The essential side inside the black art work of obscurantism should not be that it needs to darken specific individual understanding, nevertheless that it needs to blacken our picture of the world
Friedrich Nietzsche
letter from a nepali tea producer
Just some weeks previously a producer from Nepal wrote to me:
Dear Leo,
You could be blissful to know that we have stopped using “OOLONG” to clarify our partially oxidised teas. Some European purchasers nonetheless want us to call them oolongs though.
Initially for want of a higher title and to market our teas we used the time interval oolongs. Moreover we’ve got been so new to the tea enterprise that we thought calling them oolong was similar to calling some teas “black tea” which is a generic title. Over time we slowly acquired right here to know larger. This 12 months we felt assured enough to remove that tag from our partially oxidised teas.
We actually really feel larger now!
Warmth regards,
Lochan
Semi-oxidised black tea should not be oolong
My costly buddy from the Himalayas produces a lot of semi-oxidised teas from the similar tea bushes that they yield their black teas with. And with virtually the similar processing procedures. Like so many others who observe the “definition” that an oolong is a tea that is between a inexperienced and a black tea, it was solely pure for him to label the tea “oolong”, though it is not.
His tea is not any lesser tea than the perfect Darjeeling. Darjeeling is itself well-known for partial oxidation. It has, nonetheless, not at all been marketed as an oolong. You’ll uncover it beneath the black tea class in all teashops.
Oolong manufacturing involved a lot of specific steps which could be fully fully totally different from the manufacturing of such semi-oxidised black teas. Oolongs are on account of this reality biochemically pretty fully totally different as an individual class.
Not all people of the tea commerce are as eager as Lochan in correcting themselves after they begin to grasp the precise nature of oolongs.
Others propagate the parable. Some knowingly, the majority merely parrot
This is not the one fantasy on the earth of tea anyway. Spreading of myths, to some people inside the commerce, is seen as conducive to their enterprise benefits. Tea is by far a most humble class on this apply anyway. Seeing the extent what the sweetness and slimming industries can do, or financial institutes and even the federal authorities, there really isn’t any motive that we blame our fellow tradespeople for his or her slight twist of particulars.
To the purchasers, nonetheless, there could also be every little little bit of rights to know what’s precise.
To me as every a seller and an advocate, I imagine it’s simply healthful for the commerce of tea in the long run to stipulate clearly the character of points and maintain product information as open as attainable. It is solely by the faith of the mass that the category of tea as an entire can prosper in the direction of the massive promoting assaults of junk drinks. It is solely by mutual respect, actual information and open communication {{that a}} class can win the faith of the mass.
So why have some people tried to obscure the definition of oolong?