its dark roasted teas and humid-stored puer teas. Rich, deep, and velvety, these teas pair well with the heavy meals of Dim Sum and Beef Brisket that are staples in Hong Kong. Sourcing these signature teas in Hong Kong is a little different from sourcing teas on the mainland. Hong Kong is all about post-processing, meaning that these teas are grown and lightly processed in Menghai, Wuyi Shan, and Anxi and then sent to Hong Kong for their final shaping. The Tie Guan Yin comes in its green maocha form, then undergoes 60 hours of charcoal roasting, the Shui Xian sees 70 hours in a Hong Kong charcoal oven, and the Shu Puer sits in a dank Hong Kong basement for decades until it has become the deep dark soup so favored on the island. Unfortunately, since we had to carry all these teas from Hong Kong back to the warehosue in a backpack, the quantity is severely limited, and we are only able to offer a very limited qunatity of teas both in the sampler and in total samplers. The Teas: 6g Dark Roast Tie Kuan Yin (Fukien Tea Co.) 6g Dark Roast Wuyi Shui Xian (Fukien Tea Co.) 6g Dark Roast Tie Kuan Yin (Geow Yong Tea Co.) 6g Dark Roast Wuyi Shui Xian (Geow Yong Tea Co.) 12g Hong Kong Storage 1990's Cooked Puer (Tong An Tea Co.) Since we can't go direcrtly to the source of these tea leaves and follow their transformation step-by-step to ensure authenticity of origin and production, what we did was follow the big names. The three tea houses we included in this sampler have been around for almost a hundred years each! Fukien Tea Co. currently run by Patrick Yeung has been around for over 70 years in the Sheung Wan district. Like some of the best tea makers on the mainland, Fukien is a generational tea house, meaning that its stewardship goes back three genereations. They specialize in personally roasting their deep roast oolongs. Geow Yong Tea Company is also located in the Sheung Wan district and was founded in 1842 in Taiwan during the Qing dynasty. Boasting a 180 years of tea making history, they are the oldest company we sourced from this trip. While they also specialize in roasted oolongs, their processing is a little different, with three roasts and three rests instead of one ultra long roast. Tong An Tea Company, formerly Bao Lan Sheng, was founded in 1915 by Mr. Li Xie. This 100+ year old tea company specializes in aging teas, primarially Puer and Liu Bao. They are intangible cultural inheritors of the now classic Hong Kong Storage style of aging teas, meaning their teas are carefully aged in hot and humid basesments in the mountains just outside the busy city. Note: teas will be repackaged from their original packaging into smaller heat-sealed pacakges convenient for single session and sample settings.