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Chinese Tea Collection in Dubai
The thick and dense infusion envelops you in aroma and a bright taste with a languid herbal note.
This is a legendary green tea. The ivory leaves have an intoxicating floral aroma. The smooth taste, with natural notes of flowers and melon, leaves a refreshing aftertaste.
Organic Superior Yun Wu Cha Green Tea: A journey to the heart of the Lu mountains. This rare green tea, grown in the misty mountains of Mount Lu in China, invites you to discover delicate floral flavors and a clear, transparent liquor. A tea with a pure and smooth taste, perfect for lovers of fine and refined teas.
Ingredients: green tea China Yin Xiang, white tea China Silvery Needle, green tea China Sweet Osmanthus, white tea Ya Bao.
Every category of tea in the world was invented in China, and five of the six are still made better there than anywhere else. Chinese tea is organised not by brand or by garden but by processing style. Understand those six methods, and a whole world of tea opens to you, ready to explore. Cantata's Chinese collection spans green, white, oolong, red and dark tea, sourced in part through Changsha Tea Good Company, and sold mostly as loose leaf in 50 g, 100 g and 250 g packs from AED 20. The classic tea collection covers the wider range.
The six types of Chinese tea
All tea comes from one plant, Camellia sinensis. What separates the types is how far oxidation is allowed to proceed and what is done to stop it.
| Type | Chinese name | Oxidation | Character |
|---|---|---|---|
| Green | 綠茶 lǜchá | None | Fresh, sweet, chestnut, floral |
| Yellow | 黃茶 huángchá | Very light, plus a slow smothering step | Green tea with the edge taken off |
| White | 白茶 báichá | Light, unforced | Delicate, hay, honey, melon |
| Oolong | 烏龍茶 wūlóngchá | Partial, 15 to 80 percent | The widest range of any type |
| Red | 紅茶 hóngchá | Full | Malt, cocoa, dried fruit. Called black tea in English |
| Dark | 黑茶 hēichá | Post-fermented by microbes | Earthy, woody, deep. Includes pu-erh |
The naming trips people up. Chinese “red tea” is what English calls black tea. Chinese “black tea” is the post-fermented category that English usually calls dark tea, and pu-erh belongs to it.
Chinese green tea
Chinese green tea is pan-fired in a dry wok rather than steamed, which gives it a chestnut and toasted-grain quality on top of the fresh vegetal note. It is paler, sweeter and less marine than Japanese green tea.
Huangshan Mao Feng
Huangshan Mao Feng is one of China’s
named famous teas, grown in the
Yellow Mountains of Anhui province.
Fine, downy, slightly curved leaf with an
orchid aroma and a long sweet finish.
Chao Qing
Chao Qing is the denser, more
herbaceous everyday option, and it
re-steeps well.
Bai Hou White Monkey
Bai Hou White Monkey is a Fujian green
tea picked as bud and one leaf, heavy with
white down. Gentle, floral and light.
Brew all of these at 75 to 80 °C for two to three minutes. Boiling water will make them bitter. Japanese and Korean leaf is in the green tea collection, and stone-ground Japanese leaf in matcha.
Chinese red tea, known in English as black tea
Chinese black teas are fully oxidised but processed gently, so they are smooth and low in astringency compared with Indian black tea. Bud-heavy grades from Yunnan and Fujian are among the sweetest teas made anywhere.
Golden Monkey is a Yunnan red tea, all golden bud, with cocoa and honey and almost no bite.
Golden Snail and Golden Spirals are made from leaf hand-rolled into tight spirals, which unfurl slowly and give a rounder, maltier cup.
None of these need milk, and milk would flatten them. 90 °C, two to three minutes, or short gongfu steeps. Indian and Sri Lankan equivalents are in the black tea collection.
Chinese yellow tea
Yellow tea is the rarest of the six types and the most likely to disappear entirely. It is made like green tea with one extra step, men huang or sealing yellow, in which the warm damp leaf is wrapped and left to rest. That slow smothering removes the grassy sharpness of green tea without introducing oxidation, leaving something rounder and sweeter.
Junshan Yin Zhen is the most famous yellow tea in China, made from bud-only leaf and named after Junshan Island in Dongting Lake, Hunan province. Very few producers still make yellow tea at all, which is worth knowing when you see one on a shelf.
Oolong
Oolong is partially oxidised, and the range within it is enormous. A jade oolong at 15 percent oxidation drinks like a creamy green tea. A roasted Wuyi oolong at 70 percent drinks closer to a black tea.
Da Hong Pao is the best known of the Wuyi rock oolongs from northern Fujian, grown on mineral-heavy cliff soil and roasted over charcoal. Mineral, toasted, stone fruit, with a long finish that Chinese tasters call yan yun, rock rhyme.
Formose Jade Oolong and Dongfang Meiren are Taiwanese in origin rather than mainland Chinese, and Cantata lists them here alongside the Chinese range because they belong to the same tea tradition. Dongfang Meiren, or Oriental Beauty, is unusual: the leaf is deliberately left to be bitten by tea jassids, and the plant’s response to the insect produces the honey and muscat character the tea is famous for.
Gaba Vietnam is a Vietnamese dark oolong processed in an oxygen-free nitrogen environment, a method developed in Japan in the 1980s.
The full range is in the oolong collection. Oolong is the category that most rewards gongfu brewing. 5 g in a 100 ml gaiwan, 95 °C, and eight or more short infusions that change noticeably from one to the next.
Pu-erh and dark tea
Pu-erh belongs to the dark tea category and is made in Yunnan from broad-leaf assamica material. Ripe pu-erh is fermented under controlled heat and humidity for a fast, smooth, earthy result. Raw pu-erh is left to age naturally over years. Cantata’s full pu-erh range, including tuo cha and aged vintages, sits on its own page.
A Brief Guide to Gongfu Brewing
Chinese tea is built for the gongfu method, which uses a high leaf-to-water ratio and very short steeps to draw out a sequence of different infusions from the same leaf.
- 5 g of leaf per 100 ml
- Water temperature by type: 75 to 80 °C for green, 85 °C for yellow, 95 °C for oolong and red, 100 °C for pu-erh
- Rinse compressed teas and roasted oolongs for five seconds first
- First infusion 10 to 15 seconds, then add roughly 5 seconds each round
- Expect six to ten infusions from oolong and pu-erh, three or four from green
You need a gaiwan or small teapot, a fair cup, and a strainer. Nothing more. Gaiwans and pots are in teapots and carafes, cups in mugs and cups, and strainers in tea accessories.
Buying Chinese tea from Cantata
Cantata works with Changsha Tea Good Company for Chinese classic grades and has been in the tea trade for over 25 years. Everything in the Chinese range is sold loose in 50 g, 100 g and 250 g, so a single order can cover a green, a red and an oolong for comparison.
- Free UAE delivery over AED 200
- Same-day Dubai delivery on orders before 2 PM
- GCC delivery to Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain and Oman at a flat AED 55
- Cantata Boutique in Al Barsha 1, Dubai, where the range can be tasted before buying
- Gaiwans, teapots and cups stocked in accessories
Related collections
- Green tea for the Japanese and Korean counterparts
- Black tea for Indian, Sri Lankan and African leaf
- Pu-erh tea for the full dark tea range
- Oolong tea for the complete oolong listing
- Matcha for stone-ground Japanese powder
- Teapots and carafes for gaiwans and gongfu sets