Getting to know the Dong Ding

I have spent this week getting acquainted with the Dong Ding oolong and emerged slightly awestruck.

- Aravinda Anantharaman

I have spent this week getting acquainted with the Dong Ding oolong and emerged slightly awestruck. Let me start at the beginning. On LinkedIn, a Taiwanese tea producer and exporter, Hsu, Hao-Sheng, who goes by the name Sean, has been sharing really helpful guides to Taiwanese oolong.

It's a tea I know so little about and have only managed tentative tries with it. Some time ago, I had tried some Chinese Dan Cong and Wuyi Rock oolongs and have been equally keen to explore these teas from Taiwan, which is also home to some of the greatest known teas in this style. I learnt from Sean that the oolong was developed after the British took the seeds and the skills to make tea from China to India, so its origins are from the 1860s and it's also why the newer tea regions never produced it and the oolong has been a style perfected by Chinese and Taiwanese tea makers.