Light rolled oolong
The longest route in tea by elapsed time, in which the leaf is bruised at its edges, rested, bruised again, and only fixed once the maker judges by smell that it is ready.
What makes this route what it is
Fixation is deferred until the maker chooses it, and the deferral is the product. In the green route the heat is applied on a schedule and in the black route it is not applied at all until the end; here it is applied at a moment judged by nose, and moving that moment by two hours produces a different tea from the same leaf on the same night.
The route, in order
Each note describes what the step is doing in this route. The same operation does a different job in a different chain.
An open shoot with three or four leaves and some stem, deliberately coarser than a green tea standard. The route needs material with enough substance to survive repeated shaking.
A short, precisely judged period in the sun, often only tens of minutes. Its purpose is to start the leaf moving rather than to remove much water.
Brought indoors to a cool room to rest and equalise before any agitation. Frequently omitted from written accounts, and it is where the leaf recovers from the sun.
Repeated shaking in bamboo drums or by hand, rupturing cells at the leaf margin only. A targeting operation: it decides where oxidation is allowed to happen, not how much happens.
The still hours between shakes, which occupy most of the night by time. This is where the aroma is actually built, and where the maker's judgement is exercised.
Confined to the bruised margin, so a finished leaf shows a red rim around a green centre. Not a leaf oxidised uniformly and stopped part-way, which is the usual misdescription.
Applied at a moment chosen by smell rather than by clock. Everything before this point was reversible in the sense that the maker could keep going; nothing after it is.
Repeated cycles of wrapping the warm leaf in a cloth, compressing the bundle, breaking it open and re-wrapping, sometimes dozens of times over hours, until the leaf sets as a hard pellet.
Interleaved with the rolling rather than following it: the leaf is dried a little, rolled a little, and dried again, because it has to stay pliable to keep taking the shape.
A light finishing bake to set the tea and take out the last moisture. Kept light on purpose — the whole style is built on the aroma the previous nine steps produced.
A heavier bake here moves the tea towards the roasted styles and is a different product sold under a different name, not a refinement of this one.
How it differs from its neighbours
A route described on its own teaches very little. The useful fact is always which other route it is nearly identical to, and where it leaves it.
One position in the route is filled by a different named method. The shape of the route is unchanged.
Ball rolling instead of strip rolling. The pellet opens across many infusions and holds its aroma for years; the strip gives more of itself early and takes a heavy roast better. One slot, and it decides how the tea behaves in the pot for the rest of its life.
Both routes use the same operations. Only their positions differ, and that is the whole of the difference between the two teas.
Fixation is seventh here and third there. The four operations in between — sun wither, indoor rest, shaking, standing rest — are what a green tea route refuses to allow, and refusing them is the whole of what makes a green tea green.
Where it goes wrong
Shaking too hard too early ruptures the leaf centre as well as its margin, and the tea oxidises through rather than at the rim — which produces something closer to a poor black tea and cannot be corrected. Fixing too early leaves a green, sharp cup with no aroma developed; fixing too late gives a heavy, honeyed tea that was supposed to be floral.
In full
An oolong maker's night is an alternation. Withered leaf is shaken so that cells rupture along the margins but not in the centre, then laid out and left completely still for anything from half an hour to two hours while moisture migrates outward and the bruised edges brown. Then it is shaken again, harder, and rested longer. Four to six of those cycles, and the decision the maker actually makes is when to stop — a judgement taken by smelling the bed as the aroma moves from grassy to green-floral to the orchid note that ends the sequence. Fixation then happens at position seven, freezing the leaf in a state that is neither green nor black but heavily oxidised at the rim and barely at all in the middle. The rolling that follows is a long compaction cycle in cloth bags that turns the leaf into a hard pellet, and a light bake finishes it.