When speaking about oolong tea as a style, Da Hong Pao and Yancha should be in any introductory paragraph along with Tie Guan Yin.

For the most part, Da Hong Pao represents the dark side of oolong, while Tie Guan Yin represents the light side. With deep charcoal roasts, Da Hong Pao is famous for a flavor sensation ‘gan’ – a sought after type of bitterness that becomes sweet, along with a citrus zestiness, and a strong sense of minerality. To me, Da Hong Pao also the best type of tea to showcase the usefulness of unglazed ceramic teaware such as Yixing purple clay, or Chaozhou red clay. Da Hong Pao translates into English as ‘Big Red Robe’ and with that, let’s begin the article.

The nickname and label art for this tea is based mostly on my opinion of the aroma. It has a very notable medjool date fragrance, along with roasted pecans, tootsie rolls (chocolate taffy), and Caramel Squares (something old ladies buy, the box looks Scottish, kind of like a kilt’s tartan pattern…) I can imagine a young Arabic boy going trick or treating for the first time with his friends in Canada, getting a bag of candy, and when he’s sleeping that night, his patents and grandmother going through it, unwrapping a tootsie roll and thinking ‘What is this? do people actually buy these?’ — I for one like my chocolate to be chocolate, and my caramel to be caramel. Tootsie rolls are a weird abomination candy to me, but no matter my opinion of them, I can not deny that they have a unique fragrance and flavor. Da Hong Pao frequently has that same flavor, and this one definitely has a lot of it. I was playing around with the thought of doing some Arabic calligraphy for the label, I had a couple designs penned down (both sucked, and were probably illegible), but through my research I was exposed to the new world, a modern calligraphy style called “Kufi’. I hired a freelance kufi calligrapher to do the label for me, it says ‘Big Red Robe’, the direct translation from Da Hong Pao to English. In Arabic it reads: rida’ ‘ahmar kabir, or رداء أحمر كبير

‘To Not Know’ is a reference to the medjool date, etymologically medjool means ‘to not know’ the origin of the date. I’m also using it as a bit of a play on ignorance. Of course, the expectation is that most people would not know what Da Hong Pao is, but through their lives they may spontaneously come across an entry level version of the tea like this. After their experience, they’ll have an opinion, but they will still not know what is (or can be) — but at least by trying this and using it as an anchor point to those they’ll try in the future, the ignorance can be removed with experience. I’ll leave off with a beautiful (probably) Arabic proverb, one of my favourites in life so far:

He who knows not, and knows not he knows not, is a fool; shun him.
He who knows not, and knows he knows not, is simple; teach him.
He who knows, and knows not he knows, is asleep; awaken him.
He who knows, and knows he knows, is wise; follow him.

Brewing Parameters:
My control parameters are 1g tea: 75g water, 2 minutes, starting from rolling boil. The control brew was fine, it’s a bit light, watery, that’s to be expected. The finish was dull, heavy, and slow. I didn’t like that aspect.
Using control with a stronger ratio 1:60, the chocolate notes popped out right away, but with them came a carbony burned note. It isn’t strong or rich enough to be what I want. It does kind of remind me of Nestle Turtles.
1:50 2m15s RB is getting more into the caramel pecan notes than the chocolate, it feels like the tea is also leaving behind a film on my tongue.
1:20 2m RB has a significant enough amount of aroma compounds that I couldn’t get the satisfaction of inhaling them all in one breath. It had gan for a very short amount of time.
1:10 3m RB pretty cool. Successive small sips eventually lead to a ‘flame of flavor’ burning in my mouth, but by the time I got the flame going, I was already out of tea. I don’t know if this direction is the right way. I’ll backtrack.
1:50 2m RB pretty much the same as my memory of 1:50 2m15s RB

The rest of this article has a lot to do with DHP in general, just not this one. This tea doesn’t deserve an article of this calibre. Harsh I know, I’m a snobby tea bastard. When I think about it, I don’t know if I would describe DHP as the type of tea that someone just sits comfortably and reads a book with, it certainly doesn’t seem very leisurely. From my experience, DHP is supposed to be intense and it commands a lot of attention. There is a lot of sophisticated flavor to it, it’s great for ‘cha dao’, general mindfulness exercises, pairing with food, and getting geeky. Da Hong Pao CAN BE great if it’s high enough quality to be used in those scenarios, but this on is realistically only good for daily drinking. True to form DHP is very expensive tea, this humble offering my friends, is very economical.

A personal issue I have with Da Hong Pao is that I put it on such a high pedestal. The first one I ever tried (a gift from a quite wealthy, tea maniac friend) was so outrageously good that virtually everything I’ve tried since is beaten by a memory. It’s famous though, and so one might wonder why it fails to live up to the hype so often. Since I tried my first Da Hong Pao back in 2014… I’ve had only 1 which resembled my iconic ‘eureka’ DHP tea. It was one that was available to me 2 years ago, from somewhere within ‘Zheng Yan’, an area in the Wuyi mountains. I bought a very small amount of it (100g), and once I tried what I received, it really resonated with me. About a month later I tried to order it again, in a more substantial amount but sadly it was out of stock. I was reminded of a life lesson that day, opportunity doesn’t wait around after it knocks, you have to answer the door.

There is an area in the Wuyi mountains called ‘Zheng Yan’, and that is essentially what this map is all about. This protected zone is where Zheng Yan tea is produced is a forested area about 30km from East to West. In recognition of terroir, there could be a microclimate within Zheng Yan mentioned in a product description, for example, the Roaring Tiger Rock area, or the Tongmu Village area. A few years ago I had a DHP from Tiger Roaring Rock, it was quite good too. Within this protected zone chemicals/pesticides are not allowed. There is an amazing amount of unique flora and fauna present in this zone that China strongly protects, and thus tea producers within this zone have to adhere to all sorts of restrictions, perhaps directly responsible for the high quality tea.

If I averaged out my buying habits for tea, I tend to stock DHP once every 3 years. I stocked a great one last year which I still have a small amount of for my customers who do tea classes with me; but I bought this one to actually screw around and make iced tea. I didn’t expect much of this because the price is so low, but for the most part, this is a delicious everyday drinker. You can’t get much use out of it in gong fu cha brewing (because from my experience, only 1 pot infusion carries its signature flavor), but its fine for an easier drinking, mild brew. Will it change your life? No, but if you’ve never had dark oolong before, I think it’s a good tea to start with.

Da Hong Pao is the original Oolong tea. It’s made in the Wuyi mountains of Northern Fujian, the same area that makes the black teas Lapsang Souchong and Jin Jun Mei, and the same area that makes the Wuyi yancha or ‘Rock Tea’. If you’re familiar with the anime called Dragon Ball, Yancha and Oolong are 2 characters that are best friends. Fun little trivia gem.

Da Hong Pao is both the name of the tea style and the name of a cultivar. All Da Hong Pao is Yancha, but not all Yancha is Da Hong Pao. Shui Xian is another famous cultivar in the area that makes excellent Yancha. Tea is grown mostly from propagated clones from economically successful and well established tea varieties, that is to say most of the tea we drink are children.  The ‘mother bushes’ of Da Hong Pao still exist, are protected (and insured), though they are no longer harvested.

“The last Da Hong Pao harvested and made from the mother tree has been collected in the Palace Museum in Beijing. 20g of Da Hong Pao tea from one of the mother plants was sold for ¥208,000 in 2005, it is the highest auction record for Da Hong Pao.” – Wikipedia (that works its way out to be $104/g)

The Wuyi Mountains are an ideal place to grow and produce tea. It has been known since around the year 800 that tea grows best in rocky ground with good drainage. This rocky land is unfortunately not very fertile, but a tea producer can use this to their advantage. The tea will grow slower, and thus have a longer period to accumulate minerals from the ground that give it its signature ‘rock rhyme’ flavor.