Anxi Roasted Oolong
Anxi Roasted Oolong
A roasted oolong from Anxi, Fujian. A blend of a forty per cent roast and a sixty per cent roast.
Anxi, in Fujian.
Anxi county sits in the hills of Fujian, on the same ridge that gives China its Wuyi rock teas. For roasted oolong it is the foremost region in the country, and it is where this tea comes from.
Two roasts, not one.
Roasting is where an Anxi oolong is decided. Take it too far and the leaf gives up its florals for char. Stop too early and it stays green and thin.
This is not one roast. It is a blend of two, one taken to forty per cent and one to sixty, married so that the lighter lot keeps its top notes while the darker one carries the body underneath. That decision is the tea.
Whole leaf needs room.
A rolled oolong will not open inside a flat paper bag, which is why those bags are filled with tea cut almost to dust. The pyramid exists so the leaf can unfurl, and the extraction is measurably better for it.
Ours are made from a non-GMO sugar-cane PLA rather than the corn-based material most pyramid sachets use, and the material is certified to Japanese organic standards and by TUV Austria. Paper is not the clean option people assume: flat bags are sealed with a thermoplastic worked into the paper fibres.
One sachet is worth brewing more than once. The second pour is often the one worth waiting for.
Most oolong sold abroad is not from anywhere.
"Oolong" on a label tells you almost nothing. It names a category, not a place: partially oxidised tea, anywhere between green and black, from any country, at any grade. Most of what reaches Western shelves under that word is blended low-grade leaf, oxidised just enough to look the part.
This one is from Anxi, and it is roasted rather than left green, which is the older and harder way to make it. That is the whole claim. We would rather say two true things about a tea than ten impressive ones.