Foreword (Written 2023):

Phoenix oolong tea was what introduced me to the concept of ‘cha dao’ many years ago, though at the time I didn’t know it by that name. Phoenix oolong tea is the key influence behind so many of the analogies I have created to explain sensory concepts to others and is thus responsible for my growth as a competent and expressive human being. There are many varieties and grades, some more famous than others; and some much more expensive than others, but no matter the grade or cost, there is almost always a lesson to be learned by drinking them with intention. Probably the easiest of all to witness, but hardest to accept is the lesson of humility.

It’s fair to say that if I never tried phoenix oolong tea, my life would be radically different. My involvement with it is directly responsible for my love of tea, a few friendships, and several opportunities that have presented themselves throughout the years. To its credit, it turned me, someone sincerely apathetic to tea into someone who has at this point nearly dedicated my life to it. To drink phoenix oolong with a curious mind is to open pandoras box. I have no regrets.

There is a philosophy at the core of my research, known as ‘cha dao’ — ‘the path of tea’. Essentially, by drinking tea with intention, you can cultivate your spirit (tao) and understanding of life (tao). I won’t get into the details, because frankly I don’t know the details, but what I can say is that by drinking tea without distractions and focusing on the olfactory experience is the core of this practice. Cha dao has taken me very far down a path I didn’t know existed. While it is intriguing for me to look into cha dao further, I will save the deep reading for this subject for when I’m an old man. For now I’d rather wander this world of tea spontaneously without a map and stumble upon novel ideas on my own. It may take me much longer this way, but I’m proud to say it’s my path, on my terms.

In 2022 I bought a fucking crazy phoenix oolong to carry as an iconic offering for my shop Linvers Atelier. It was a $7000/KG mother bush of ‘8 immortals’ (luckily just 500g). Was it a waste of money? On one hand, absolutely yes. It doesn’t deserve that cost if you’re judging it on the flavor experience, but on the other hand, by drinking it I learned what I now consider a crucial part of understanding tea culture.

You see, I drink a lot of tea. I like to compare my mental drinking of tea to physically climbing a mountain face. It’s exhausting and takes practice, but there are some special views to see from the top. How I would consider myself at the top of a tea is by brewing it, describing it, quantifying it, and adjusting variables until I can optimize the teas flavors to my preferences. Once I can feel totally satisfied with it, the tea is ‘complete’ and I’m proud to show it off. Preparing the tea for others as a hiker might show pictures of their magnificent view from faraway mountain tops.

The aforementioned tea was the second tea in my life that frustrated me. I was too junior to appreciate what frustration meant when I had my first experience, that was back in 2014 I guess. Lo and behold it was also with Phoenix oolong, a rare single bush offering called “Eastern Red” or “Dong Fang Hong”

Can you imagine what an avid climber would feel if they arrived at a mountain face that was almost entirely smooth like a sheet of glass? A mountain where every grip and finger hold appeared to be within reach but never actually was. The feeling that the hiker with all their experience could do nothing but be humbled by an ‘unclimbable’ mountain. There’s something in that analogy that means a tremendous amount to me. It was an idea that I conceived last year, that I’ve just recently built upon with the teas I’ve tried this year (namely this tea and another called ‘Golden Hour’)

I went to visit Mt. Fuji in the autumn of 2022. It was my first time to that part of Japan in my 8 trips. The day that we went to Fuji-san, the skies were overcast and the mountain was enveloped in clouds. Here I was, at the foot of the mountain but unable to see it at all. It was a disappointing experience, but without it, what I’m about to say would have never occurred to me.

It’s said there is a magical mountain island called Penglai. The gods and immortal beings live there, the mythical creatures like phoenixes and dragons live there. Flowers are always in bloom, and fruits are always ripe. It’s a paradise in every aspect of the word. Mortals cannot see or reach this island, but mortals though cultivation of their tao can become immortal, and to immortals the path will be open.

It has taken me 11 years of unrelated experiences in visiting a cloudy mount fuji, spending a tonne of money on ‘disappointing tea’, watching incense smoke snake through the still air of my tea room, reading various books on Chinese poetry, history, fables, a Japanese insight into beauty, books about color – again a plethora of seemingly unrelated experiences all converging at this point that I can take another step on this path, up this glass mountainface, and say…

“maybe what we smell are memories”

I can’t help but think I’m not living in the moment when I’m drinking this tea. That I can only really experience it in the past tense. Once it’s literally gone, it figuratively appears. When I have it in front of me, it slips away like a mountain behind fog, and that I’m chasing an elusive imaginary island through time, as if the key to finding it is a map given by the tea, but only shows where the island was – not where it is right now.

Ah, this sounds ridiculous, but it’s the best I can do right now. It’s a bit raw, I’ll have to think about it more and polish it up.

If I’m being honest, I can’t explain to you how this tea smells, because it smells like how I imagine Penglai would smell. I feel like I can get to the shore but it’s enveloped in fog. I can feel the magic emanating from the island. I’ll anchor my boat, but once I step onto the rocky crags the fog disappears and I’m just staring at the ocean with an island in the distance. It smells like something beautiful is perpetually just out of reach. It’s a humbling, frustrating fragrance. If the path of Cha Dao will lead me anywhere in life, I’m confident that a Phoenix will guide my way.

Everything I know about phoenix oolong teas and their basis of pricing has lead me to say this: this is a goddamn steal. When phoenix oolongs are frustrating, I have observed that they cost a LOT of money. While this is one of the more expensive teas on this site, this price pales in comparison to what the upper echelon of phoenix oolong can go for. For a student of cha dao, this is ‘essential reading’.

More Information, Factual stuff (Written in 2022, Modified in 2023)

From this point, this page takes about 14 minutes to enjoy without reading “The Aurora” and probably 20 minutes if you do.

Several years ago I wrote a fictional piece called “The Aurora” in an attempt to express my feelings about this tea. As my passion for tea grew and I started this company, this tea has maintained its role as my flagship product. I was pretty insistent the beginning of my career to force my customers to learn the authentic names of the teas they would buy from me, which admittedly sometimes can be quite long. Recently the concept of ‘nicknaming’ the teas has helped a lot with breaking the ice surrounding them. In 2023, this tea will be known as ‘The Mirage” though to a serious tea drinker, its full Chinese name has significant value ‘Feng Huang Lao Cong Dan Zhu Mi Lan Xiang’ and with that; there’s some basic terminology that think we should clear up before going further.

Feng Huang (鳳凰): “Phoenix”
Dan Cong (单枞): “Single Trunk”
Lao Cong (老從): “Old Trunk”
Dan Zhu (單株): “Single Plant”
Mi Lan (蜜蘭): “Honey Orchid”
Xiang (香): “Fragrance”

There are at least 23 ‘famous’ types of ‘Feng Huang Dan Cong’ (herein after referred to as ‘Phoenix Oolongs’). Famous is a bit subjective because some are significantly more popular than others. Phoenix in its name implies that the tea is made in the area of the ‘Phoenix Mountains’ in the northern part of Chaozhou city (潮州市) in Eastern Guangdong Province of China.

‘Dan Cong’ should imply that the finished tea is the product of a single isolated tea bush, not a blend of different bushes. As it has been taught to me, this used to be the case but is not any more. The area has received so much fame for their high quality tea that the producers in the area just slap the word Dan Cong on everything they can because it would be hard to sell otherwise. It’s also worth mentioning that I wrote ‘bush’ just now, most of the time the good ‘Dan Congs’ are more like trees. We’ll get to that in a minute.

‘Lao Cong’ implies 2 things:

1) The tea is harvested from very old bushes (or trees). How old is old? It’s at least older than what you’d find on tea plantations, which are culled at a maximum 90 years in most of the world. Different parts of China use the term ‘Lao Cong’ more leniently than others. It should be accepted that 100 years is a good place to start calling a particular bush ‘Lao Cong’ across China; however in the Phoenix mountains, many of the famous ‘Lao Cong’ trees are between 200~650 years old. The Phoenix Mountains of Guangdong, Wu Yi Mountains of Fujian, and ancient tea forests of Xishuangbanna in Yunnan are 3 great areas to find really old ‘Lao Cong’ teas. In the Phoenix mountains, tea has been planted for approximately 900 years. Most varieties of tea bushes used in Phoenix oolong production are descendants from a tea bush called Shui Xian. Shui Xian was imported from the Wu Yi mountains of Fujian province, and to this day is still grown extensively there.

2) When the term ‘Lao Cong’ was originally used in this area, it referred to the ‘mother bush’ of a certain variety of tea; that definition (like what happened to Dan Cong) has been muddled over time.  When plants in nature cross pollinate and spread their seeds, those seeds will be genetically different from their parents. The traits of the children can potentially be more favourable, perhaps having higher yields, drought resistance, cold hardiness, etc. As tea has become more commercialized over time, laboratory propagation and selective cross pollination is a common way to develop new, superior varieties of tea. As it happens in nature though, before tea research labs had any role to play in society, tea producers would observe and discover these miracle bushes with superior genetics, cut branches from the bushes and graft them to new rootstocks, creating a replica, or clone of a favorable bush. The original bush that the clones are taken from is called the mother, or lao cong. An important consideration is that new bushes are still being discovered today, and that once cloned, the clone will grow from year 1 and start to be harvest-able between years 2~5. The mother bush will be considerably older, perhaps 650 years older.

Not every lao cong is the mother bush, though some are, others are just very old clones. When something is 500 years old it gets hard to prove. If one bush is said to be 500 years old, and one is said to be 560, you’d be hard pressed to know which is older visually, and be doing severe damage to them by cutting them open to check the rings’. Since the old bushes of this nature are so celebrated anyway, if its’ debatable which bush is the mother bush, they can both be the mother bush. It’s not a regulated term anyway.

So why does it matter if it’s lao cong or not? The finish, depth of flavor, aroma-flavor harmony, etc are all more elegant and cohesive from an old bush. If we can compare tea to people, let’s say the Lao Cong is a 85 year old, sharp as a tack, charming and charismatic world explorer. They have stories to tell, and love to tell them. When a lao cong bush is used, there will be a great person behind its production. There isn’t a lot of these old bush teas to go around, and there is money to be made when they are processed well, they will not be wasted. The producer will be able to record a conversation with the world explorer, store it in a dry form, and allow the listener to hear the story on demand, perhaps many months after it has been recorded. On the other hand, plantations focus on using the youthfulness of the tea to their advantage, each variety having its own signature flavor balance, the tea can be great, wont cost as much, but you’re interviewing a 14 year old. Some 14 year olds are prodigies, they could have had very wild and interesting lives, they may be well spoken, but from my experience this is the exception. You could have the greatest interviewer in the world asking a 14 year old questions, only to get something that most listeners cannot relate to, or are not interested in hearing.

If you are enjoying reading this, I highly encourage you to take a break from reading and watch the following video before continuing. The video is not related to tea, though it is a beautiful analogy to what I am trying to say. Plantation tea is level 1 or 2. It is the essence of the music. Could it be more impressive? Well… You tell me. Lao Cong usually exists as level 3 or 4 depending on its provenance. If I think back to any time I’ve ever heard Fur Elise… I guess I’ve always heard something similar to level 3? To me, 3 sounds like the ‘classic’ version. 4 is outstanding, what a treat to witness! This tea is level 5 (because of ‘Dan Zhu’ which we will cover next). It’s hard (for me) to comprehend the amount of skill that it requires to play at level 5. If I wasn’t watching the video with my complete attention, it might almost be too much to take in. Comparing this tea to level 5 of the music is great because if you drink this tea with the clarity of mind to pay attention to what it does, it’s like watching this video — magic happens. If you drink it without that state of mind, well — it’s still great, but you would be missing an incredible amount of its “raison d’etre”. Finding this video and writing this analogy was really a special experience for me, I hope you’ll enjoy it as much as I did.

‘Dan Zhu’ is the moniker that a producer applies to ‘Single Plant’ teas today. As I wrote above, it is when the tea is harvested from literally one plant so that a consumer can drink the tea of an unique species of the tea bush or appreciate the nuances of an older bush. The reason why you should care about that: If it’s not a Lao Cong tea, you shouldn’t really, I’d even go so far as to say that’s kind of a marketing ploy unless you were drinking a very unusual variety. If it IS a Lao Cong tea there will be flavors and aromas that over the course of the growing season the geezer will have lapped up and concocted into beautiful peripheral experiences for the taster; sensations with such subtlety that they may easily be covered up by something else (for example a younger bush with stronger base flavors)

Lastly, ‘Xiang’ refers to the fragrance of the tea. It is said that Phoenix Oolongs are chameleons of the tea world, taking on scents that are very similar to other things. For example, a few of the popular ones are Almonds, Vietnamese Cassia Cinnamon, Ginger Flowers, Honey Orchids, Gardenia, Jasmine, Iris, Osmanthus, and Duck Shit.

Let’s take this opportunity to learn the last 2 Chinese word in its name: Mi and Lan. Mi (蜜) is honey, Lan (蘭) is Orchid. Honey Orchids are a variety of oncidium orchids which apparently have a sweet, honey-like scent. I have never seen, or smelled this particular flower before though.

So: Fenghuang Lao Cong Dan Zhu Mi Lan Xiang or Phoenix Area, Single Plant, Old trunk, Fragrance of Honey Orchid. It could be shortened but that would erase some of its (very important) identity. Ironically the one thing I could erase from its name is “Feng Huang” because a tea like this this tea could literally not be made anywhere else. In the label art of this tea, it says LCDZMLX which is the acronym for its Chinese name.

Alright so by now you’ve probably got the gist of it all, but I haven’t really told you anything other than general information. Let’s go deeper.

Teas from Mt. Wudong (乌岽) are the best and have been famous since the Song Dynasty (960~1279). They are the best because of solar aspect, altitude, climate, soil type and the average age of the tea trees (they are on average very old). These concepts collectively known as ‘terroir’ would not be unfamiliar to a wine lover. Red clay — bountiful around Wudong, is rich in minerals, especially iron. Iron gives a better flavor to tea no matter how it gets in (through the tea leaves, teapot, or kettle). Wudong teas grow at altitudes between 950m and 1360m above sea level. The higher up they grow the slower they grow, which in the case of the old trees that Wudong is famous for forces them to grow even slower. The solar aspect of being on a mountain is nice if you’re on the south side. Wudong town is South East of the peak and therefore gets sun for the morning and afternoon while the evening cools down in shade. The weather must be nice, but I have no comment on it. Teas from the nearby Mt. Dazhi (大质山) and Shiguping Village (石鼓坪村) to the East are also very highly regarded, but definitely have no where near the fame of Wudong, especially internationally.

Comparing phoenix oolongs to other dark styles of oolong such as Da Hong Pao and Shui Xian which are produced in Fujian’s Wu Yi mountains is an interesting exercise. I generally dislike Wu Yi oolongs because the charcoal roast that finishes the tea is almost always too deep for my taste. If a phoenix tea has a detectable roasted or smokey flavour it was poorly made and/or released too early. Phoenix teas do go through charcoal baking at the final stage in their preparation which is very important to coax out their full flavor potential. After the roasting process there is a resting period where the teas will shed any unwanted smokiness, this is the reason why phoenix oolongs are generally released in July/August despite being picked in April/May. An apt comparison may be cookies; if you can taste that a cookie is burned or over-baked it detracts from the overall enjoyment, phoenix teas follow the same logic.

You’ve been reading this for a while, more so if you’ve read “The Aurora” story mentioned in the beginning. You might not have noticed that it was a link as it looks like regular text. Even this one was a link! This website stuff is crazy. It’s been a fun several (7) hours writing this out. You still have no idea what the tea is supposed to taste like though, and that might not even be relevant anymore. Let me leave you with this:

As amazing as this tea tastes you don’t drink this tea for the flavor, you drink it for the experience.