The essential ingredient throughout the black paintings of obscurantism simply is not that it must darken explicit particular person understanding, nevertheless that it must blacken our picture of the world
Friedrich Nietzsche
letter from a nepali tea producer
Just some weeks prior to now a producer from Nepal wrote to me:
Costly Leo,
You could be completely satisfied to know that now we now have stopped using “OOLONG” to clarify our partially oxidised teas. Some European prospects nonetheless want us to call them oolongs though.
Initially for want of a larger title and to market our teas we used the time interval oolongs. Moreover we had been so new to the tea enterprise that we thought calling them oolong was identical to calling some teas “black tea” which is a generic title. Via the years we slowly bought right here to know greater. This yr we felt assured enough to remove that tag from our partially oxidised teas.
We actually really feel greater now!
Warmth regards,
Lochan
Semi-oxidised black tea simply is not oolong
My expensive pal from the Himalayas produces a few semi-oxidised teas from the similar tea bushes that they yield their black teas with. And with nearly the similar processing procedures. Like so many others who adjust to 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, however, under no circumstances been marketed as an oolong. You can discover it beneath the black tea class in all teashops.
Oolong manufacturing involved a few particular steps which is likely to be utterly completely totally different from the manufacturing of such semi-oxidised black teas. Oolongs are subsequently biochemically pretty completely totally different as an individual class.
Not all people of the tea commerce are as ready as Lochan in correcting themselves after they begin to know the precise nature of oolongs.
Others propagate the parable. Some knowingly, the majority merely parrot
This is not the one delusion on the earth of tea anyway. Spreading of myths, to some people throughout the commerce, is seen as conducive to their enterprise benefits. Tea is by far a most humble class on this observe anyway. Seeing the extent what the surprise and slimming industries can do, or financial institutes and even the federal authorities, there truly isn’t any goal that we blame our fellow tradespeople for his or her slight twist of information.
To the consumers, however, there’s every little little bit of rights to know what’s precise.
To me as every a seller and an advocate, I consider it is solely healthful for the commerce of tea in the long run to stipulate clearly the character of points and preserve product knowledge as open as doable. It’s simply by the faith of the mass that the category of tea as a whole can prosper in opposition to the massive promoting assaults of junk drinks. It’s simply by mutual respect, actual knowledge 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?