Signor Soana was distraught.

�??I am so sorry,�?� he said. �??I have run out of my usual Formosa oolong. I can offer you another one instead. It is good, though not as good as my usual one.�?�

I was sorry too�??until I compared prices. Phew, that was an escape. Signor Soana�??s usual oolong is twice as expensive as the replacement one. Undoubtedly, it will also be twice as good, but since my tea expenses have already come under my family�??s scrutiny, settling for the cheaper one suits me just fine. Plus Signor Soana has been twenty-five years in the business so he knows decent tea when he sees it. Still, I joked that I wouldn�??t go back if I didn�??t like it.

Accident shaped my oolong palate on Formosa. At the shop where I worked, the only oolongs we carried came from there, chiefly because oolong was little known at the time and, in any case, here in Europe, Formosa was a synonym for it. Which is a bit unfair really because oolong teamaking first emerged in mainland China. Its birthplace was Fujian, where some enterprising grower first created it in the 17th century, or thereabouts. Fujian settlers brought the technique to Taiwan in the 19th century and it quickly became a local specialty, matching and perhaps even eclipsing the fame of the mainland version. This may well have had something to do with the Cold War, and with the fact that Taiwanese tea growers were very accommodating of Western demands and made some of their oolongs with high degrees of oxidation. But it is also true that Formosa oolongs, whether highly or lightly oxidized, are delicious, which is why I was particularly looking forward to my cup.
I put Soana’s Oolong Fancy to the test against a much pricier Formosa Imperial Phoenix Oolong by Whittard. I brewed them both gongfu style, filling the bottom of two gaiwans with leaves and steeping them for three breaths. They both yielded cups of a beautiful deep amber color. However, the Formosa Imperial Phoenix Oolong had a more pronounced floral scent than the other one. The FIPO was light and aromatic in the mouth while Soana�??s Oolong Fancy had a stronger black tea mouthfeel. It was not as sophisticated as the Whittard one, but held its own nicely, like aGainsborough against a Van Dyck.

When I visit Soana next, I�??ll tell him. I suppose this means he�??ll keep my custom. Even if he says he gets all his teas from a French importer, (the admittedly extraordinary) Dammann Frères, �??because the French are more reliable than the British.�?�

Marco Polo had just returned from Cathai, Dante Alighieri was penning the Divine Comedy and the Pope was about to flee Rome for Avignon when some enterprising tea grower from Guangdong, in Southern China, first brewed Zhongshan Baiye, the Phoenix Bird.

The tea bushes it comes from have never been pruned, so pickers need ladders to gather the leaves, which are then oxidized to about 40 percent. I had never tried this historic oolong, so curiosity had the better of me when I came across it on the Special Teas website, and I picked it up.

I tried it today, gongfu style. Pointedly ignoring instructions, I filled the bottom of my gaiwan with leaves, then poured what I hoped was crab’s eye water on top. I let the leaves steep for five breaths before pouring the liquor into the pitcher.

Every description I have read about Zhongshan Baiye wants it delicate, with fruity and toasty notes. I am starting to wonder whether my nose and palate are slightly skewed, because this is most emphatically not what I experienced with this tea. My cup was a rich amber color with a strong, pleasantly vegetal scent. The same quality emerged with clarity in the mouth. It was lightly sweet at first approach, buu a definite vegetaley character came out clearly in the long finish.

It tasted like a cup of awakening countryside and, for once, it didn’t immediately evoke a painting or a painter. I keep wanting to say Constable, because of the country landscape, but the colors are all wrong. This tea is darker, like a faded scroll. Like, now that I think of it, the dark ochre scroll hanging just behind my desk. A delicate portrait of willowy ladies against a barely-there landscape. Beautiful, and gloriously anonymous.

Once upon a time in Fujian lived a poor farmer. One day, as he went to tend his fields, he passed by a shrine. He peered inside and could hardly believe his eyes. A carpet of leaves and dust covered the floor, thick cobwebs wrapped every corner and the crumbling walls were gray with centuries of grime. Forgotten in a corner, an iron statue of Kuan Yin, the Goddess of Mercy, presided over the ruins of her temple. The man was horrified.

�??This no way to worship you,�?� he told the statue. �??I don�??t have enough money to repair the temple�??s walls, but I�??ll do my best to honor you with what I have.�?�

Every day, he swept the floor, cleaned the walls and lit the incense. Soon the shrine looked tidy, if not new. One night, as the man slept, Kuan Yin came to him in his dreams.
�??It is time to reward all you have done for me,�?� she said. �??Tomorrow, go to the little cave behind my shrine and you will find something for you.�?�

The man did as he was told and found a tea shoot. He tended it carefully and it grew into a luxuriant bush, whose leaves yielded a marvellous tea. Grateful for this bounty, the man named the tea after the goddess, calling it Ti Kuan Yin, the Iron Goddess of Mercy.

The story doesn�??t mar its poetry by saying whether the man became hugely rich by selling his tea�??but he should have done. Ti Kuan Yin is by far one of the best oolongs in mainland China and one of the country�??s ten best teas.

For some inexplicable reason, today I felt the urge to brew it gong fu style. Nothing wrong with the idea itself�??this method, which calls for short, multiple infusions, is commonly used for oolongs in China and Taiwan. But gong fu means skill from practice�??and practice is something I definitely don�??t have. Calling myself a beginner is already a gross exaggeration. But this insane need gripped me, so I ignored the instructions that Special Teas had lovingly included with my Superior Ti Kuan Yin sample, turning instead to Stephane Erler�??s Teamasters blog for a crash course on gong fu.

This chap is learning from the pros in Taiwan and does a marvellous job of sharing his knowledge with the rest of us through videos, text and pictures. He was my only hope to make a reasonably decent tea. I duly rinsed my gaiwan, pitcher and cup with hot water, and placed the leaves to cover the bottom of the gaiwan. Then I put the kettle on and waited for the crab�??s eyes, though I am not sure I got it right.When the bubbles started rising from the bottom, I poured it into the gaiwan and tried to replicate the trick I saw in Stephane�??s video.

Let�??s say my leaves didn�??t quite dance. Oh and the kitchen was covered in water because I had omitted to follow his crucial suggestion of placing a towel under the gaiwan. I waited five breaths and poured the tea into the pitcher. Oh my goodness, the scent of it. It was the fragrance of honeysuckle at night. My cup was a crystal clear golden with that fantastic floral aroma. Not as strong as in the pitcher and perhaps with a fleeting note of something vegetaley but still like walking through honeysuckle vines. It was obviously sweet on the tip of the tongue but became quickly floral with an astringent finish. A really, really, really good tea with a fine balance of elegance and flavor, like Van Gogh�??s Irises.

Elated by this success, I promptly proceeded to flood the kitchen some more with my second and third gongfu infusions, which yielded a more astringent tea with no hint of sweetness but still that wonderful floral quality.

I fell in love with Ti Kuan Yin and fell in love with gong fu. I am hoping that if I practice it with devotion the goddess will reward me too.

Say tea and I�??ll think black. So ingrained is my prejudice that I forget the vast majority of the world drinks green tea. Which is why a message on Adagio�??s TeaChat forum took me aback yesterday. Posted by a green tea lover, it asked for suggestions to move into black tea. And I suddenly realized it never occurred to me anyone could ask this question. It just goes to show just how much my palate is influenced by my culture and place of origin.

Anyhow, it was fun to turn my prejudice on its head and start thinking�??if I had only drunk green and wanted to move into black, what would I have? My answer, like many other posters suggested in that thread, was to choose oolong. Oolong is a somewhat neglected tea�??Joe Simrany of Tea USA once told me that it is only drunk by 2 percent of the world�??s tea drinking population�??which I think is a shame. Most oolongs make fabulous drinking. The one I am drinking now, Whittard�??s Formosa Imperial Phoenix Oolong, is lovely, with light but round mouthfeel and a delicately sweet flavor. Oh, and I read somewhere that it helps fight aging.

But what�??s perhaps more interesting for someone wanting to move into black tea is that oolongs come in several degrees of oxidation. This means you can slowly adjust your green-geared tastebuds by going from a very lightly oxidized one�??closer to green tea�??to a highly oxidized one�??closer to black. Indeed, some of the more highly oxidized oolongs were developed specifically for the export market to satisfy black-tea-shaped Western palates like mine.

The concept obviously works just as well in the reverse�??you can drink oolong as a way to move from black to green. So did I follow my own advice and drink it when I made my first forays in the world of greens? Nope. Soft landings are not for me�??I belong to the sink or swim school. I jumped straight into Gunpowder (the green tea, rather than the explosive type). And you know what, it worked for me because it suddenly opened my eyes to a whole new gamut of tastes that I wanted to explore. Maybe I should have suggested to that green tea lover at TeaChat to take the plunge and start drinking Irish Breakfast.