Gongfu Tea
By admin on 2015-01-16

Gongfu Tea is not a name for tea or a certain tea category, but a method of tea making. It is so called because the way of tea brewing is very particular and somewhat painstaking. The Gongfu here means the knowledge of tea making and tasting.

As a local produce in Chaozhou and Shantou areas, Gongfu tea is listed top of the Eighteen Peculiarities of Chaozhou and Shantou Area. The treat sounds of please or have your tea are famous here, making it a folk custom to drink Gongfu tea everywhere in the region. The tea is famous for its rich taste. When you first taste it, it might seem a little bitter, while later you may feel other teas lack of flavor. Oolong tea is adopted for steeping Gongfu tea, such as Tie Guan Yin, narcissus and phoenix tea, which is semi-fermented tea intervenient between brown and green tea. Only this type of tea can offer the color, fragrance and flavor required by Gongfu tea.

Anxi Tikuanyin, Wuyi Rock-essence Tea, Phoenix Tea

Tikuanyin” is a famous species of tea trees, with the leaves being common raw material for Oolong. As a place of origin of Tikuanyin, Anxi region in China is also the main production region of Tikuanyin. The leaves are low-yield owning to delicate nature of this species, yet are of extremely excellent quality.

Anxi Tikuanyin is a kind of semifermented tea, the fabrication of which is featured by both fermentation of black tea and non-fermentation of green tea. The processing technique is highly exquisite, comprising over ten working procedures. The finished tea is featured by sturdiness and heaviness, with red spots scattering on the green leaves and hoarfrosts attaching to the surface. It is, after being brewed in hot water, characterized by intense fragrance, golden liquor, sweet aftertaste, and faint scent of orchid, peanut kernel or coconut. Tikuanyin is brewing-tolerant and can retain faint aroma after being brewed for seven times.

Being a natural and tasty drink, Tikuanyin is endowed with comparatively high healthcare value. Other than having healthcare functions similar to those of general species of tea, it provides efficacies of antiaging, anticancer, anti-arteriosclerosis, diabetes prevention and cure, weight loss, body building, decayed tooth prevention and cure, clearing heat, purging evil fire, reliefing smoking-induced detriment and removing or dispelling the effects of alcohol, etc.

Wuyi rock-essence tea, a famous kind of oolong in China, grows in the Wuyi Mountain of Fujian Province. The tea gets its name for that the tea plants grow on the rocks of the Wuyi Mountain. Since the Tang Dynasty, tea leaves of Wuyi Mountain became a precious kind of tea offered to the upper class; and an imperial tea garden was set in the Wuyi Mountain to specially gather and produce tea for the imperial family. Since the Ming Dynasty, people began to develop oolong, to which Wuyi rock-essence tea belongs.

There are many kinds of Wuyi rock-essence tea, with famous teas of several dozens. Among these kinds, the “famous plants (Mingcong)” called “the king of rock-essence tea” is the most famous and rarest. The “four most famous plants” refer to bright red gown (Da-hong-pao), ferric arhat (Tie-luo-han), white cock (Bei-gong-ji) and watery goldfish (Shui-jin-yu). The bright red gown tea, the best kind among oolong and which grows on the crag of the Tianxin Rock, is clear and smells sweet after being brewed in boiled water. Besides the mellow, faint scent, the ferric arhat tea, the earliest tea in the Wuyi Mountain, has the function of fever cure. There is some other famous tea like Wuyi cinnamon.

Tea leaves from the heartland of Wuyi Mountain, called “Zhengyan Tea”, are the most excellent among all kinds of Wuyi rock-essence tea. As these tea leaves are brewed in the water, they smell sweet and mellow for a long time and taste without bitter or acerbity. This unique sweet smell is called “Yanyun (Lasting Appeal of Rock)”.

The phoenix tea comes from the Mount Phoenix region in Chaozhou. The tea water assumes brownish color, with tealeaves thick and compact in strips. It generally offers around 20 times of infusion with great taste. Among it, the phoenix single-cluster tea is the most famous with multiple flavors of sweet-scented osmanthus, jasmine and honey for you to choose from, which once topped the national famous tea contest held in Fuzhou.