Wuyi Rock Tea Quality Characteristics:
Appearance: Curved strip shape, with colors ranging from dark brown, ink-green, sandy-green, bluish-brown, to a precious luster.
The strips are tightly rolled, either fine and tight or robust and tight.
Liquor Color: Orange-yellow to golden yellow, clear and bright.
Aroma: Floral and fruity fragrance profile. It can be sharp, intense, and long-lasting, or pure, delicate, and distant. Scents may resemble peach, orchid, osmanthus, milky notes, etc.
Taste: Mellow, thick, smooth, and sweet with a distinct "Yan Yun" (Rock Rhyme).
Infused Leaves: Soft and bright, showing "green leaves with a red border," or red spots along the leaf edges, or a toad-skin-like appearance.
The characteristics of Rock Tea are mainly manifested in the following three aspects:
1. Variety Characteristics: The common characteristics possessed by a specific tea variety when processed correctly according to oolong tea techniques, regardless of its growing location. Setting aside terroir factors, Rock Tea with pronounced variety characteristics must have been processed to at least a medium level or above (if processed using green tea methods, the variety characteristics would not be evident). Therefore, lower-grade Rock Tea has weaker variety characteristics.
Variety characteristics should be common traits unique to that variety and not found in others. For example, Rougui (Cinnamon) tea's "cinnamon bark aroma" and "pungent spiciness." However, "longan aroma" is not a variety characteristic (it is a processing characteristic, often with a slight smoky note). Understanding variety characteristics requires practical experience. Some traits are easier to sense than describe, such as the familiar characteristics of Shuixian (Narcissus) tea.
2. Processing Characteristics: Features formed due to different processing techniques or mishandling during specific processing stages. Examples include: fermented taste (over-fermentation, similar to black tea), stuffy/wet taste (caused by not drying promptly after rolling or prolonged initial firing), smoky taste, grassy/green taste (insufficient fermentation during shaking/withering or insufficient kill-green), sour and spoiled taste, high-fire taste, over-fired taste, burnt taste (from pan-frying or baking). Some consumers often mistake tastes like fire-workmanship, stuffiness, smokiness, sourness, greenness, or aged flavors for "Yan Yun."
3. Yan Yun (Rock Rhyme) - Environmental Characteristic: Refers to the aroma and taste of tea formed when fine oolong tea varieties are grown within the Danxia landform of the Wuyi Mountains and processed using traditional Wuyi Rock Tea cultivation and production techniques.
The above definition indicates: "Yan Yun" is the unique characteristic of Wuyi Rock Tea; the presence of "Yan Yun" depends on the tea plant's growing environment; the strength of "Yan Yun" is also influenced by the tea variety, cultivation management, and processing techniques.
Under the same conditions: different tea varieties exhibit varying strengths of Yan Yun; processing methods other than traditional Rock Tea techniques will not bring out the Yan Yun; refined roasting is an important process for enhancing Yan Yun.