Orchid
The defining aroma of good oolong in Chinese tasting language, and the single most-used floral note in this catalogue.
Lan xiang — orchid fragrance — is not a decorative comparison in Chinese tea vocabulary; it is the standard against which a great many oolongs are judged, and Tie Guan Yin, Wuyi yancha and several Dan Cong cultivars are described and priced against it. In the cup it reads as high, cool, slightly green and distinctly not sweet, which is what separates it from the honey and stone-fruit notes it often sits beside. It arises during the bruising and partial oxidation of oolong processing rather than being present in the fresh leaf, which is why the same cultivar made as green tea does not have it. Twenty-eight teas here carry the note directly and one more as 'honey orchid', which is the literal reading of Mi Lan Xiang, the best-known Dan Cong.
Which sense this is
Aroma. Volatile compounds, smelled through the nose or retronasally while drinking. Nearly all descriptive tea vocabulary is here, including words people say they can taste.
Compound descriptor. A familiar thing used as shorthand for a mixture of sensations. Nobody detects 'chestnut' — they recognise it.
Where it comes from
- Processing step
Bruising the leaf edges and allowing partial oxidation is what develops it. The same leaf fixed immediately as green tea does not produce it.
A named production step reliably produces it. A statement about practice, not about chemistry.
Processing: process-bruising, process-oxidation, processing-s32-standing-rest. Types: type-oolong-tea.
- Cultivar or terroir
Some cultivars are selected and named for it. Attributing the aroma to the cultivar alone is a simplification, since processing has to develop what the plant makes available.
Attributed to the plant material or the place it grew.
Types: type-oolong-tea.
Not to be confused with
- White floral (Aroma) — The broad intrinsic floral band — gardenia, honeysuckle, lilac, lily, blossom — that the leaf produces without anything being added to it.
What gets said that is not right
That it means the tea smells like the flowers sold as orchids in florists, which are mostly bred for appearance and barely scented. The reference is to fragrant species and to a category in Chinese aesthetics, not to a supermarket phalaenopsis.
The phrases this covers
Editors write tasting notes in their own words. These are the exact phrases in the catalogue that this descriptor accounts for — the mapping is authored phrase by phrase, so nothing is grouped by a rule that guessed.
honey orchid · orchid
Teas whose notes resolve to this
Derived from the tasting notes on each tea, not assigned by hand.
- Ban Tian Yao
- Ben Shan
- Bingdao sheng pu-erh
- Golden Monkey
- Gou Gu Nao
- Hou Kui supreme
- Huangshan Maofeng
- Jingmai sheng pu-erh
- Keemun
- Keemun Hao Ya
- Longjing
- Lu Shan Yun Wu
- Meng Ding Gan Lu
- Meng Ding Huang Ya
- Mi Lan Xiang Dan Cong
- Phoenix Dan Cong
- Qi Lan
- Que She
- Rwandan orthodox black
- Song Zhong Dan Cong
- Taiping Houkui
- Tian Mu Qing Ding
- Tie Guan Yin
- Wenzhou Huang Tang
- Wuyi Jin Guan Yin
- Wuyuan Ming Mei
- Yiwu sheng pu-erh
- Zhangping Shui Xian
- Zhi Lan Xiang Dan Cong
Nearby
A tasting note is a comparison, not a measurement. Where the route from leaf to sensation is established it is labelled as such above; where it is not, the page says so rather than supplying a mechanism the descriptor has not earned. See the rest of the vocabulary for how the axes divide up.