All of these teas are variations on Dahongpao "Big Red Robe" tea, grown from old tea plants grown on the rocky ground of Wuyi Mountain, and all of them are exported from China by Yingmeihua Food Industry in Wuyishan City in Fujian. I have included their catalogue numbers and the UPC code for a box of each tea.

The legend is that a visiting scholar learned of this tea and was awarded a red robe by the emperor for curing the emperor of disease with it. He returned to Wuyi mountain to place the robe on a tea plant and the tea has been known that way since.

These teas are marked by the importer as "Wuyi Rock Tea" presumably because this would be more comprehensible to an export audience than "Big Red Robe."

Dahongpao is considered a very high grade and desirable tea in China and so not surprisingly it is sometimes counterfeited. We are told by Wikipedia that this tea can be steeped for as many as nine times. Is this true? We propose to find out.

Each of these teas comes in small packages with enough tea to make a pot; the contents of the packages are all between 7.12g and 7.92g which may be due to manufacturing variation as the package to package variations of the same type were on the same order as the variations between different types.

We had a small panel trying two or three steeps of each tea, made with two minute steeps using boiling water, and then additional testing on teas that we preferred. The directions on the packages showed that they each had a slightly different amount of tea in them, but they all recommended boiling water and a short steep in a gaiwan. Since we are using a brewing basket and not a gaiwan we used 250ml/2 min as a starting reference point.

Tea Number one -- Cat. D-9973

UPC code for this tea is 970659-930376.

The first two minute steep on this tea was pleasant and flavourful. It had a very distinct nutty oolong flavour. Unfortunately this did not carry on to the second steep which was pleasant but with no intensity, until we figured out that the second steep requires much, much longer time than the first.

This could well be a baseline commodity or bulk tea and it is perfectly fine for regular drinking. It stands up to at least four steeps if they are long enough, and has a pleasant "oolong" taste.

Prepared with 250ml of water this made a solution at pH 6.25.

Tea Number two -- Cat. YX-568

This tea is marked "Rogui Xiang" or "Cinnamon fragrance" but it is not a scented tea at all. This is again a conventional dahuongpao which is presumably thought by the vendor to taste like cinnamon.

UPC code for this tea is 970659-930451.

The first taste coming up was not necessarily that of cinnamon, but it was very distinct. "This tastes like weed!" said Harmony, and indeed it did. A second steep was only slightly better. There was a very distinct sort of cannabis or pine tar scent and flavour in the finish here which none of our testers found in any way pleasant. A third steep was more mild, but still with the same flavour. "It's weed!" says Harmony. A fourth steep was not interesting.

Prepared with 250ml of water this made a solution at pH 5.9.

Tea Number Three -- Cat. PD-062

The label says this is a "Special Shuixian" tea. This is a specific cultivar of tea, sometimes called "Narcissus" or "Water Sprite" and the darkest of the typical Wuyi oolongs. It is not in fact made with narcissus flowers or any such thing.

We can't make out the characters that make this special, but believe it has something to do with being old.

UPC code for this tea is 970659-930260.

This also had the weed taste to some extent, although not as strongly as tea #2 above. Notes include "more oolong, less weed." This was also more bitter than any of the other teas tested, which is something that might be remedied with different preparation methods. A second steep was much more pleasant than the first, a third steep held up, and a fourth steep was getting boring.

"It's still weed," says Harmony.

Prepared with 250ml of water this made a solution at pH 5.7.

Tea Number Four -- Cat. TH-028

This is another Shuixian tea like the PD-062 tea above, but it's specifically indicated as being "Handmade Roll" tea, meaning it was rolled by hand after steaming rather than being run through a rolling machine. When visiting the Araksa tea plantation in Thailand we were told that hand rolling was an option for tea processing and that it resulted in a brighter and fresher tasting tea.

UPC code for this tea is 970659-930260, which you will note is the same code used for the PD-062 tea above. Doesn't that make for inventory control issues? It might make importation paperwork easier.

This was definitely much more floral in scent and flavour than the #1 baseline tea, but with less of the nutty oolong flavour. A second steep was similar.

It seems almost ironic that of these teas, one of the least-liked and one of the best-liked shared a catalogue number. How do you order one and make sure you don't get the other?

Prepared with 250ml of water this made a solution at pH 6.2.

Tea Number Five -- No Catalogue Number

This tea also just has characters on the front saying "Da Hong Pao Tea" and nothing more specific. What makes it different than all the others?

The packaging for this tea also mentions a Malaysian distributor which is not mentioned on the other teas. That distributor is Wha Hung Enterprise and has a website at https://wysymh.com. It also differs in packaging in that it has no catalogue number.

UPC code for this tea is 970659-930086.

This was super bitter in comparison with all of the others. It's as if it was a completely different tea. I thought the second steep was better than the first with a slight smokiness, but none of the other members of our panel agreed about that smoky taste in the finish. A third steep was still better but a fourth steep was losing flavour.

Prepared with 250ml of water this made a solution at pH 6.5.

Tea Number Six -- Cat. YH-1811

This tea again says "Shuixian" in large letters in front. We can infer this is a lower grade of Shuixian than the "special old" or "hand-rolled" Shuixian teas above.

UPC code for this tea is 970659-930383.

This was pleasant but much more subtle than the others. Can we suggest it is a lower grade than the baseline reference #1 because it was not as strongly flavoured? Or is it a higher grade because it is more delicate?

"It tastes of nothing" said Barbara, although of course we are tasting this at the end of our sequence. Would it have been more interesting if we'd tasted it first instead of after five others?

To find out we made another cup on a fresh morning, and found it to be subtle but pleasant. Slight peach notes. A second steep was drinkable but dead-tasting.

Prepared with 250ml of water this made a solution at pH 6.3.

Conclusion

I thought pH would correlate somewhat with bitterness since we can't easily measure catechin or tannic acid levels, but it did not seem to measure anything useful.

All teas were tested using Williamsburg, VA. city water at pH 6.65 from the tap, using 250ml of water per packet of tea for 2 minute steeps. All pH values measured by manual titration with phenolphthalein.

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