A Few Ways to Select a Tea

Select a tea by category, region, taste or TCM character

At TeaHong.com, we try to put ourselves in our customers’ shoes. Different people have different priorities. Each sees the world differently. Naturally when it comes to selecting a tea, your criteria may not be the same as that of any other tea drinkers. That is why we group our tea products in different ways so you can see them in the context that is closest to how you think when selecting a tea.

Selection by
Tea Category

Selection by
Tea Region

Selection by
Taste Preference

Selection by
TCM Character

Our Tea Master’s personal favourites

Before doing your own selections, you may also want to check out what our Tea Master’s very own favourites here.

Or refer to his best loved oolongs here:

by random order

Selection by Tea Category

The most common way to group different varieties of tea is by the category of processing method with which they are produced. Some call it Tea Classification, others Tea Categorisation. We think the later label is semantically more accurate.

Many connoisseurs and tea specialists organise their collections with this concept.

The above chart shows the five main categories: Green, Black, White, Pu’er ( Post-Fermentation ) and Oolong teas. Click the pie chart to browse the category of tea, click on your choice and enjoy the browse!

Need more info about a category before seeing the products? Here are some articles:

Our tea regions

Fenghuang / Phoenix

Tea farmer withering tea leaves in the afternoon sun

Huangshan/ Anhui

Tea picking on the hill side terrace

Minnan-Mindong, Fujian

Wang's peak farm

Nepal, the Himalayas

Tea Regions of TeaHomg.com: Nepal / Himalayas

Taiwan

Master Li talks about ant problem in his wild Red Jade tea field

Wuyi-shan

A tea field in Wuyi

Yunnan

Thick linen are being put on piles of tealeaves for post-fermentation in Yunnan

Zhejiang

Tea Hong: Finest Hand-roasted Green tea: Longjing Spring Equinox

Selection by Taste

Teas are like raw gems. The true taste of each awaits the revelation made possible by the way you make it. Your personal need matters. It may change according to mood, time of the day, and occasions.

tasting

Tasting is the ultimate way to learn about a tea

Experience and explore

Begin by tasting a few selections using various infusion styles to gain more specialist understanding of the finesses and differences. Relate this with your personal preferences and you will gradually carve out a direction in building your own repertoire of tea. This will be your very own line that best suits your taste and your needs. With repeated usage your senses and perceptions will deepen. This will empower you with the connoisseur skill to easily master yet more varieties to continue to gain levels in the vast world of tea.

Selection by TCM Characters

This is for those who understand the needs of answering the voice of the body. A well customised and balanced collection not only helps to maximise tea’s health benefits, but also tea’s gastronomic qualities. At Tea Hong, we categorise our collection by traditional Chinese medicinal character.

Check out trending best sellers

If all these other ways of thinking about how to select a tea are not for you, perhaps you can see what other people are buying. These are some of what’s trending now:

Information on a tea page

Detail information on each tea page includes a description, taste profile, infusion tips and a few properties described with icons. This article gives a general orientation in case you want to prepare yourself before browsing.

Customer Reviews

Yet another way to get an idea is to see how other customers see our products. Read a few random reviews they have posted in this site, and click on the link to go to the product page:

  • Menghai Spring 2004, Pu’er shu cha

    A fine Shu

    Whether in the gaiwan or a common earthenware tea pot, this shu infuses dark and flavorful, sweet and inviting with no astringency to speak of. Re-infuses well even at 1g to 100ml ratio. Goes smoothly with savory meals and is very attractive on its own.

    M.

    Michael Eversberg II
  • Phoenix Classic, dancong oolong

    Wow, what a delicious and amazing experience. The roast on this is flawless, it perfectly exemplifies what good firing techniques can, and should, do to the Bai Ye cultivar.

    Bai Ye is a pretty common cultivar, the market is flooded with it and most of it is, at best, middle of the road quality. A lot of Bai Ye is processed & sold as Mi Lan Xiang, and although there is an authentic Mi Lan Xiang cultivar, most of what’s sold to the Western-facing market is not the real thing. Anyways, Tea Hong’s Phoenix Classic is not a wanna-be Mi Lan, nor is it a middle-of-the-road example of Bai Ye. It’s priced like a daily drinker, but drinks like a special treat.

    The flavor profile is just so deep and layered, with complex notes of tropical fruits like passionfruit and lychee, accented perfectly by the flawless roast which only adds to the sweet and fruity notes rather than smothering or obscuring them. The body of this tea is smooth but pungent, with distinct notes of peaches, moss, and woods. It’s like walking through a thick forest on a hot summer day and feeling the fresh aromatics of the soil and trees working their way deeper and deeper into your lungs. There’s something spiritually satisfying about this tea.

    As I continue through my session, the clarity of the flavor profile continues to grow and so too does the strength of the aftertaste. The fruity flavors get stronger, and the peachy, nectar-like sweetness clings for longer, emanating from the back of my throat for at least one full hour before subsiding.

    The roast is detectable across the full session, but never felt on the palate. This is amazing, and while most people would overlook this characteristic, I want to point it out because it’s a sign of mastery in processing when you can get Fenghuang oolong to have a detectable level of charcoal in the aroma without having any detectable charcoal in the flavor profile. It’s only in the background, supporting and highlighting and accentuating all of the other flavors, and it never touches the palate by itself.

    This is a new daily drinker for me. I will always have some of this in my collection.

    NN
  • Phoenix Classic, dancong oolong

    I ordered 2018 Classic Phoenix and my friend really liked it.

    hads218
  • Orchid Literati, Phoenix dancong oolong

    Indeed, better known Phoenix cultivars are widely planted throughout the Fenghuang area and well beyond, for obvious commercial incentives. In some gardens the harvest can be disciplined and the processing respectfully done. In some others, outputs are maximised for cashflow. The latter ones are quantitatively far more substantial. They are sold in the same name nevertheless. As a result, you can most certainly come across the same label here and there, with whatever origin or master maker your purveyor might tell you, basing on whatever information he/she has been given, or want to give.

    A recent visit to a few popular teashops in London, however, has given me a new level of understanding of this phenomenon. There is no limits to how low the quality a Ya Shi Xiang — Duck Poo tea ( they call it Duck Sh*t tea, by the way ) can be and still demanding a premium price. I have tasted quite a few quality levels in my 20+ years in this trade and have honestly never came upon such lowly ones. They did not even taste like anything from Fenghuang at all.

    People are still buying there because they do not know any better. On one hand, I am happy that people are interested in exploring the world of finer teas, on the other, however, I think it is dangerous that the spread of such fraudulent quality, will, in the long run, destroy the future of the market for good tea. When people have attempted to find a finer tea and found not much to enjoy even in a premium price product that they do not know is an unauthentic one, they simply will grow disinterested in the category all together.

    As in the spirit of the traditional literati, it is all the more an obligation that I have to bear to make sure the genuine quality get delivered to the market, for the sake of the future of good tea. That is also why I am grateful for customers like you, N.N., who would take the extra step in sharing the tea experience with more people. It is far more than the feeling of being appreciated, your sharing is even more effective than our efforts in involving the market for the interest in the real thing. Hopefully someday good tea will drive out bad.

    Leo Kwan